China’s near-monopoly on rare earth minerals—99% control of gallium, germanium, and dysprosium—has left the U.S. military unable to equip F-35 jets with radar since June 2025, forcing them to use gym weights as placeholders. Analyst Mike Adams warns this crippled supply chain, combined with ammunition shortages, labor gaps (like Virginia’s missing welders), and troop fitness declines, makes prolonged U.S. warfare unsustainable, emboldening adversaries like Iran. Trump’s tariffs backfired by severing imports without domestic replacements, while China easily pivots to other buyers, leaving the U.S. vulnerable in high-stakes conflicts where advanced tech fails. [Automatically generated summary]
This is gym weights that have been attached to the nose cone of what is said to be an F-35.
And the reason they're using gym weights here is because the radar units can't be made.
And the reason the radar units can't be made is, well, because of exactly what we've been talking about right here.
Welcome to the special report.
I'm Mike Adams.
And, you know, a week ago, I warned about this exact thing.
I said, look, probably the U.S. military, if it loses F-35s or if it loses B-2 stealth bombers or any other highly advanced aircraft, it will not be able to replace them.
And why?
Well, because, of course, the U.S. government doesn't have access to the rare earths any longer because those are the ones that have been blocked by China, which has a near 99% monopoly on many of them.
And I did a podcast on this, and I even did an article on this, which was published February 3rd.
And it's called Unobtanium and Hopium, How China's Rare Earth Siege Has Neutered U.S. Military Might.
And in that article, I said exactly this, that China's monopoly is staggering.
It controls from 48% to 100% of global production for these materials.
This dominance gives Beijing decisive control over supply chains, vital to modern warfare.
The catastrophic implications are direct.
Without gallium and germanium, the production of advanced radar systems, satellite communications, and infrared night vision equipment grinds to a halt.
And I went on to talk about a shortage of antimony and tungsten and graphite, which China controls 100% of graphite.
And I talked about dysprosium and terbium and neodymium and other elements.
And again, what did I say?
The U.S. military doesn't have supply chains for these, at least not reliable supply chains.
And so what's happening now is so, it's such a freaking clown show.
It's almost too crazy to be true.
But it actually is true.
And it's been covered on numerous defense industry websites like DefenseTalks.com.
It says F-35 fighters delivered without radars as APG-85 integration faces further delays.
And that story says the following astonishing thing, that newly built F-35 fighters are entering service with the United States Air Force without onboard radar, reflecting ongoing delays and integration challenges associated with the program's next generation sensor suite.
Oh yeah, I bet, I bet the delays, we know what's causing the delays.
It's the lack of gallium and other rare elements.
So it says, according to reporting by Avionics International, aircraft that's originally scheduled to receive the advanced radar from 2025 onward are currently being delivered with no radar installed at all.
This issue stems from a combination of development delays and supply chain constraints affecting the new system.
Oh, supply chain constraints.
Oh, you mean like exactly what we've been talking about here.
So let me get this straight.
So the United States Air Force is buying fighter jets that have no radar.
So they're going to be flying blind, flying blind.
What are they supposed to do?
Top gun this thing with their eyeballs?
They think this is World War II?
Yeah, just look, look at three o'clock, enemy fighters.
Give me a break.
No radar means you're dead.
No radar.
And also, by the way, submarine systems use these rare earths for their communication systems as well.
So, I mean, we're going to have an Air Force that's blind, a Navy that's deaf, and a military that's dumb.
Like, too stupid to be able to build anything because we outsourced all the minerals to China, and then Trump came along and cut off China.
And there are morons out there cheering Trump's tariffs.
It's so good.
It's so good.
And they believe this lie that Trump says, oh, it's going to replace the income tax.
We're going to be able to cancel the income tax, just support the tariffs.
That's a lie.
Of course, I mean, who's dumb enough to believe that?
Not going to replace the income tax with tariffs.
The numbers don't even work.
And besides, they don't need the income tax to raise money.
They need it to control people and keep people down.
So you really have to be a complete idiot to believe, like to support the tariffs and think that that means, oh, we're never going to have to pay federal income taxes again.
Nonsense.
Of course, you're going to pay income taxes.
So it says, since June of 2025, this has been going on a while.
The new F-35s have been delivered without radar with ballast installed in the nose section, you know, the gym weights.
Like, we are truly living in idiocracy.
This is a total clown show.
To preserve the aircraft's center of gravity.
This approach, it says, has allowed production and deliveries to continue rather than halting assembly lines while waiting for radar availability.
What do you mean?
This approach has allowed deliveries to continue deliveries of blind F-35s that can't be used in combat.
But even then, they say, oh, oh, but it can.
This article says, program officials maintain that an F-35 without radar can still fly and operate safely.
You can't make this up.
Total clown show.
In practice, such aircraft are expected to function within formations that include fully equipped F-35s or other assets capable of providing sensor data.
So wait a second.
So let me get this straight.
They're going to launch like three F-35s.
Only one of them has radar, and the other two are relying on the radar from the first one.
And if something happens to the first one, then all three are toast.
Uh-huh.
Okay.
Yeah, that's what it sounds like.
You know, we've often joked about the F-35 barely being able to fly.
Even when it has radar, it can barely fly.
And now we find out that it's not even going to have radar.
Note to everyone, Iran has radar.
Russian aircraft have radar.
Chinese aircraft all have radar.
