Vertical integration enabled by supply chain resiliency is part of a national security imperative

When global supply chains seized during the pandemic and tensions with China intensified across the Pacific, the U.S. defense industrial base learned a hard truth: technological power is meaningless without secure access to the critical materials and components.

Control of the supply chain for advanced rare earth elements, minerals, and raw materials today has become a new battlefield -- one where America must invest, build, and protect its industrial sovereignty. Across the defense sector, vertical integration enabled by supply chain resiliency has emerged not just as a business advantage but also as a national security imperative. Made in America is not just a slogan but also a critical need for national security.

Fragile chain of dependency

For decades, the United States relied heavily on other countries to fabricate key components, minerals, and raw materials. China still controls more than 70 percent of the world’s germanium and gallium exports -- two essential elements in infrared optics, detectors, and high-performance systems across the U.S. military. These materials are vital for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) across all domains, including space, airborne, ground, and maritime.

When China restricted germanium and gallium exports in 2023, global demand drove the market costs to surge by 700 percent, and the supply chain for optical materials tightened and sometimes even stopped. Many programs were subject to cost increases and faced program delays.

“It revealed how exposed we really are,” said one senior Department of War analyst. “Every lens, coating, or component manufactured abroad introduces risk that can be exploited in a moment of tension.”

Security through vertical integration

To mitigate those vulnerabilities, companies like Clear Align are supporting development of a domestic process -- from material refining, to finished optics, to AI-enabled surveillance systems -- that restores significantly the controls of the U.S. defense industrial base.

Clear Align’s vertically integrated model consolidates what once took many suppliers across several countries into a more secure domestic manufacturing operation. Within U.S. facilities, the company grows crystals, cuts blanks, grinds, polishes, and applies specialized coatings on optics, then assembles and tests complete EO/IR systems, reducing foreign dependence while compressing lead times from more than a year to a few months.

When we own the entire process -- from the boule to the battlefield -- we don’t just improve efficiency; we also enable mission readiness. Vertical integration gives us speed, security, and certainty when America needs it most.

This control enables Clear Align to sustain production for space, airborne, ground and maritime programs, even during supply chain disruptions.

Securing optical-grade materials at the source

Vertical integration doesn’t end at the factory door. Recognizing that access to critical minerals remains a bottleneck, Clear Align has built direct partnerships with trusted allies to secure optical-grade materials outside adversarial control.

The company works with suppliers in Africa, Canada, Australia, and select European countries that participate in the Mineral Security Partnership (MSP) -- a U.S.-led initiative to diversify and secure critical materials vital to defense and high-tech industries.

Through these alliances, Clear Align sources silicon, germanium, and other materials. Batches arrive ready for domestic processing, which ensures full traceability, ITAR compliance, and adherence to the Buy America framework. When this combines with in-house fabrication delivery, times are cut by 30 to 80 percent.

Working near the source isn’t just about logistics. It’s about building supply chain resilience and strengthening the network of allied countries that share democratic values.

Vertical integration once was viewed as a cost-control measure; today, it defines industrial resilience. By uniting material science, engineering, supply chain, fabrication, assembly, and test, vertically integrated firms ensure production continues through trade shocks, export bans, or limited access to critical minerals. This enables military-grade camera systems from one operation that consolidates production in the United States.

Clear Align’s vertically integrated manufacturing process allows for fuller control over operations -- limiting reliance on overseas suppliers. That agility is the practical definition of readiness.

Modernizing mining and refining

To strengthen its defense industrial base and reduce foreign dependence, Clear Align proposes that America must modernize mining and refining -- controlling the stages of the material life cycle. Current extraction and processing technologies were developed for an earlier era, when environmental impact and cost efficiency were secondary concerns. Today, the challenge is to produce essential minerals and elements responsibly, affordably, and at scale.

Traditional financiers and large banks often restrict investment to known and proven (though outdated) processing technology and equipment that rely on last-century processes. This financing model discourages innovation and locks the industry into high-cost production methods that are neither sustainable nor competitive. What the nation needs now is a new paradigm -- one that funds mining and refining innovation to achieve environmental stewardship and economic efficiency.

Across California, Nevada, Utah, and other resource-rich states, emerging companies and university researchers are developing advanced refining technologies such as plasma separation, electro-chemical extraction, and silicon-based recovery. These processes minimize toxic chemicals and enable the clean isolation of critical minerals like zinc, germanium, copper, indium, silicon, and selenium -- key elements vital to infrared optics, communications, and power infrastructure.

