RE:RE:New Video (Pat interviewed with The Watchlist)Lifton:"Ucore's recent acquisition of a $4.28 million funding agreeement from the Canadian Government, in addition to support from U.S. DOD speaks volumes about its credibility." Either that, or U.S. and Cabada are throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. I.e., they want more rare earth capability, so they take a flyer on unproven companies and technologies to see if any pan out. Meanwhile, the big bucks go to the more credible players, such as Lynas and MP Materials, which need the money less (or not at all) than Ucore, but whom the DOD has more confidence will actually pan out.
The thing that I see wrong with Lifton statement is that both Lynas and MP both produce light REEs and not heavy REEs. DOD is after tech that produces heavies.
So they would have to take a flyer on unproven tech to find it. Remember that Ucore is the only company out of 15 that got an award. If there had been other companies that had tech to do heavies. DOD would have given money to the top two or three to play out. See who's tech was best.
Dragon