China speeds up armour steel production by 30% as US Conshohocken plant folds

China has boosted its armour steel production speed by 30 per cent with continuous investment in tech upgrades, while a major American steelmaker that provided military-grade steel for tanks, ships and mine-resistant vehicles ceased operation for financial reasons.\nChinese military supplier Inner Mongolia First Machinery Group said it had solved key technical challenges to allow large-scale production of high-performance armour steel, which has been deployed for manufacturing tanks and armoured vehicles, the official Science and Technology Daily reported this month.\nIn the United States, steelmaker Cleveland-Cliffs announced in May the indefinite closure of its Conshohocken plate finishing facility in Pennsylvania – a plant that has provided specialised armour plating for US Navy ships, army ground vehicles and thousands of mine-resistant military vehicles for decades.\nThe shutdown highlights a growing gap in the industrial capacity underpinning defence manufacturing between the two nations.\nArmour steel is a core material for national defence, military industries and special equipment. It possesses extreme properties such as ultra-high strength, hardness, toughness and low thermal conductivity.\nIts production has been difficult, expensive and inefficient. Project leader Duan Aiping told the newspaper that to overcome these challenges the research team had upgraded their cutting tools with an ultra-hard material and reduced production temperatures so that the tools lasted longer.\nDuan said the new cutting tools were made from cubic boron nitride, a synthetic material that is almost as hard as diamond – the hardest naturally occurring mineral.\nWith the addition of nano coating, the tool’s resistance to adhesive wear is improved by 40 per cent. Cutting speeds can reach 300 to 500 metres (984 to 1,640 feet) per minute, which is 1½ times faster than traditional cutting tools, according to the newspaper.\n\n\nThe new process also incorporated cooling techniques to reduce temperatures by more than 30 per cent and decrease tool wear by 15 to 30 per cent, it added.\nThis technology had developed into a comprehensive solution for efficient processing of armour steel and had been successfully applied to the manufacturing of equipment such as tanks and armoured vehicles, it said.\nFor each 50 units of armour steel equipment, the new method would save more than 650,000 yuan (US$92,300) in production, including tool and energy costs. Once scaled up, it is estimated the annual benefits for the industry will exceed 2 million yuan, according to the newspaper.\nCleveland-Cliffs, the second-largest steelmaker in the US, announced in May that it would indefinitely idle three steel plants in Pennsylvania and Illinois, citing financial losses.\nOne of them was Conshohocken, near Philadelphia, a plate finishing facility that used to produce military alloys and serve the construction and military markets, according to the company.\nWilliam Greenwalt, a senior fellow at the think tank American Enterprise Institute, wrote last year that the US Defence Department sourced steel from two plants owned by Cleveland-Cliffs.\n“The steel that is most important to DOD is of high quality and bought at low volumes, primarily from two plants in Pennsylvania that produce the armoured plate for navy ships and army ground vehicles,” he wrote.\nAccording to a 2021 article by the Alliance for American Manufacturing, the Conshohocken mill “manufactures military-grade armour and high-alloy steel, much of which is used in the US naval fleet and other military operations”.\nIt added that the plant produced specialised steel armour plate for 18,000 unarmoured military vehicles to protect them from improvised explosive devices during the Iraq war from 2003 to 2011.\n