Recent assessments by the U.S. Geological Survey confirm that global demand for critical materials will far exceed supply unless new domestic mining and refining methods are developed. To accelerate this development, the U.S. must leverage federal grants, energy-transition programs, and agency incentives designed to close the gap between dependency on adversarial countries and self-sufficient domestic capability.

All advanced defense and space solutions ultimately trace back to the materials that power them -- material science first pioneered by Bell Labs and other organizations. Early material science work at Bell Labs contributed to the optical technology that laid the foundation for innovations that continue to evolve America’s technological capability, driving breakthroughs in sensors, communications, and next-generation defense systems.

Government-level investments and partnerships

The United States government and industry have invested in foreign mines and mineral rights, especially for critical minerals that are essential for energy, defense, and technology manufacturing. Sadly, though, this investment is taken for granted because materials and processing have been available and affordable from foreign sources. Today, however, the U.S. needs to refocus on owning, partnering, and securing raw materials from sources all around the world, as China has been doing.

The U.S. needs to increase and re-energize government and industry partnerships and investments to finance overseas mining and processing projects to reduce dependence on China and other dominant suppliers; provide loans and guarantees for U.S. companies involved in strategic mineral projects abroad; fund or back projects that ensure a secure supply of critical materials (like cobalt, nickel, rare earths); and support for critical minerals supply chains, often through research or recycling initiatives.

Agencies such as the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC); Export–Import Bank (EXIM); Department of Defense (DOD); Department of Energy (DOE) can help with this, as can multilateral alliances such as the Minerals Security Partnership (MSP) -- launched in 2022, includes the U.S., Canada, Australia, the EU, Japan, South Korea, and others. Its goal is to finance responsible mining projects in Africa, South America, and Asia to diversify supply chains; and the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII) -- a broader G7 effort supporting strategic infrastructure, including mining and processing.

Strategic industrial assets

The Department of Defense now views vertically integrated firms as essential assets. Programs under the Defense Production Act Title III and the Buy America provisions of DFARS, increasingly prioritize suppliers demonstrating secure, domestic manufacturing.

Clear Align fits that model. The company operates 100,000 square feet of advanced manufacturing space across three U.S. states -- Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Florida -- all under ITAR and cybersecurity compliance.

Its 78,000-square-foot optical fabrication and integration center in Nashua, N.H., is the largest privately held U.S. facilities for infrared optics. Teams perform cutting, grinding, polishing, diamond turning, and thin-film coating of Infrared materials -- processes that have often been outsourced overseas.

Other departments handle precision CNC machining, system assembly, and AI-enabled inspection, producing complete EO/IR systems domestically for defense and homeland-security programs.

Buy America advantage

Clear Align’s all-U.S. footprint aligns perfectly with the Buy America Act by strengthening domestic manufacturing and securing supply of critical materials. This supports the broader Defense Industrial Base Resilience strategy to ensure that advanced systems -- from airborne ISR to persistent surveillance towers -- are manufactured, assembled, and tested in the United States.

We view Buy America not as a regulation but as a catalyst. It encourages us to invest in American manufacturing, shorten the supply chain, and protect our manufacturing base.

The advantages of vertical integration extend far beyond compliance. First, economical in-house fabrication reduces schedule and cost, including shipping time; second, technical, close collaboration between engineering and production improves performance and accelerates new technology development; and third, it protects intellectual property and ensures that critical systems remain within secure borders.

This combination of control and innovation enables mid-sized U.S. firms to compete on the global stage while maintaining faster delivery, lower life cycle costs, and faster support and maintenance times.

Rebuilding the optics and infrared manufacturing base is more than economics -- it’s a deterrent. Expertise in infrared optics and coatings cannot be re-created overnight.

By training optical technicians, coatings experts, and systems engineers, Clear Align and its peers are rebuilding the nation’s critical material workforce. Every optic we make here, every engineer we train, adds to the defense industrial base. That’s what real sovereignty looks like.

In an era of contested logistics and great-power competition, manufacturing control is as vital as control over technology. The integration of Buy America policy, allied sourcing, and deep vertical integration provides a blueprint for securing critical materials, reducing cost, and ensuring supply continuity.

As the world divides into rival blocs, our response is clear: make what we need here, with allies we trust, because when you control your supply chain, you control your destiny.

Angelique X. Irvin is founder, CEO, and chairman of Clear Align in Eagleville, Pa., which designs and manufactures custom electro-optics components and subsystems for imaging, sensors, and advanced photonics systems in aerospace, defense, and commercial applications. Before Clear Align, she was with Bell Laboratories, AT&T Microelectronics, and NEC Corp.