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Elemental Leverage: How the United States Can Stop China’s Rare-Earths Squeeze Before the Next Crisis

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By Josh Richards and Joseph Hanacek

The Elemental Weapon

When China threatens to close its fist, the world listens. In August 2025, Li Chenggang, Beijing’s chief trade negotiator, didn’t bother with euphemism. If the United States continued tightening controls on advanced technologies, he warned, China would answer by restricting exports of the metals that make those technologies possible.1 Rare-earth elements, the invisible foundation of jet engines, electric vehicles, and precision weapons, had become bargaining chips in a new kind of power game.

It was a small statement with continental consequences. Within weeks, Chinese ministries began slowing export licenses for certain alloys and magnetic materials, sending nervous tremors through markets from Tokyo to Detroit. The message was unmistakable: what Washington thinks of as global supply chains, Beijing sees as instruments of leverage.

That moment captured the logic of the age. Over the last two decades, the United States and its allies treated the materials that underpin modern life, rare-earths such as lithium and cobalt as the anonymous plumbing of globalization. China treated them as strategy. Today it controls most of the world’s processing and virtually all of the stages that matter: refining, separation, and magnet manufacturing. In total, Beijing controls roughly 70 % of global mining, about 90 % of separation/processing, and more than 90 % of high-performance magnet manufacturing.2 The result is an asymmetry more dangerous than most weapons systems because it operates quietly, through dependency rather than force.

This is not simply a rehearsal for war over Taiwan and the global semiconductor market, though that flashpoint looms over everything. It is part of a broader campaign to reorder the global balance of power, to remind every nation that in the 21st century, the flow of materials can be as decisive as the movement of troops. Rare-earths have become Beijing’s favorite pressure point because they embody the new reality of competition: the next crisis may begin not in the Taiwan Strait, but in a factory that can no longer get the magnets it needs.

And yet, the story is not just about China’s dominance, it is about America’s choices. Whether the United States treats this as a passing market fluctuation or a defining national-security test will determine not only its industrial resilience, but its ability to deter coercion before a single shot is fired.

The Strategic Context: Material Leverage in a Post-Industrial Age

Beijing’s threats over rare-earth exports are not a sudden innovation; they are the predictable evolution of a decades-long strategy. China benefits from low-cost mining and lax environmental regulation, but their dominance in rare earth elements did not emerge purely from geological luck. Rather, China employed deliberate statecraft, leveraging industrial policy fused with geopolitical vision. Since the late 1990s, the Chinese government has poured billions into refining, separation, and magnet-making infrastructure, while the United States dismantled its own. By the 2010s, Beijing had learned to turn economic scale into political leverage: subsidize the middle of the supply chain, flood global markets, drive out competitors, and then consolidate control. What began as a commercial edge became a coercive instrument. 3

The results are stark. China now accounts for the overwhelming majority of global rare-earth processing and nearly all of the world’s high-performance magnet production—the beating heart of everything from precision weapons to renewable-energy systems. In a global economy where advanced technologies are the currency of power, control of materials is control of tempo. Beijing understands this intimately. Its 2023 export-control laws, followed by tightened magnet licensing in 2025, were not about profit; they were about signaling. 4 Each new bureaucratic delay or “security review” serves as a reminder that dependency is a policy choice, and that global markets operate at China’s discretion. 5

For the United States, this is not merely an economic vulnerability—it is a strategic liability. Every day that the refining, alloying, and magnet-making that feed America’s defense and technology sectors remain concentrated overseas, Washington’s deterrent posture weakens. The lesson is familiar to anyone who watched Russia’s manipulation of Europe’s gas supply in 2021: energy dependence and material dependence both collapse deterrence long before the first crisis erupts.

Why the U.S. Can’t Wait for Taiwan

It is tempting to treat China’s tightening grip on rare-earths as a prelude to war over Taiwan, a crisis to be managed “when the time comes.” That would be a mistake. The rare-earth squeeze is already here, unfolding in boardrooms and customs ports rather than battlefields. The August 2025 remarks from Li Chenggang were not idle bluster. They marked a deliberate escalation in Beijing’s campaign to use industrial interdependence as leverage, an offensive waged through permits, tariffs, and export licenses instead of missiles. 6

Beijing’s logic is simple and effective: coerce early, not late. By testing Western vulnerabilities before open conflict, China forces companies and governments into self-censorship and hesitation. It pressures investors to think twice about U.S. manufacturing projects and signals to allies that Washington cannot protect their supply chains. In other words, the weaponization of trade happens during peacetime precisely because it is more efficient than war.

Yet this economic coercion is not separate from Beijing’s territorial ambitions, but a prelude to them. The same strategic vision that seeks dominance in the Taiwan Strait also seeks dominance in the global flow of strategic materials. In both cases, the goal is the same: to make resistance costly and compliance inevitable.

If the United States waits for a military crisis to address these dependencies, it will have already lost the contest that matters most over industrial sovereignty. A credible response must begin now, while the tools of competition are still commercial and the battlefield still economic. The coming decade will test whether Washington can rewire its supply chains faster than Beijing can weaponize them.

The question of how to outmaneuver China is not abstract, but physical: how to rebuild the industrial arteries that power American strength. The contest over rare earths is a contest over the tangible ingredients of deterrence, the metals inside every jet, missile, motor, and microchip. What Beijing has achieved through decades of patient investment is not just control of markets but control of manufacturing tempo. To understand why this matters, and how deeply it runs through the U.S. economy, one must look beneath the headlines of trade disputes and into the machinery itself: where magnets, alloys, and sensors meet strategy.

Where the U.S. (and Allies) are Exposed

The United States’ advanced-technology economy is built on foundations most citizens never see and fewer understand. Every modern instrument of power, whether a fighter jet banking over the Pacific, a hypersonic missile guiding at Mach 5, an electric vehicle gliding through traffic, or a smart phone depends on the same microscopic ingredients: rare-earth elements. Neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, and terbium are not household names, but they are the metals that turn electrical energy into movement and precision. They make magnets that can survive the heat of jet engines, sensors that can detect the faintest electronic signals, and motors that spin with unmatched efficiency. When the ability to mine, refine, and magnetize those materials sits almost entirely overseas, dependency becomes a design flaw and a geopolitical risk. A shortage wouldn’t just slow production; it would stall entire defense and clean-energy programs at once.

The vulnerability lies not only at the start of the chain where ore is mined, but more critically in the middle, where those ores are refined, separated, and transformed into alloys and magnets. This “midstream” is where complexity, not geology, determines control. The United States can mine all the raw material it wants, but if it must still send concentrates overseas for separation or metallization, it remains at the mercy of those who own the processing plants. The Mountain Pass Mine in California illustrates the dilemma perfectly. It sits atop one of the world’s richest rare-earth deposits and can produce thousands of tons of concentrate each year, yet for much of its modern history those concentrates were shipped abroad to China for processing. Even as domestic separation resumes, the legacy of dependence lingers: until the U.S. can transform raw ore into finished magnets within its own industrial base, its security rests on someone else’s permits.

Analysts warn that even as mining diversifies, with new projects in Australia, Canada, and parts of Africa coming online, the choke point has simply shifted downstream. The “systemic trade risk,” as researchers call it, now clusters around the intermediate tiers: the solvent-extraction circuits that separate individual elements and the precision magnet plants that turn them into usable parts. China holds dominance over both.7 These are capital-intensive, chemically complex, and environmentally sensitive operations that Beijing spent decades perfecting and subsidizing while Western economies outsourced them. The United States today may have more mines in motion than ever before, but its midstream, the critical infrastructure for processing and magnet-making that turns geology into power remains fragile. Without it, every ton of ore dug in Nevada or Texas is still just another shipment waiting on a license from somewhere else.

