The U.S. Army is putting fresh money behind American tungsten. Engineering & Mining Journal first reported that Perpetua Resources has been awarded up to $40 million from the Army’s Defense Ordnance Technology Consortium to study tungsten production at the Stibnite Mining District in central Idaho, the same site where Perpetua is already building a gold and antimony mine.
- The Army’s Defense Ordnance Technology Consortium, working through its Portfolio Acquisition Executive Agile Sustainment and Ammunition program, is committing up to $40 million over 36 months to Perpetua’s tungsten work at Stibnite.
- Perpetua matches the award dollar for dollar. An initial 18 month phase is budgeted at roughly $18 million, split evenly between the company and the Army.
- The funding covers drilling to define a tungsten resource, lab and bench scale metallurgical testing, and design and permitting for an exploration decline that would reach high grade mineralization beneath the Hangar Flats pit.
- This award brings total U.S. government critical minerals funding to Perpetua to $126 million since 2022, on top of separate construction financing for the adjacent gold and antimony project.
- The work is a feasibility study, not a production commitment. No company has mined tungsten commercially in the United States since 2015.
What is the Army actually paying for at Stibnite?
The $40 million is not a construction check, it is a feasibility budget. Perpetua will use the money to drill new holes aimed at defining a tungsten resource separate from the gold and antimony ore body already permitted at the site, then run laboratory and bench scale metallurgical tests on the rock the company pulls out. Early test work has already looked at a 550 kilogram sample grading 9.2 percent antimony and 4.2 percent tungsten, which the company has used to gauge how the two metals might be recovered together. A third piece of the budget goes toward designing and permitting an exploration decline, an underground tunnel, that would let crews physically reach high grade mineralization sitting beneath the existing Hangar Flats pit. None of this guarantees a mine. Perpetua still has to prove the tungsten is there in mineable quantities and that it can be processed economically before any of it reaches American factories.
Why does the Pentagon care about tungsten from an Idaho gold mine?
Tungsten is the metal behind tungsten carbide, the material that tips drill bits, saw blades, and armor piercing rounds, and the United States has not had a commercial tungsten mine since 2015. Nearly every pound used today is imported, and recent Chinese export controls on tungsten have sharpened Washington’s interest in a domestic source. Stibnite already has history on its side: during World War II the district supplied roughly half of the tungsten and 90 percent of the antimony used by U.S. war efforts, before sitting idle and unreclaimed for decades. Perpetua’s current construction plan centers on gold and antimony, so a workable tungsten resource would make Stibnite a three metal site instead of two, all of it tied to the same permitted footprint in a state Mining Our Future tracks closely. Our Idaho master report and Stibnite tour stop cover the district’s wartime role and its current buildout in more depth.
How does this fit into Stibnite’s bigger buildout?
The tungsten study rides alongside, not instead of, Perpetua’s main project. Gold and antimony construction keeps moving at Stibnite under financing that already includes a federal Export-Import Bank loan, and this new Army award lifts total U.S. government critical minerals support for Perpetua to $126 million since 2022. Perpetua President and CEO Jon Cherry framed the award as part of a broader push for domestic supply, saying “resilient mineral solutions start here in America.” Later phases of the tungsten program still need their own funding approvals, and any work outside the currently permitted mine plan would require additional regulatory review before a shovel goes into new ground. For now, Stibnite remains a single construction project with a second, earlier stage study running in parallel underground.