Perpetua Resources has landed a new 36-month, up-to-$40 million award from the U.S. Army to study whether tungsten concentrate can be commercially produced again at Idaho's historical Stibnite Mining District, a site that hasn't seen commercial tungsten mining anywhere in the country since 2015. The company will match the Army's contribution dollar for dollar, with an initial 18-month phase expected to cost roughly $18 million split evenly between Perpetua and the federal government.
The award, announced Monday, flows through the U.S. Army's Defense Ordnance Technology Consortium and is administered by the Portfolio Acquisition Executive Agile Sustainment & Ammunition office at Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey, according to Perpetua Resources. The funding will support drilling to define a potential tungsten mineral resource, bench-scale metallurgical testing, and the permitting and engineering work needed for an exploration decline into areas of known tungsten mineralization. Perpetua says it will design and implement the project itself while matching the Army's $40 million commitment.
Jon Cherry, Perpetua's president and chief executive, framed the award as validation of the company's strategy. “Resilient mineral solutions start here in America,” Cherry said, adding that the Army's added investment in a historically proven American tungsten source underscores Stibnite's growing strategic value, as reported by IndexBox.
A District With a Wartime Pedigree
Stibnite, located in central Idaho, previously produced both antimony and tungsten, and the district supplied roughly half of U.S. tungsten use and 90% of U.S. antimony use during World War II, per Perpetua. Mining there ended after the war, but identified mineralized material has remained in the ground ever since. The new program will focus largely on tungsten mineralization beneath the Hangar Flats pit, where Perpetua has already logged promising drill results, including a 9.8-meter interval grading 4.6% tungsten and 8.3% antimony.
Perpetua's broader Stibnite Gold Project, focused on exploration, site restoration and redevelopment of gold-antimony-silver deposits in the Stibnite-Yellow Pine district, is what the company describes as one of the highest-grade open-pit gold deposits in the United States and, it says, the only identified domestic reserve of antimony. The Hangar Flats area alone holds roughly 1.37 million ounces of gold resources and more than 95 million pounds of antimony resources that are not currently counted in the company's mine plan or reported reserves. Perpetua believes underground access to that material could eventually supplement its existing production, though any work outside the permitted mine plan would require additional regulatory review and permitting.
Why Washington Keeps Writing Checks
The Pentagon's interest in Stibnite reflects a supply picture that officials consider precarious. The U.S. has not mined tungsten commercially since 2015, and China controls about 85% of the world's tungsten supply, according to Defense News. A separate, lower-confidence U.S. Geological Survey snippet instead frames the exposure in import terms, putting China at 26% of recent U.S. tungsten import sources alongside Germany, Bolivia and Vietnam — a different measure that isn't directly comparable to the global production figure. Tungsten's military relevance is straightforward: it's used in manufacturing weapons ranging from bullets to missiles, the outlet notes.
This isn't the only recent federal bet on reviving the metal domestically. The Defense Department has separately announced a $450 million investment in The Elmet Group, with roughly $150 million earmarked to restart tungsten mining in Imlay, Nevada, and another $100 million set aside for a new refining and trading division, Defense News reported. Perpetua's own government support extends beyond the Army award, too — the company previously secured a $2.9 billion loan from the U.S. Export-Import Bank for the Stibnite Gold Project, as reported by CNBC. That same report notes Washington has struck similar critical-mineral deals with USA Rare Earth, Lithium Americas and Trilogy Metals, and that no marketable antimony was mined in the U.S. in 2024 at all, with China supplying more than half of domestic antimony demand.
What's Actually Funded — and What Isn't
Perpetua is careful to note that only the first phase of the new Army program is actually funded right now; later phases are subject to results and incremental funding approvals, with each additional phase requiring its own sign-off. The company says it has submitted proposals for further grants but has cautioned that further funding isn't assured. Monday's award does bring Perpetua's total U.S. government critical-mineral funding to $126 million since 2022, the company said.
The planned work includes initial surface exploration drilling and metallurgical test work on a 550-kilogram sample from prior exploration that graded 9.2% antimony and 4.2% tungsten, along with the design, permitting, and possible construction of an exploration decline. Perpetua intends to continue its own exploration beneath the currently permitted Hangar Flats pit regardless of how the Army-funded phases unfold. In July, Perpetua, the Army and Idaho National Laboratory opened a modular mineral-processing pilot plant aimed at building a domestic antimony trisulfide supply chain, according to a Perpetua Resources release documenting the project.