A Strategic Blueprint: Five Interlocking Tracks

If the rare‐earth supply-chain shock is a plausible act of coercion, the U.S. must respond with a layered strategy. Here are five tracks—each reinforcing the others, each aimed not merely at mining more, but at transforming structural dependence into structural resilience.

A Strategic Reserve That Buys Time, Not Trophies. The United States doesn’t need a warehouse of geological curiosities—it needs a reserve that buys time in a crisis. That means stockpiling what defense and energy programs actually consume: refined oxides, metals, and magnets, rotated through active contracts to keep quality current. The reserve should function like an insurance policy, bridging weeks or months of disruption while diplomacy and supply adjust. Time, not tonnage, is its true measure. 8

An Allied Sourcing Compact. The path to resilience runs through partners. Australia’s separation plants, Canada’s deposits, Japan’s precision engineering, and Vietnam’s emerging reserves all form a foundation for shared security—if bound together by long-term offtake agreements and reciprocal release protocols. The Minerals Security Partnership already convenes these players; what’s missing is teeth. A formal compact—backed by price floors and clear crisis procedures—would convert goodwill into capacity. 9

Finishing the Middle at Home. America’s rare-earth story cannot end at the mine gate. True independence depends on the midstream—refining, separation, and magnet fabrication. Federal incentives through the Defense Production Act and DOE’s loan programs must target this stage, where every new processing line multiplies the effect of every new mine. Shared “tolling” facilities could let smaller miners buy processing services rather than build redundant plants, creating an ecosystem rather than a patchwork of projects. 10

Permitting That Moves at Strategic Speed.
Time is the ultimate enemy. A mine that takes ten years to permit is a strategic liability. The solution isn’t cutting corners—it’s aligning process with purpose: single-agency coordination, concurrent reviews, and designated industrial corridors with infrastructure in place. Projects that meet the highest environmental and community standards should move fast because they meet them, not despite them.

Recycling and Substitution That Close the Loop. America’s next rare-earth supply may come not from mountains but from scrapyards. Every retired wind turbine, EV motor, and hard-drive array contains magnets rich in recoverable material. A national recycling framework—paired with research into lower-dysprosium magnet designs—can reclaim what would otherwise be waste. Substitution doesn’t eliminate dependence overnight, but it bends the curve, turning scarcity into opportunity. 11

Rare-earth projects die in the troughs. Contracts-for-difference, floor-price puts, and anchored offtakes are not industrial charity; they are anti-whiplash technologies that make private capital rational. Pair those tools with Export-Import Bank and DFC support for allied projects in exchange for delivery rights, and suddenly the spreadsheet’s “downside case” looks financeable. The effect is cumulative: every financed separator or magnet line reduces the premium Washington pays for emergency barrels of oxides later.

A Phased Timeline

The first phase should begin immediately, focusing on shock absorbers rather than monuments. Within a year, the U.S. could establish a functioning Strategic Rare Earths & Magnets Reserve, buying and rotating modest quantities to work out logistics, and negotiate ten-year offtake and stock-swap agreements with close allies like Australia and Canada. These are achievable within existing authorities and budgets. At the same time, Washington should channel current Defense Production Act and Department of Energy funding toward the midstream: separation, metallization, and magnet lines that are already half-built. The goal is not to design new programs but to finish those that exist, turning ribbon-cuttings into production runs. Finally, a Five Eyes–EU monitoring cell should start quarterly stress-tests, with dry runs for a 90-day licensing freeze so that when friction appears in a port or a ministry, policymakers see it before procurement officers feel it.

The second phase, spanning roughly two to three years, must consolidate what the first began. Domestic refining and magnet lines should transition from pilot to full-scale operation, the reserve should grow into a buffer measured in months of defense and grid demand, and allied offtakes should begin steady delivery. This is also when recycling must move from experiment to infrastructure, with federal procurement preferences creating a guaranteed home for recycled content. On the regulatory side, the first industrial parks and brownfield re-mining projects should clear the new permitting regime, signaling credibility to investors that timelines are finally predictable.

By years three through seven, America’s resilience becomes clearly visible. Allied supply chains mature; U.S. magnet production satisfies a majority of domestic needs; and the strategic reserve gives Washington options when China flexes its licensing power. At that point, the geopolitical logic changes: when Beijing threatens to tighten a licensing screw, markets still move, but U.S. production schedules remain steady.

Strategic Implications for the Indo-Pacific and Taiwan

Although this paper does not hinge on a Taiwan invasion, that scenario illuminates the stakes. Taiwan remains central to the U.S.–China competitive equation. If Beijing were to blockade or invade Taiwan, U.S. and allied capabilities will depend on magnets, sensors, propulsion systems, many of which rest on rare-earth chains. If now the U.S. enters crisis mode and cannot spin up magnet production or import alternatives, the tactical decisions in the Strait will be made under supply shock, not strategic coherence and once the US military’s supply of expensive high-end munitions is exhausted, replacement will be difficult if not impossible

Moreover, an early rare-earth crisis, whether linked to Taiwan or technology competition (AI, cyber, semiconductors), can blunt U.S. response before kinetic conflict begins. Therefore, the rare-earth strategy is less a “nice to have” and more a mission-critical enabler of defense and economic posture in the Indo-Pacific.

Cost, Risk, and the Iron Law of Trade Leverage

The scale of investment, though nontrivial, is modest compared to the cost of being caught unprepared. Billions of dollars over five years for a reserve, tens of billions over a decade for full mid-stream build-out. The risks: project cost overruns, permitting delay, price collapses, partner country policy shifts. Many commentators have noted the U.S. faces a “rare-earth delusion” if it assumes mines alone solve the problem.12

But the alternative risk is far greater: if China decides to throttle supply, the industrial base, defense production, and allied manufacturing face cascading effects. The cost of doing nothing, or doing too little, is catastrophic strategic leverage left in the hands of an adversary.

Making the Blueprint Real

Blueprints don’t move metal; politics does. The architecture for rare-earth resilience already exists; the challenge now is execution. Turning strategy into supply will require coordination across institutions that rarely move in sync: Congress, the White House, the private sector, allied governments, and the capital markets that finance them all. Each has a role that only it can play.

Congress must provide consistency where markets cannot. It can modernize the Defense Production Act to treat separation, metallization, and magnet-making as enduring national-security priorities, not emergency programs that expire with each appropriation cycle. Long-term procurement authority, multi-year funding, and statutory stockpile mandates would tell industry that the rare-earth effort will outlast the next budget fight.

The executive branch holds the levers of speed. The White House and its interagency partners can cut permitting timelines, streamline environmental reviews, and integrate the work of DOE, DOD, and Commerce under a single critical-materials coordinator. The Minerals Security Partnership should evolve from a diplomatic forum into an operational alliance, tasked with financing and synchronizing projects across allied supply chains.

Industry and finance are the builders. Public capital can launch projects, but private capital must scale them. To draw investment into a volatile sector, Washington should expand price-stabilization mechanisms, such as floor-price guarantees, offtake contracts, and export credit support, so investors can model predictable risk. Without those tools, every project remains a gamble on Beijing’s next export decree.

Allies can be force multipliers when relationships are properly balanced and maintained. Australia, Canada, Japan, Vietnam, and the EU already have the geology and the expertise; what they need is U.S. demand certainty and shared strategic planning. Reciprocal stockpile release agreements, joint procurement, and common standards for refining and magnets could convert fragmented national efforts into a collective shield against coercion.

Finally, the public sector, from state governments to research institutions, must fill the innovation gap. Recycling systems, magnet reclamation, and material substitution will determine whether this decade’s investments build independence or simply delay dependence. Federal and state coordination on industrial parks, tax credits, and workforce training can ensure that new facilities are not just built but sustained.

