In War With China, U.S. Risks Being ‘Beaten Over The Head’ With Its Own Explosives Technology

Pentagon efforts to develop new missile propellants and explosives waned after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the Chinese have made big strides.

_{By Jeremy Bogaisky, Forbes Staff}

In1987, U.S. Navy researchers discovered a new explosive with fearsome capabilities. Named China Lake Compound No. 20 after the Southern California base where it was developed, it boasted up to 40% greater penetrating power and propellant range than the U.S. military’s mainstay explosives, which were first produced during World War II.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, the Pentagon’s urgency evaporated. So did the expensive task of perfecting CL-20 and designing weapons to use it.

China, however, saw the potential. The country has invested heavily in developing long-range missiles with the aim of forcing U.S. warships and non-stealthy aircraft like refueling tankers to operate at a distance if Chinese forces invade Taiwan. Some of those weapons are believed to be propelled by a version of CL-20, which China first fielded in 2011 and now produces at scale.

“This is a case where we could potentially be beaten over the head with our own technology,” Bob Kavetsky, head of the Energetic Technology Center, a nonprofit research group that does work for the government, told Forbes.

Kavetsky and other experts in energetics, the niche field of developing things that go boom, have been warning for years that the U.S., long the world leader, has fallen dangerously behind China. The Pentagon last year outlined a plan to spend $16 billion over 15 years to upgrade and expand its aging network of munition plants, but Kavetsky warns that doesn’t include developing the advanced manufacturing capabilities needed to mass produce new explosives like CL-20.

To make matters worse, the U.S. depends on China as the single source for about a half-dozen chemical ingredients in explosives and propellants, and other countries of concern for another dozen. Advocates hope that lawmakers and the Pentagon will be spurred to action by the struggle to replenish munitions provided to Ukraine and increasing worries over China’s preparations to seize Taiwan by force.

If Washington intervenes in a fight on China’s home turf, U.S. forces will face greater numbers of Chinese missiles, including some with better range and power. That’s only partly courtesy of CL-20 – the Chinese have also developed technology to make propellants burn more efficiently and have built larger missiles than U.S. forces can bring to the fight by air or sea.

“We can’t build enough ships and airplanes to carry the number of missiles necessary to reverse the firepower imbalance we have inside the first island chain,” said retired Major General Bill Hix, who served as the Army’s director of strategy after commanding forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and has consulted for the Energetic Technology Center.

“The only solution is new energetic materials,” he said. That would allow the U.S. to produce smaller missiles with the same power, so more could be carried by warplanes and ships, as well as to enable weapons that can shoot farther and pack more of a punch.

Last month, Kavetsky briefed members of the House of Representatives, including Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), vice chair of the House Armed Services Committee, who told Forbes that addressing the explosives gap will be “a significant area of emphasis” in this year’s defense spending bill.

Wittman said he supports the idea of retrofitting existing missiles with CL-20 and creating a high-level office devoted to energetics under the secretary of defense. While decision makers at the Pentagon are aware of the issues, “I don’t think they see a sense of urgency with it,” Wittman said. “We’re going to instill a sense of urgency with them.”

Chinese scientists account for about three-quarters of the published research on energetics and in related fields over the last five years, nearly seven times as much as U.S. researchers, according to analyses from the Hudson Institute and Georgetown University. They’re working on materials that have improved performance over CL-20, Kavetsky said.

In the U.S., energetics development has stagnated as the Pentagon has focused on developing more accurate weapons to increase lethality rather than explosive power, according to a 2021 Energetics Technology Center report commissioned by the Pentagon in response to a mandate from Congress. U.S. spending on munitions R&D fell 45% between 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down, and 9/11. Since then, amid low-intensity conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan against lightly armed opponents, the munitions budget has often been cut to fund development of big platforms like ships and planes. The bulk of U.S. work on energetics has been channeled by a 2001 congressional mandate to make explosives less sensitive so they wouldn’t explode accidentally.

Given the dangers and limited civilian applications, military explosives have been almost entirely developed and manufactured in U.S. government facilities. Though military researchers have developed some new explosives and propellants over the past few decades, none have been put into mass production. (Small quantities of CL-20 have been made for use in detonators, but at a cost of over $1,000 a pound.) Work on energetics is balkanized among different R&D units of the military, with no senior official playing point and advocating at a high level for change.

“There’s no one who wakes up in the morning at DoD who only thinks about energetics,” Kavetsky said.

While the government has been aware of problems for years – in 2012 the DoD stood up a panel called the Critical Energetics Working Group to reduce the number of single points of failure in the explosives supply chain – observers say they’ve been overshadowed by other priorities.

But now worries are rising in Washington over the adequacy of U.S. weapons stockpiles after donating heavy amounts of missiles, artillery shells and other munitions to Ukraine, as well as research that suggests the U.S. military could run out of key precision munitions within a week of the start of a high-intensity conflict in the Taiwan Strait.

Nearly all U.S. explosives are produced at a single Army-owned plant in Holston, Tennessee, that dates back to World War II and is run by U.K.-based defense contractor BAE Systems (2022 revenue: $25.5 billion). The production processes generally are as old, Kavetsky said, with explosives prepared in 400-gallon vats that resemble cake mixers. Many advanced energetic materials can’t be made that way, including CL-20, which he said is synthesized in smaller amounts in chemical reactors.

It would be possible to make 20,000 pounds of CL-20 a year with current amounts of precursor chemicals, Kavetsky said, but broad use would require 2 million pounds a year, which he believes could take three to five years to scale up to. “If DoD says we want large quantities,” he said, “industry will respond.”

“If DoD says we want large quantities, industry will respond.”