Yeah, only America says, oh, we don't need no stinking radar.
We'll just fly around with gym weights in the nose.
We'll call it good.
What are people thinking?
Seriously, we are living in the dumbest chapter of this country, of the history of this nation.
We're living in idiocracy.
I mean, what's next?
They're going to deliver them without engines and they're just going to have like a rubber band with a propeller back there and all like a bunch of men have to wind it up and then get ready, go, you know, And takes off and then crashes because the rubber band doesn't last long enough, like I can seriously see this going full idiocracy at this point.
America's Dumbest Chapter00:06:36
But you know, on a serious note, this brings up something really critical here, which is that the?
U.s cannot win any sustained war period.
There's no question about that.
I mean, yeah, the U.S. Can pull off little kidnappings and such, as go kidnap Maduro, with his cooperation, Obviously.
Tell his people to stand down, you know.
But the U.S. can't fight Russia in a sustained war.
Obviously, that's already been shown.
The U.S. can't fight China.
It can't fight Iran in any kind of sustained conflict.
All the U.S. can do is launch a bunch of missiles and bombs and then run and sail back home or fly back home and try to reload because you shot up all your ammo already.
In a sustained conflict where the U.S. is taking losses, the U.S. can't replace those losses.
In fact, there's a very serious shortage of shipyard capacity in the United States Navy.
And that's why some ships are being built in South Korea.
So if ships get damaged and have to sail home to go into a port for even maybe dry dock repairs, then that's going to be a multi-year, multi-billion dollar practice right there.
The U.S. can't repair much of anything and it can't build much of anything because it doesn't have a supply chain for the minerals and elements that it needs, including graphite.
And it doesn't have the knowledge base domestically.
It doesn't have people who know how to do anything anymore when it comes to physical repairs.
I mean, who knows how to fix an aircraft carrier?
Not that many people.
There's really not that many people.
There are some.
There are some in Virginia, the welders and so on.
There are a few.
But most of the people who know how to do that stuff, they're retired or dead.
They died after taking the jab.
Got killed off by Operation Warp Speed.
So they're no longer around to repair anything.
So in other words, if the U.S. actually gets into a fight with anybody, if the U.S. doesn't win in the first two weeks, it's going to lose badly because it's over.
The U.S. has no depth, no depth of ammo, no depth of supply chain, rare earths, no depth of a skill set, training, endurance.
None of that exists.
Have you seen, not to mock people's physical structure, but our soldiers are fat.
Soldiers are fat.
They really are.
And it's crazy because they're fat in their 20s.
And if they're fat in their 20s, imagine what they're going to be by the time they hit mid-40s, for God's sake.
And look, I'm nowhere as thin as I was when I was in my 20s.
That's for sure.
But, hey, I jogged an hour today.
You know, I can jog an hour.
I don't think there's very many people in our military that can jog 10 minutes.
You know, I mean, the special forces guys can.
But active duty, have you seen these people sitting at the desks in the naval offices?
They look like they have one hand on the keyboard, one hand on a cheeseburger.
You know, they're not fit.
They're not smart.
They're not educated.
They can't do math.
I don't know how the U.S. expects to win any kind of a war.
And maybe this is why Iran is calling Trump's bluff and saying, no, we're not going to agree to your insane terms because we think you can't beat us.
And Iran is probably correct.
So I guess we'll just have to see where this goes.
But bottom line is, you know, take my warning seriously when I do deep research on a collapsing supply chain and no more rare earths available.
And I see what Trump is doing with the tariffs, which are just insanely stupid.
I mean, it's almost suicidal.
It's hurting America way more than it's hurting China because China can export those elements to lots of other countries.
Whereas, you know, America doesn't have any other choice of where to get them for the most part.
Maybe they can find a few stockpiles here and there, but China controls most of the supply.
So we're probably not that far away from submarines being delivered with no sonar.
They're supposed to just cruise around the ocean until they bump into something, like a Roomba robot.
And they bump into something.
They have a bumper on the front, and then they change direction and sail again until they bump into something else.
It's truly insane.
And by the way, I talked about all this in my recent interview with John Kiriaku.
And I'm also watching that there are a bunch of U.S. commandos apparently being flown to Azerbaijan and maybe to try to threaten Iran with some kind of like a ground invasion force or maybe helicopter insertion like Venezuela style.
And again, that sounds like a suicide mission.
If you send in 200 commandos or special forces units into Iran, you should plan a few hundred body bags because I don't think most of them are coming home.
And maybe that's Trump's plan is to send a bunch of soldiers in there and get them killed and then parade them all over U.S. television.
Look what Iran did.
They killed our soldiers.
We have to nuke them.
Maybe it's some kind of a bait situation to sacrifice the soldiers in order to get the public behind a bigger war.
Lindsey Graham would love that.
But since Iran has Chinese anti-stealth radar systems and very capable surface-to-air missiles that take out aircraft, you got to wonder how long could the U.S. actually fight from the air?
And I think the answer is not very long, actually.
Bait And Switch War Strategy00:00:33
Not very long.
So this should be really interesting to watch.
Stay tuned.
You can follow my articles at naturalnews.com.
And my podcasts now are being posted at brightvideos.com.
That's plural, brightvideos.com.
So check it out.
And thank you for listening.
Take care.
Stock up on the long-term storable Ranger bucket set.
536 servings of clean organic superfoods for your survival pantry.