If there is a single lesson from recent history, it is that resilience is rarely won in crisis, it is built in advance, when the costs are political rather than existential. China’s command of rare-earths supply is not destiny; it is the product of time, will, and coordination. The United States can still match it, but only if it acts with the same discipline and purpose.

The next confrontation may not unfold in the Taiwan Strait but in a shipment log, a licensing bureau, or a factory floor. The question is whether Washington will treat the rare-earth race as a line item, or as the front line.

Conclusion

In the decade ahead, warfighting and deterrence will not only be determined by fleets, missiles, and satellites; they will be shaped by mills, magnets, alloys and processing lines. Here is the dilemma: the United States has for too long treated rare-earth elements as an economic commodity subject to market forces. China treats them as strategic infrastructure subject to Party control.

The good news: the U.S. still has time. The moment of kinetic conflict in the Taiwan Strait, or a wider Indo-Pacific war is not today. But the moment of supply shock may well come before. When it does, the margin between success and failure will likely be defined by how quickly the U.S., its industry and its allies can spin those magnets, feed those sensors, roll those motors. The bets made today on stockpiles, allied contracts, processing plants, recycling and permitting reform are not optional; they are structural.

Deterrence is not just about sending ships and jets. It is about ensuring the industrial base behind those systems is resilient, trusted and redundant. When the next adversary contemplates turning off the tap on rare-earths, the United States should be the one saying: go ahead, the supplies are already on deck, production lines are humming, and we have a plan B at the ready.

That is how you turn elemental leverage into resilience, and how you ensure that supply chains become part of our defense, not part of their coercion.

Josh Richards is the Chief Commercial Officer of Pacific Peering. He serves on the UN’s Joint Task Force on SMART Cables as a member of the Steering Committee, and chairs the Business Development Committee. He is a Security Fellow with the Truman National Security Project, a Tech Policy Fellow with the Aspen Institute, and a Senior Fellow with AI2030.

Joseph Hanacek is a Surface Warfare Officer in the United States Navy. He serves as a Warfare Tactics Instructor at the Surface Advanced Warfighting School detachment of the Naval Surface and Mine Warfighting Development Center in San Diego, CA. The views and opinions presented herein are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of War, the Department of the Navy, or its components.

References

1. Hidayat, Muflih. “China’s New Rare Earth Export Controls: Global Supply Chain Impact.” Discovery Alert, October 16, 2025 https://discoveryalert.com.au/news/china-rare-earth-export-controls-2025-impact/

2. Baskaran, Gracelin. “China’s New Rare Earth and Magnet Restrictions Threaten U.S. Defense Supply Chains.” Center for Strategic and International Studies, October 9, 2025 https://www.csis.org/analysis/chinas-new-rare-earth-and-magnet-restrictions-threaten-us-defense-supply-chains

3. Klimek, Peter, Sophia Baum, Markus Gerschberger, and Maximilian Hess. “Systemic Trade Risk Suppresses Comparative Advantage in Rare Earth Dependent Industries.” arXiv, August 1, 2025 https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.00556

4. Baskaran, Gracelin. “China’s New Rare Earth and Magnet Restrictions Threaten U.S. Defense Supply Chains.” Center for Strategic and International Studies, October 9, 2025 https://www.csis.org/analysis/chinas-new-rare-earth-and-magnet-restrictions-threaten-us-defense-supply-chains

5. Reuters. “China Expands Rare Earths Restrictions, Targets Defense and Chips Users.” Reuters, October 9, 2025 https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-tightens-rare-earth-export-controls-2025-10-09/

6. Hidayat, Muflih. “China’s New Rare Earth Export Controls: Global Supply Chain Impact.” Discovery Alert, October 16, 2025 https://discoveryalert.com.au/news/china-rare-earth-export-controls-2025-impact/

7. Klimek, Peter, Sophia Baum, Markus Gerschberger, and Maximilian Hess. “Systemic Trade Risk Suppresses Comparative Advantage in Rare Earth Dependent Industries.” arXiv, August 1, 2025  https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.00556

8. Baskaran, Gracelin. “China’s New Rare Earth and Magnet Restrictions Threaten U.S. Defense Supply Chains.” Center for Strategic and International Studies, October 9, 2025 https://www.csis.org/analysis/chinas-new-rare-earth-and-magnet-restrictions-threaten-us-defense-supply-chains

9. Kozul-Wright, Alex. “Can Australia Provide US with Rare-Earth Metals Which China Has Restricted?” Al Jazeera, October 17, 2025 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10/17/can-australia-provide-us-with-rare-earth-metals-which-china-has-restricted

10. Baskaran, Gracelin. “China’s New Rare Earth and Magnet Restrictions Threaten U.S. Defense Supply Chains.” Center for Strategic and International Studies, October 9, 2025 https://www.csis.org/analysis/chinas-new-rare-earth-and-magnet-restrictions-threaten-us-defense-supply-chains

11. Cameron, Hugh. “China’s Rare Earth Restrictions Could Backfire on Xi. Here’s How.” Newsweek, October 16, 2025 https://www.newsweek.com/chinas-rare-earth-restrictions-could-backfire-on-xi-heres-how-10886552

12. Foroohar, Rana. “America’s Rare Earth Delusion.” Financial Times, October 19, 2025 https://www.ft.com/content/583abbd2-ffa8-4232-931f-66f55949b5d5?syn-25a6b1a6=1

Featured image: An open-pit mine in Kokpatas, Uzbekistan, operated by Navoi Mining and Metallurgical. (Photo by U.S. Army Acquisition Support Center)

Capability Analysis

From the Paracels to the Far Seas: How China Closed Their Maritime Medical Platform Gap

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By Jonathan Robinson

Introduction

In January 1974, in the tail end of the Vietnam War, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and Republic of Vietnam Navy briefly clashed over control of the Paracel Islands in what became known in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the Battle of the Paracels (Figure 1). Despite Beijing securing their grip on the archipelago after the battle, the victory exposed a severe operational vulnerability. The PLAN was unable to rapidly evacuate and stabilize casualties from the conflict zone for follow-on care ashore. It also exposed the limits of the PRC ability to sustain their maritime power close to home.

Figure 1. Oil Painting Titled “Battle of the Paracel Islands – Ship No. 389 in Combat,” Depicting the 1974 Engagement. (Ai Youmin and Li Enming)
Figure 1. Oil Painting Titled “Battle of the Paracel Islands – Ship No. 389 in Combat,” Depicting the 1974 Engagement. (Ai Youmin and Li Enming)

This operational gap served as a catalyst for the development of the PLAN’s first ever hospital ships being launched in 1991, that today has grown into a fleet of twelve vessels. Operating across a range of environments, from blue water to littoral areas, the PLAN’s medical fleet is shaped by the legacy of their engagement in the Paracels, something that makes the PLAN’s vessels distinct from how U.S Navy platforms were developed.

Exploring the evolution of the PLAN’s hospital ship fleet since the 1970s, this article will argue the PLAN has not only resolved their historical maritime medical shortfalls today but could now also leverage lessons from newly launched forward-deployed civilian expeditionary assets – such as the Pinglan – to further strengthen their capabilities for sustaining combat operations at sea into the future.

Adaptation and Experimentation: PLAN’s Early Hospital Ships | 1991 – 2006

Prior to 1991, the PLAN did not operate a single dedicated hospital ship. In comparison, the U.S. Navy had been operating such vessels for over one hundred years. However, the short-lived Battle of the Paracel Islands changed this. While a tactical victory for the PLAN, the clash exposed severe maritime medical shortcomings. A PRC journal published at the time noted that the PLAN lacked specialized ships to rescue, rapidly treat, or evacuate the wounded, relying instead on requisitioned fishing boats and PLAN fast patrol boats. As a consequence, wounded sailors often waited up to 48 hours before being properly treated, leading to a number of PLAN personnel dying of infection and other preventable injuries.

