In the film “Top Gun: Maverick,” there’s a memorable scene where Tom Cruise looks over his shoulder in the cockpit and sees inbound missiles hot on his tail. Amid the riveting action, most fans of the film don’t realize the real hero of this moment is magnesium.
Cruise fires deflection flares, which shoot out the back of his F/A-18 Super Hornet and throw the enemy missiles off course. Those are magnesium flares.
Big Blue Technologies, a magnesium processing startup with operations at Cheyenne’s Swan Ranch Industrial Park, told Cowboy State Daily the magnesium needed to make those flares “could come from Cheyenne tomorrow.”
Big Blue Technologies CEO Aaron Palumbo said the company is still in the startup phase, but it’s applying for development grants and courting investors, while looking to satisfy the demand for domestically produced magnesium materials, including metals, aluminum alloys and fighter jet deflector flares.
“We're trying to get into that DoD (U.S. Defense Department) supply chain,” said Palumbo.
“Magnesium metal is a material of choice for lightweight vehicles and aircraft,” added Palumbo. “For instance, when the Ford F-150 switched over from a steel body to an aluminum body, that aluminum alloy required a significant amount of magnesium as the primary alloying constituent.”
Underneath the leather or plastic exterior of most automobile steering wheels, there’s a circular magnesium metal frame.
U.S. Magnesium, a magnesium metal producer in Utah, shut down in 2024, said Palumbo. That left the country with no domestic source for magnesium metal.
Like most rare earth minerals, the magnesium metal now feeding U.S. demand comes from overseas.
“Between China and Russia, they control over 90% of global supply, especially since U.S. Magnesium went under,” said Palumbo. “And so that's an untenable situation because of magnesium used in national defense applications. It's not a good situation for the U.S. to be in.”
Wyoming Application
Big Blue Technologies is asking the Wyoming Energy Authority for $1.5 million in matching funds to jumpstart operations that could ultimately produce “military incendiaries” (deflection flares) among other magnesium applications like metals for lightweight vehicle components and aluminum alloys.
“Despite an abundance of magnesium ore, including in Wyoming, and a 108% import tariff on Chinese metal, none of the existing commercial smelting technologies are economically viable in the U.S.,” stated Big Blue Technologies in its application to the WEA.
The company asserts its technology offers, “The only process to be competitive with China on a global scale.”
Building on its existing pilot facility, Big Blue Technologies aspires to integrate a mining and smelting operation capable of producing 10,000 tons of magnesium metal a year.
That’s a big leap from what the company announced in August, when it reported its pilot production facility could produce 100 to 200 pounds of metal per week.
Hard Process
“For me, it was a very clear problem,” said Boris Chubukov, chief technology officer for Big Blue Technologies.
While a graduate student at the University of Colorado-Boulder, Chubukov looked for ways to streamline the labor-intensive process for smelting magnesium that’s exploited by China.
“We had all the raw material we needed to make magnesium metal,” Chubukov told Cowboy State Daily. “And there was a big demand for the metal, but there was no processing method, no extraction method to make the metal from the ore, from the rock.
“So it was a very clear-cut problem. Not an easy problem at all. Very difficult.”
Chubukov said to transform magnesium ore into metal, it must be heated up to 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,832 degrees Fahrenheit).
“We add scrap aluminum to that feed,” said Chubukov. “We mix up rocks and scrap aluminum. And at that temperature, magnesium is released as a gas. And so the way we condense and capture that magnesium gas, that's really the crux of the technology. It’s like an alcohol still.”
The captured magnesium gas condenses into a solid during what’s described as “a proprietary carbothermal reduction process.”
It’s complicated, and now Chubukov is busy trying to simplify it all into a concise pitch to investors.
When reached by Cowboy State Daily, Chubukov was on his way to a Creative Destruction Lab investor pitch event in Vancouver, B.C. Dressed in a suit, Chubukov asked if he could practice his three-minute pitch during the phone interview.
“We make magnesium metal,” Chubukov said in the tone of a contestant on “Shark Tank.” “Magnesium is among the most critical minerals, and we're completely reliant on imports for primary and pure metal… Our unit economics are industry-leading and the process is zero-waste.”
Cheyenne Connection
The ore used for smelting into magnesium metal comes from dolomite rock. A previously operational mine west of Wheatland could hold an ample reserve of dolomite, said Mac McCreless, managing director of Garrison Minerals.
Big Blue Technologies partnered with Garrison Minerals, which steered the joint operation to the current location at Swan Ranch Industrial Park.
“It has great rail access,” said McCreless, who moved operations from Colorado to Wyoming. “Wyoming is a phenomenal state to work with when it comes to natural resources and this type of research.”
While still in the exploratory phase, McCreless said the dolomite out of the mine near Wheatland could feed a major magnesium metals smelting operation at the Cheyenne facility.
“We know it's there, and we just need to kind of go in and do some further exploratory work,” said McCreless, who laughed about magnesium’s role in “Top Gun: Maverick.”
As McCreless put it, “The ‘Top Gun’ movie would have been over really, really quickly had it not been for the magnesium flares.”
David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.