Recognizing this shortfall could undermine Beijing’s ability to sustain their aggressive island-holding strategy in the South China Sea, the PLAN’s South Sea Fleet and Medical Logistics Department formally proposed in 1976 that the Central Military Commission acquire dedicated hospital ships. However, progress was hindered by the devastating aftermath of Chairman Mao Zedong’s devastating cultural revolution in the late 1970s and 1980s. In this resource scarce environment, the PLAN prioritized the development of combatant ships over auxiliary platforms as state spending focused on national economic reconstruction and countering land-based threats to the PRC.

But by 1991, this initiative delivered. Two Qiongsha class troop transports were adapted into two Nan Kang class hospital ships; the Nan Kang (832) and Bei Kang (833). These vessels began providing dedicated maritime medical support to PLA garrisons on islands in the South China Sea, laying the foundation for sustaining the PLAN’s forward power projection in the region.

Following these beginnings, in the late 1990s and early 2000s the PLAN began experimenting with modular containerized medical platforms to augment the capacity of their Qiongsha class hospital ships. This concept involved placing standard shipping containers painted white with red crosses and outfitted with clinical capabilities onto the decks of two PLAN auxiliary training vessels; the multi-role training ship Shichang (82) and the cargo transport Village River (865).

Although these modified platforms were confined to near-shore testing rather than real world deployments, their deeper drafts and greater lengths offered significantly larger capacity to treat and transport mass casualties over greater distances than the two Nan Kang vessels (Figure 2). This development signaled an important doctrinal shift. Moving the PLAN’s maritime medical ambitions away from purely localized island-and-reef medical support towards grander aspirations to support fleets in distant waters. However, the PLAN’s early solutions remained hindered by the reliance on aging or non-dedicated hulls, something that could affect the PLAN’s ability to sustain medical operations at sea into the future.

Figure 2. The PLAN’s first-generation hospital ships; Nan Kang 832 (top left) and Bei Kang 833 (top right) and the PLAN’s experimental modular containerized medical ship concepts from the late 1990s and early 2000s; Shichang 82 (bottom left) and Village River 865 (bottom right).
Figure 2. The PLAN’s first-generation hospital ships; Nan Kang 832 (top left) and Bei Kang 833 (top right) and the PLAN’s experimental modular containerized medical ship concepts from the late 1990s and early 2000s; Shichang 82 (bottom left) and Village River 865 (bottom right).

From Adaptation to Purpose Built: PLAN’s Dedicated Hospital Ship Fleet | 2007 – 2020

By mid 2000s, the PLAN moved beyond their reliance on makeshift platforms. They began constructing purpose-built solutions to addressing future maritime medical needs. This included launching the first Type 920 Anwei class vessel – Peace Ark (866) – in 2007 that completed a series of sea trials and a domestic medical mission, before transitioning to the high-profile maritime medical diplomacy missions around the world it is now widely recognized for. Since 2010, the ship has conducted ten of these Harmonious Missions, provided foreign humanitarian assistance in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, and conducted at least one real world search and rescue mission.

While a common narrative is that the Peace Ark’s development was in reaction to the PLAN’s inability to respond to the nearby Indian Ocean Tsunami in December 2004, there are signs from that time that the PLAN was being more deliberate in their thinking. In May 2004, six months prior to the disaster, the PLA’s Naval General Hospital established a specialized 150-person maritime medical team tasked with supporting “new, under-construction, or reconstructed hospital ships”. The Peace Ark’s design was also being finalized before the 2004 tsunami and featured extensive triage spaces, multiple operating theaters, and advanced diagnostic suits as well as a relatively narrow hull. Coinciding with this, five Ankang class ambulance transport vessels were also being built for use in the North Sea, East Sea, and South Sea Fleets by the 2010s. These key logistical connectors enhanced the rapid transfer of casualties from a littoral or island combat zone to a larger medical platform before receiving definitive care ashore. Early versions of these shore-to-ship vessels have been documented exercising with the Peace Ark as early as 2009 (Figure 3).

Taken as a whole, the above-mentioned purpose-built ecosystem that was optimized for rapid casualty evacuation underscores the view that this development was the result of a deliberate choice by the PLAN to address the operational gaps identified from the Battle of the Paracels rather than a reactionary decision to a nearby humanitarian disaster. It also indicates that the PLAN’s experimental modular medical platforms and aging Qiongsha-class hospital ships from the 1990s were not satisfactory for the PLAN’s long-term operational requirements. Ultimately, the commissioning of the Peace Ark and supporting Ankang class ambulance vessels cemented the PLAN’s strategic shift away from solely providing medical support to PLA troops stationed in the South China Sea. It signaled the PLAN’s aspiration to become a true blue-water navy, capable of projecting soft power and medical combat support in near and distant seas.

Figure 3. An unidentified Ankang class ambulance vessel alongside the Peace Ark during an exercise in 2009 (left). The Peace Ark exercising with an Ankang class ambulance vessel in 2010 (right).
Figure 3. An unidentified Ankang class ambulance vessel alongside the Peace Ark during an exercise in 2009 (left). The Peace Ark exercising with an Ankang class ambulance vessel in 2010 (right).

Next Generation: Expanding the PLAN’s Expeditionary Capabilities 2021 – 2025

In the 2020s the PLAN began significantly expanding their fleet of purpose-built hospital ships (Figure 4). Between 2021 and 2023, two new Type 919 Anshen class vessels were put into service; Friendship (861) and Friendly (862). Still designed for speed, these ships are slightly smaller than the Peace Ark and replaced the long-obsolete Nan Kang class ships previously operating in the South China Sea. In building and deploying these vessels, with the support of the Ankang-class ambulance transports, the PLAN firmly closed the operational gap identified after the Battle of the Paracels and ensured reliable maritime medical support from dedicated platforms for island garrisons in the South China Sea into the future.

By the end of 2025, the PLAN also launched two additional Type 920 Anwei-class hospital ships – Silk Road Ark (867) and the Auspicious Ark (868). Sister ships to the Peace Ark, these platforms significantly increased the PLAN’s operational depth in blue ocean environments. The Silk Road Ark recently concluded the eleventh Harmonious Mission in 2025 – 2026, visiting ten countries in the Pacific, Caribbean, and Latin America. The 234-day mission marked the longest cruise by this type of vessel to date and highlighted its role in consolidating the Peace Ark’s previous soft power gains from its ten previous Harmonious Missions between 2010 and 2024. With the Auspicious Ark’s recent medical support mission to the South China Sea mirroring deployments of the Peace Ark and Silk Road Ark prior to their involvement in Harmonious Missions, it implies this vessel’s transition to distant water operations could be forthcoming. It also gives the PLAN the capacity to conduct at least two concurrent maritime medical diplomacy missions a year, comparable to the scope of the U.S Navy’s Pacific Partnership and Continuing Promise global health engagement missions.

The three Type 920 class hospital ships have boosted the PLAN’s distant theatre medical support capabilities, ending a reliance on a single flag ship. Instead, the PLAN has transitioned to a model where multiple dedicated platforms can sustain maritime medical needs to fleets operating far from the mainland. This expeditionary capability has already been demonstrated in 2010, 2013, 2017 and 2024 when the Peace Ark provided medical services to the PLAN’s counter-piracy escort task force in the Gulf of Aden. Such deployments not only enhance the PLAN’s ability to project maritime soft power abroad but also strengthen reliable, forward-deployed medical care in distant theatres, a hallmark of a navy with global, rather than regional, ambitions.

Figure 4. PLAN Type 919 Anshen Hospital Ships; Friendship (861) (top left) and Friendly (862) (top right). PLAN Type 920 Anwei Hospital Ships: Silk Road Ark (867) (bottom left) and Auspicious Ark (868) (bottom right)
Figure 4. PLAN Type 919 Anshen Hospital Ships; Friendship (861) (top left) and Friendly (862) (top right). PLAN Type 920 Anwei Hospital Ships: Silk Road Ark (867) (bottom left) and Auspicious Ark (868) (bottom right)

Looking Ahead: Civil-Military Augmentation | 2026 onwards

The PLAN’s future maritime medical capacity will likely benefit from the growing number of civilian-built medical vessels emerging from the PRC’s shipbuilding sector. Recent years have seen the launch of several adapted passenger ferries by the China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) for international humanitarian organizations. These include the Global Mercy and Africa Mercy II (currently under development) for the U.S. charity Mercy Ships, as well as two unnamed vessels currently being constructed for the German non-governmental organization (NGO) Worldwide Hospitals.

These ships provide the PLAN with a valuable blueprint for scaling up maritime medical platforms in times of conflict, especially if stable, long term casualty support is needed (Figure 5). Designed with this in mind, these civilian vessels address a gap not currently met by the PLAN’s existing hospital ship fleet. Adding to this, in late 2025 the PRC launched the Pinglan. The first purpose-built civilian run hospital ship in the country’s history, it will be used by the Beijing Peaceland Foundation. Appearing to be modeled on the Type 919 class design, the ship will be reportedly used for long-range expeditionary missions to Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.

By observing the implementation of these civilian platforms, the PLAN could gain valuable data on the endurance and logistical support required to maintain these types of vessels during long-term, expeditionary forward deployments. In particular, the two Mercy Ships that will be stationed in West Africa will offer the PLAN an opportunity to study how these types of hospital ships perform far from the support of home ports and established logistics chains. Should the Pinglan successfully adopt a permanent forward-deployed posture like the two Mercy Ships, it could provide the PLAN with an additional data point in testing the expeditionary capabilities of a hull closely resembling their Type 919 class vessels.

These civilian operated platforms not only strengthen the PRC’s ability to project maritime soft power across the civilian and military realms but also provide a redundancy within the PLAN’s overall maritime medical network. In the event of a conflict, the PLAN could rapidly augment their existing dedicated hospital ship fleet with these civilian platforms to support maritime medical needs in both near and far waters. This redundancy moves the PLAN beyond the medical gaps identified from the Battle of the Paracels and into a new era of modernization.

Figure 5. PRC Built Civilian Use Hospital Ships; Global Mercy (top left), Africa Mercy II (top middle), Pinglan (top right), two unnamed hospital ships for Worldwide Hospitals (bottom)
Figure 5. PRC Built Civilian Use Hospital Ships; Global Mercy (top left), Africa Mercy II (top middle), Pinglan (top right), two unnamed hospital ships for Worldwide Hospitals (bottom)

Conclusion

The evolution of the PLAN’s maritime medical platforms from the 1970s to the present day is a study in implementing a methodical and deliberate modernization strategy. From the complete absence of dedicated maritime medical capabilities in the Battle of the Paracels, the PLAN’s trajectory has taken it to makeshift adaptations in the 1990s and early 2000s, to a robust, layered network of twelve dedicated vessels today. This fleet looks set to be increasingly augmented by a growing PRC-built civilian capability, providing a blueprint for scaling up platforms as required (Figure 6). This diverse ecosystem provides the PLAN with a dependable maritime medical capacity for routine operations in the South China Sea; a dedicated capability to rapidly service large numbers of casualties in the event of a regional contingency close to the mainland (such as a Taiwan conflict scenario), as well as support PLAN ambitions to project maritime power around the world in the coming years.

A central thread throughout the PLAN’s evolution of their maritime medical platforms has been the unwavering focus on addressing the gaps identified after the conflict in the Paracels. That was the need to have hospital ships that can rapidly transport casualties away from the conflict zone and can also sustain island garrisons in the South China Sea. These origins fundamentally shaped the PLAN’s design philosophy, marking their hospital ship fleet distinct from the U.S. Navy, which historically prioritized large, stable platforms capable of long-distance transport across the Pacific or Atlantic Oceans based on experiences from the World Wars.

However, the growth in PRC’s civilian medical platforms in recent years that mirror this U.S design philosophy indicates another strategic shift in the PLAN’s maritime medical development could be underway. If lessons from the expeditionary performance of these forward-deployed civilian vessels are successfully integrated into the PLAN’s fleet in the future, it will provide an even more robust underpinning for their ongoing transformation from a regional-focused force to a truly global navy.

Figure 6. Development of PLAN’s Maritime Medical Platforms 1970 – 2026 (Created by Author).
Figure 6. Development of PLAN’s Maritime Medical Platforms 1970 – 2026 (Created by Author).

Jonathan Robinson is an assistant professor in International Programs at the U.S. Naval War College. A specialist in civilian-military operations, conflict analysis, and human security, Jonathan has provided operational advice and in-depth analysis to numerous U.S. and international organizations for over 15 years, including spending a decade working in conflict and post-conflict settings in the Middle East. He has also supported pre-deployment efforts for the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Partnership missions in 2021, 2022, and 2024. His research currently focuses on the PLAN’s maritime medical platforms and Russia’s use of humanitarian aid as a soft power tool.

Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied within are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Naval War College, the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense, any other U.S. government agency, or any of the author’s previous employers.

Featured image: People’s Republic of China, People’s Liberation Army (Navy) ship Peace Ark (T-AH 866) steams in close formation as one of 42 ships and submarines representing 15 international partner nations during Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) Exercise 2014. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Shannon Renfroe)

Alliances and Partners

The Iran War Makes the Case for the United States to Recognize Somaliland

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By Burhan Adam

In December 2025, a journalist asked President Donald Trump whether the United States would recognize Somaliland, as Israel had just done. He answered with a single word: “No.” Then, as he often does, he tossed off a question of his own: “Does anyone even know what Somaliland is?” The jab landed partly because it’s fair –  most Americans couldn’t say. But the answer now bears directly on a waterway the war with Iran has thrown into crisis. Somaliland is a stable, self-governing state that has held elections, each followed by a peaceful transfer of power, and kept the peace for thirty-five years. And of strategic significance, it  sits on the southern approach to one of the two maritime chokepoints the war has put under strain. Officially recognizing Somaliland would be controversial. Somalia regards it as part of its territory, and nearly every member of the United Nations recognizes Somalia’s territorial integrity. But Somaliland reclaimed its sovereignty in 1991, after the collapse of the central Somali state, and has governed itself independently ever since. Israel was the first country to recognize it.  However, recognizing Somaliland would be the single most strategic action Washington could take to secure maritime regional shipping for the long haul. Such an action would arguably be more useful than any individual base in the region for the purpose of ensuring the continued movement of shipping.

The argument is straightforward. The war that began on 28 February 2026 has shown just how exposed America’s large, fixed bases near Iran really are, and the war’s dynamics are pushing the Pentagon toward a more dispersed approach built on access and reliable partners. But in that approach, strategic advantage isn’t gained by one more base. Any host can evict a tenant. However,  recognition of Somaliland turns a temporary arrangement into a lasting one and closes a door that both Turkey and China are trying to hold open.

For all the economic pressure and diplomatic pull coming from China, Turkey, and their partners, Somaliland has repeatedly chosen a strategic relationship with pro-Western democracies, as its formal ties with Taiwan and Israel show. Meetings with members of the Somaliland leadership in Hargeisa in March 2026 suggest this is a choice rooted in shared values, not merely transaction. Somaliland shows real institutional maturity: it keeps the peace at home, takes democratic governance seriously, and protects a real measure of free expression, which is not a small thing in its region. With instability rising across the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea, Somaliland offers the United States a stable, principled, and well-placed partner.

Two Chokepoints, One Corridor

The geography makes the point. The Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb are usually treated as separate chokepoints, but they are really the two ends of a single corridor, running from the Persian Gulf through Hormuz, across the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Aden, through the Bab el-Mandeb and the Red Sea, and into the Mediterranean by way of the Suez Canal. Pressure at one end is felt along the whole length.

For the first time, both ends are under strain at once. Hormuz normally handles about one-fifth of the world’s seaborne oil. After the United States and Israel struck Iran, Tehran declared the strait closed and began attacking any ship that tried to pass through it. The strait has been effectively closed since early March 2026, and by the reckoning of British parliamentary researchers, oil shipping from the Gulf has fallen by 95 percent. The Bab el-Mandeb was already choked.  The Houthi attacks had pushed ships onto routes around Africa, cutting oil flows there from about 9.3 million barrels a day in 2023 to around 4 million. Hormuz decides how much Gulf oil reaches open water, while the Bab el-Mandeb decides whether Gulf oil can still take the short route to Europe. The system can usually absorb trouble at one end. It can’t absorb it at both.

The War Broke the Base Model

The war did more than disrupt shipping. It tested, under real conditions, the proposition that American power in the Gulf could rest on a handful of large bases near Iran, and that thesis failed. For weeks, Iranian drones and missiles hit radars, hangars, warehouses, and command centers across the Gulf.  Consequently, the United States dispersed tens of thousands of troops rather than leave them concentrated where a single salvo could destroy masses of them in one blow.

The officers who ran those bases got the message. As Mark Cancian of the Center for Strategic and International Studies put it, the war had shown how vulnerable all the fixed bases were. Retired General Frank McKenzie, who commanded American forces in the region from 2019 to 2022, was blunter, calling the forward headquarters in Qatar, about a hundred miles from Iran, a “monument to old thinking” and urging the military to move its bases west. A report on the Pentagon’s own deliberations describes exactly these changes: structural modifications at the Bahrain naval base, smaller facilities in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and hardened, dispersed sites farther from Iran’s reach.

The rationale for change is simple. A base near Iran gives the United States a quick response time but places its forces inside the threat ring of most Iranian munitions. Forces and key platforms are easy to find and hard to protect. A fight stretching from the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea is poorly served by a posture built for one corner of the Persian Gulf. The emphasis is shifting toward the far end of the corridor, and that is exactly where Somaliland sits.

What Israel Saw

On 26 December 2025, Israel became the first United Nations member state to officially recognize the Republic of Somaliland, signing a joint declaration in the spirit of the Abraham Accords and committing to exchange ambassadors. It wasn’t acting out of goodwill. Its ships had been under Houthi fire in the Red Sea for two years;  it needed a reliable partner in the Gulf of Aden, and Somaliland had the coast. Somalia called the move illegal, and at the United Nations the Arab Group called it “null and void”. Recognition drew criticism. However, given the facts on the ground and the operational payoff, the decision remains strategically sound.

To be clear, you don’t need to completely control the Bab el-Mandeb to influence events here, and no single country dominates it. Yemen sits on one side, Djibouti and Eritrea on the other. What you need is a stable position nearby, and Somaliland has one. Its anchor is the port and airfield at Berbera. During the Cold War, NASA leased the Berbera airfield, one of the longest runways in Africa, as an emergency landing site for the Space Shuttle, and United States Navy warships called at the port. Somaliland’s government has offered these facilities to the United States on several occasions.

Compare that to Djibouti, which hosts America’s only permanent military base in Africa. The place is crowded. Five countries now keep permanent bases there: the United States, China, France, Japan, and Italy, and once you count smaller and secondary facilities, more than eight nations have some military presence in that small country at any given time. China’s base sits about seven miles from the American one and is built to hold thousands of troops. That kind of proximity constrains what the U.S. Joint Force can do and raises real operational security and counterintelligence concerns. It is part of why a willing partner at Berbera looks more attractive now, not less, and why the head of United States Africa Command and the American ambassador visited Somaliland in late 2025. In August 2026, the commander of United States Special Operations Command Africa, Major General Claude Tudor, traveled to Hargeisa for talks focused on Red Sea and Gulf of Aden security.

The Money is Already Moving

Investors are already betting on Somaliland’s stability even though the world won’t say so out loud. DP World, the Dubai-based port operator, holds a thirty-year concession and has committed up to $442 million to expanding the port at Berbera. Ethiopia, landlocked and routing almost all its trade through Djibouti, has taken a 19 percent stake in the project. British International Investment reckons that by 2035 Berbera will handle trade worth close to a quarter of Somaliland’s economy. Ship turnaround times have subsequently fallen from sixty-four hours in 2018 to twenty-five by 2024.

For Washington, the point is that recognition wouldn’t mean building an investment case out of nothing. It would mean reducing the risk for investors who have already committed, unlocking financing now held back by the unclear legal status, and giving the United States a real hand in shaping the most promising piece of friendly infrastructure on the corridor rather than standing on the sidelines. That is precisely the argument Somaliland’s president made at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos.

In addition, Somaliland’s value to its Western partners runs deeper than geography, a deep-water port, and an airfield. The territory is believed to hold significant deposits of critical minerals, among them lithium, chromium, nickel, and platinum-group metals, the inputs that matter for both the energy transition and defense technology. There may be oil, too: the British-led firm Genel Energy holds onshore exploration blocks, in partnership with Taiwan’s state oil company, that early seismic work suggests could hold billions of barrels. No commercial discovery has been confirmed yet. Fewer than twenty wells have ever been drilled in Somaliland, the last in 1989, but the long-term commercial and energy potential along this stretch of the Red Sea corridor is real.

A Base Can Be Evicted, But a Partner Cannot

None of this is a pitch for another base. A base is real estate you rent, and a landlord can evict you when the government changes, when circumstances shift, when a coup intervenes, as is mostly prevalent in Africa, or when someone makes a higher bid. Recognition, by contrast, secures the relationship. As long as Somaliland’s status remains undecided, that ambiguity is a liability: an unrecognized state has fewer options and weaker protections, leaving it exposed to pressure from outside powers. That is exactly what Turkey, working through Mogadishu, and China, working in the wider region, exploit for leverage. Settle the status, and most of that leverage disappears.

The objection raised most often to proposals to recognize Somaliland is that this would set off a rush of secessions across Africa. It wouldn’t, because Somaliland isn’t seceding so much as restoring an independence it once had. British Somaliland became independent and was recognized by more than thirty countries in June 1960, for five days, before it voluntarily merged, with no binding treaty, into a union with the former Italian colony to its south. That unratified union broke apart in 1991 amid a war against a dictatorship whose campaign against the Isaaq clan killed tens of thousands, after which the central government collapsed. Recognizing Somaliland doesn’t draw a new border, but confirms a border that previously existed, and one that its people want to protect. South Sudan’s peaceful admission to the United Nations in 2011 shows the system can absorb that kind of change without the wave of copycat secessions that skeptics keep predicting.

What Washington Should Do

To maximize strategic advantage in this region, Washington should take the following actions in sequence. The State Department should open a representative office in Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, and stop treating stable Somaliland as part of volatile Somalia when it issues travel warnings. Congress should advance the Republic of Somaliland Independence Act, which the House Foreign Affairs Committee has held for the third Congress in a row. The Department of Defense should turn general interest into concrete action, cooperating with Somaliland on maritime monitoring and arranging contingency access at Berbera, so the relationship is in place before the next crisis rather than improvised during one. And the administration should treat diplomatic recognition of Somaliland as the destination all of these actions are aiming toward, not a reward left dangling.

The obstacles are real. The international community is cautious, Somalia is pushing hard against any diplomatic overtures made toward Somaliland, and the U.S. president has already said “no” to the question of recognition. But a “no” in December 2025 need not last forever.  The argument that recognition serves cold American interest, not just a preference for good governance, gets harder to dismiss the longer the corridor in the Gulf stays contested.

The chokepoints are the symptom, but the region is the system. The big Gulf bases have just shown how vulnerable they are, and strategic inertia moves toward dispersal and partnership. In that setting, Somaliland offers something rare: a stable, democratic partner you can keep rather than rent, one whose own course is already making the argument. Israel has taken the step to seize the opportunities afforded by an official relationship with Somaliland. To best secure its regional interests, the U.S. should be the next country to do the same.

Burhan Adam is the founder of Red Sea Meridian, a consultancy focused on national security and mission support in the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea region, and East Africa. He is a retired Department of Defense official with more than three decades of federal service.  The views here are entirely his own.

Featured image: The commemoration of the 27th Anniversary of the establishment of the Somaliland National Army. (Wikimedia Commons)

Human Capital

The Looming Armageddon of The U.S. Military’s New Anti-Beard Policy

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By Dr. John P. Cordle, Captain, U.S. Navy (Retired)

Introduction

There is an episode of Star Trek (S1:E2) that has always chilled me to the bone, called “Armageddon”. The premise is that wars are too costly, so they are gamed out using a computer simulation. Predicted deaths are calculated, then assigned to the general population by lottery. If your number comes up, you report to a central location and are executed. Everyone accepts it as the cost of doing business.

In the military today, a quiet Armageddon is about to occur as we watch the potential separation of up to 5% of the force for a condition known as Pseudofolliculitis Barbae (PFB).

If you are in the military and can’t pronounce it, you need to learn it, because PFB is about to change your life whether you are directly affected or not. At the direction of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, this condition, which has been waiverable for four decades, is now a disqualifying condition for continued service in the armed forces. Depending on the military service, separations will begin as early as now (Air Force), nine months (USMC) or 11 months (Army and Navy). (1)

As a veteran with 30 years service, and a Human Factors Engineer who has researched this topic extensively in collaboration with military dermatologists, I would like to ask Mr. Hegseth to reverse his position against facial hair in the military, specifically for religious and medical reasons. It would be a win-win situation for him and the military.

The Secretary’s often-articulated core values of merit and warrior ethos would seem to lend support rather than opposition to beards, at least for those with religious or medical waivers. In June he stated, as justification for rescinding the requirement for flu vaccinations, that, “We will not force you [to get a flu shot) because your body, your faith and your convictions are not negotiable.” (2)  That is exactly the argument that he could use to support beards; the reasons for beard waivers are also related to individual body characteristics (the medical condition PFB) or religious convictions. If he truly believes in these values, he is missing a huge opportunity when it comes to facial hair.

Despite the sudden prevalence of this issue, many military members and national security members lack familiarity with PFB. A quick primer follows:

PFB is a chronic skin condition primarily associated with the curved shape of the hair follicle and tightly curled hair structure but can be associated with a genetic predisposition. It is triggered by shaving.(3)

There is no “treatment plan” that allows a person with PFB to “return to normal shaving.”  Shaving itself, combined with genetics, is the cause of PFB.

Discussions regarding the separation of service members who cannot shave revolve around force protection and risk-to-mission in contaminated or smoke-filled environments where protective masks must be worn.  However, considerable research demonstrates that there is minimal impact on forced air mask effectiveness for individuals with 1/8” to 1/4” facial hair; they achieved a satisfactory seal to OSHA standards in the vast majority of cases. (3)

While the effect of facial hair is more pronounced for gas masks in a CBRD environment, the setting of MOPP levels can easily incorporate shaving as additional step when gas masks are issued in the event of a real world threat, as I did in command. Effectiveness can be validated by a periodic fit test. Yes, there is risk, but it can be mitigated.

Figure 1. Representation of the impact of the U.S. Navy’s new PFB policy. (Mr. Michael Johansson)
Figure 1. Representation of the impact of the U.S. Navy’s new PFB policy. (Mr. Michael Johansson)

This shows an exceedingly small risk, and one that we have accepted for decades with no recorded injuries due to mask leakage during fires. I spoke with several military members affected by this policy. They, and their families, are under immense stress – especially those deployed and unable to access medical care. Here are a few of their stories:

Vignette 1

“I am a black Naval officer with PFB. I am fairly senior and have dealt with it for my entire career. Up until last week I felt like I was upwardly mobile in my community, but it appears that those days are over – a selection board will take one look at my photo and vote “Zero” regardless of my accomplishments. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I was able to serve honorably in a multitude of operational assignments for over 29 years with a beard, and suddenly it appears to be disqualifying.  I have made peace with this, and I’m ready to move on. But the impact doesn’t stop there. I have two teenage sons. One of them had decided long ago the Navy was not for him based on watching my career and the things that I had to work through. The second was on the fence, but the new policy essentially shuts the door on him since he has PFB. For me this policy is generational in its impact.”

Vignette 2

“I’m a junior enlisted person who has been in the Navy for six years. I joined the Navy to build a better life. Since joining I have become a naturalized citizen, earned a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree while working full time on Active Duty. I have PFB and have tried everything but the only thing that works is not shaving. I have applied for a Commissioning program and felt I have a good chance, but the new policy seems to remove that opportunity. I am getting used to the idea that I may have to give up my career because of my PFB, despite having no impact on my performance or ability to do my job. I find the entire process confusing and frustrating. All I want is to do my job and serve my country.”

Vignette 3

“I recently graduated from the United States Naval Academy. Before that I attended NAPS (Naval academy prep school) and that’s when I was originally diagnosed with PFB. They were better with it there, I also wasn’t growing the same amount of facial hair so that could have played a part. They were a lot more understanding at NAPS than what I later experienced at USNA.

“My preparation actually came before plebe summer because I was led to believe that the only reason I had PFB was because I was shaving wrong. (No one ever taught me how to shave) So I tried everything: single and multi-bladed razors, magic shave, heated towels and steam. Using the techniques I figured a way to make my shaving better, but it still didn’t get rid of the PFB or the discomfort that came with shaving.

“So, when Plebe summer came around with completing time hacks, I was unable to properly shave not to mention being told to dry shave in front of everyone on the bulkhead if there was any stubble. I tried to toughen it out for a while because I didn’t want to seem different from my peers it wasn’t until an upperclassman from another company saw my neck and face that I was instructed to go to the doctor and get a chit. At this time when you received a chit you couldn’t line your beard up at all. I thought my facial hair was getting out of control and I didn’t think I was presentable or professional so I decided to line my beard up.

“This was a mistake. When my supervisors saw this, they made me shave immediately and then once again there was stubble so I had to dry shave in the hallway. The discomfort with all the training evolutions or just being outside having the sun and my own sweat run across my razor scrapped neck and face was horrible. I was very self-conscious about my face and neck while at the academy the way people stared at it makes you feel unhuman. Then the irritation and pain cause you to focus on your neck when you could be focusing on much more important things like school.

“When you look at PFB it’s usually minorities that have it. I understand that racism is not the intention of the current rules and policies but when usually only one race has PFB and we are told to be in the back while marching or are hidden at certain events it starts to get your mind racing. It just sucks to be singled out because of a medical condition that for some reason has a negative stigma. After a while you understand “it is what it is” and you may not be able to get certain jobs as a flag aide or things of that nature I realized this at the Academy that because of me not being able to shave I will probably miss out on a lot of opportunities in the Navy. Now it appears I may be separated before my career has really begun.”

Vignette 4

“I’m scheduled to promote to Lieutenant Commander (LCDR) on September 1. I’ve served for 19 years, enlisting in 2007. Throughout my career I’ve had intermittent medical shaving waivers for pseudofolliculitis barbae (PFB). At no point has this condition affected my ability to perform my duties, deploy, qualify, or lead Sailors.

“Early in my career, having a shaving waiver as a white Sailor came with a lot of ridicule. I was routinely told by senior leaders, “You’re not Black. Shave your f****** face.” Wanting to fit in and avoid the attention, I often shaved anyway despite the medical consequences. As I gained experience and advanced in rank, I became more confident advocating for my own health and refused to accept that kind of toxic leadership.

“I made Chief Petty Officer in 2015 and was commissioned as a Limited Duty Officer in 2017.  Across my career I’ve completed 13 operational submarine deployments. During every deployment, once we were underway, no-shave morale chits were standard practice. Neither I nor my teammates were required to shave, and it was never treated as an operational safety concern. Throughout all of those deployments, our ability to accomplish the mission was never questioned because of PFB or facial hair. I have earned numerous personal, campaign and unit awards. I also completed a Bachelor of Science while enlisted and a Master of Arts after commissioning, accomplishing both while serving on active duty and between deployments.

“I share that background because I want to make one point: PFB has never prevented me from deploying, qualifying, leading Sailors, or successfully completing any operational assignment I have been given. My record demonstrates that. When the new policy was announced, I immediately went to Navy Medical to understand my options. Based on the guidance I received, if I continue requesting recurring 90-day shaving waivers, after one year I could be processed for administrative separation. If I accept my promotion to LCDR on September 1, I will incur a three-year service obligation. Yet, based on the guidance I received, I could still face administrative separation before reaching retirement eligibility, despite nearly two decades of honorable service. That leaves me with an incredibly difficult decision. I can accept promotion and resume shaving, knowing it will aggravate a documented medical condition, or I can decline promotion and retire instead.

“For me, this isn’t about wanting to wear a beard. It’s about facing the possibility that a medically documented condition—not my performance, conduct, leadership, or ability to serve—could force me to choose between my health and the career I’ve spent nearly 20 years building.

“I understand the Navy has the authority to establish grooming standards, and I have lived under those standards for my entire career. I am not asking for special treatment. I am simply asking that decades of demonstrated readiness, operational performance, and documented medical evidence be given appropriate weight when determining whether a Sailor remains fit to serve. My concern is that this policy appears to place successful, deployable Sailors with documented medical conditions in an impossible position. I hope my story helps illustrate the very real impact these changes may have on experienced Sailors, their families, and ultimately the retention of proven leaders the Navy has spent years developing.”

These are real people, with real families. There are over 6000 of them in the Navy alone, and potentially quadruple that across the entire military. They feel betrayed, abandoned, and forgotten by the Navy they have loved and served. How do I know? They told me.

Contradictions

Finally, beards are historically aligned with the warrior ethos that the Secretary of War wants for the military. Navy SEALS  are routinely authorized to have beards, and they are truly amazing warriors. He also once said, “If you want to grow a beard, join the special forces.” He has already associated beards with an elite fighting unit, and expressed willingness to abandon grooming standards if the service-member is of a certain military skillset. This reveals either a lack of consistency or a contradiction in this new policy.

Beards are aligned with warrior ethos, independent of merit, and a historical symbol of strength and religious conviction, which puts them in perfect alignment with his values. Remember, this is not a case where a policy change was recommended by the services and approved by the Secretary; it came from him. But his actions contradict his words; what this policy is saying is, “We will force you (to shave) because your body, your faith and your convictions are negotiable.” This stance is contrary to Secretary of War’s previously stated values regarding bodily autonomy and religious conviction.

Further, many of our NATO Allies,such as Great Britain and Germany, allow beards with no operational or safety impact. Compared to navies around the world, our clean-shaven force is an outlier. 

Figure 2: Representation of the impact of Navy PFB on potential Black Recruits (Mr. Michael Johansson)
Figure 2: Representation of the impact of Navy PFB on potential Black Recruits (Mr. Michael Johansson)

The Cost to the Service

Most importantly, if the services  follow through with the Secretary’s  plan to separate those service members with PFB, we will be ruining lives and careers, as well as creating gaps in critical skill areas – many more than those separated during the pandemic for refusing the COVID vaccine. Let’s look at the numbers. I’ll focus on the Navy, and the readers can extrapolate the numbers for each service. 

Since the majority of those with PFB are Black, this policy has a disproportionate, if coincidental, racial outcome. This may not be the intent, but it is clearly the impact. Just within the Navy, the new policy will discharge between 6,000 and 12,000 Sailors in the next two years. Demographically that represents between 3-5% of all Sailors, but could exceed 20-25% of Black Sailors, who represent 65-85% of those with waivers. (4)  That is the equivalent of an entire Carrier Strike Group, at a time when our warships are engaged in combat operations and extended deployments with over 10,000 gaps at sea.

The new Navy policy goes a step further, buried in a small sub paragraph in the policy, applying the PFB restriction to new recruits as well. This will effectively shut the door to Navy service for 50% of Black Americans and ultimately change the face of the Navy. It will certainly turn back the clock by undoing the progressive policies of CNO Elmo Zumwalt in the removal of barriers for minorities. But the Secretary can change that by allowing those with PFB to continue to serve on a waiver. 

Talk to Your Experts and Your Sailors

I encourage the Secretary of War to meet with a Dermatologist to discuss the true nature of PFB; then meet with a group of “bearded warriors”, those with approved waivers – over a cup of coffee. Listen to their stories. Look past the beard at the person behind it; they are proud professionals who just want to serve their country, and exactly the type of people we want leading in tomorrow’s wars.

Dr. John Cordle is a retired Navy surface warfare officer (nuclear). He commanded the destroyer USS Oscar Austin and the cruiser USS San Jacinto during his 30-year military career and was recognized with the U.S. Navy League John Paul Jones Award for Inspirational Leadership.

References

1. NAVADMIN 162/26, “Navy Grooming Standards, “(https://www.mynavyhr.navy.mil/
Portals/55/Messages/NAVADMIN/FACT_SHEETS/Fact_Sheet_NAV_162_26.pdf).

2. “US military service members will no longer be required to get annual flu shot,” The Guardian, 21 April 2026 (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/21/military-flu-shot-
requirement-pete-hegseth).

3. “Review of Treatments for Pseudofolliculitis Barbae,” National Institute of Health, (https://
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36840647/).

4. Influence of Facial Hair Length, Coarseness, and Areal Density on Seal Leakage of a Tight-
Fitting half-face Respirator, Floyd et al, University of Oklahoma College of Public Health.

5. Transcript of SECDEF Speech to Flag and General Officers, 30 September 2025, (https://www.war.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/article/4318689/secretary-of-war-pete-hegseth-
addresses-general-and-flag-officers-at-quantico-v/).

6. New Navy Policy Limits Medical Shaving Waivers to One Year, USNI, July 9, 2026.

Featured image: Fleet Master Chief Petty Officer Raymond D. Kemp, fleet master chief for U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa, waits to receive the American flag during the reading of “Old Glory” at his retirement ceremony on Naval Support Activity Naples, Italy, June 4, 2019. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Damon Grosvenor/Released)