Defense and aerospace silver consumption is real, growing, and not separately quantified as a standalone category in the standard supply-demand tables. Here is what the data actually shows.
The Silver Institute's World Silver Survey, the industry's authoritative annual report, breaks demand into categories by application type: Electrical & Electronics, Brazing Alloys & Solders, Other Industrial, Photography, Jewelry, Silverware, and Coin & Net Bar Demand. There is no dedicated defense or aerospace line item in the demand tables.
That does not mean defense demand is absent from the data. The World Silver Survey 2025 explicitly identifies defense and aerospace as growth drivers within its existing categories. The North America section notes robust growth in the "defense / aerospace industry." A dedicated Focus Box on "Novel Applications in New & Established Fields" discusses silver's expanding role in military drones, EMI shielding, space applications, and advanced plating for defense components. Defense silver demand is captured within the broader industrial totals. It is not separately broken out.
With the Iran war putting missiles, drones, and military electronics in the news daily, it is worth examining precisely what the available data supports about this embedded demand layer, including a correction to a per-unit figure that has been overstated in silver analysis for years.
There are seven Deep Dives that I'm discussing in this week's premium Silver Catalyst issue, and in this article, I'll focus on one of them.
The Demand That Is Tracked but Not Separately Measured
A subscriber asked a question that cuts to an honest gap in the silver data: how much silver does the defense and aerospace sector actually consume, and is that number growing?
The direct answer is that no government agency, no independent research firm, and no industry body publishes a standalone figure for defense and aerospace silver demand. The USGS Mineral Commodity Summary reports US silver use by broad sector (physical investment, electrical and electronics, coins and medals, photovoltaics, jewelry and silverware, brazing and solder, and other industrial uses and photography) with no military line item. The Silver Institute's World Silver Survey captures defense demand within its broader industrial categories but does not break it out separately.
What the public record does confirm, without quantifying the aggregate:
Silver-zinc batteries power guidance, telemetry, and actuation systems across Tomahawk, Patriot, THAAD, Hellfire, and Standard Missile programs. EaglePicher, the dominant US military battery supplier, confirms this directly, though they supply multiple battery chemistries (including thermal and lithium-oxyhalide) across these programs, and not all use silver-zinc. The silver-zinc chemistry is not US-specific: silver-zinc cells purpose-built for combat torpedoes appear in German, French, Italian, Indian, and Russian naval specifications. Single-use applications (fire and discard) mean no recovery and no recycling.
Silver-plated connectors, wiring harnesses, and circuit boards run throughout military avionics under requirements originally defined by Federal Specification QQ-S-365 (now superseded by ASTM B700). The reliability standard for defense electronics, where failure means loss of aircraft, crew, or mission, is the primary reason silver remains specified rather than substituted.
One widely circulated figure worth correcting: the 480-500 oz of silver per Tomahawk cruise missile that appears frequently in silver analysis has been directly disputed by CPM Group, one of the most rigorous and skeptical precious metals research firms. Their published analysis puts the actual figure at closer to 10-15 oz per Tomahawk, primarily in solder and an ignition battery. Smaller missiles used in Ukraine, the Middle East, and similar conflicts reportedly carry less than 1 oz each. CPM estimates cumulative silver consumed in all Tomahawk missiles fired over forty years at approximately 32,000 oz total. This is an important correction. Overstating per-unit silver loadings undermines the credibility of the underlying demand case, which is real even at accurate numbers.
My honest estimate, applying CPM's per-unit frameworks and available defense electronics production data, puts global defense and aerospace silver demand at approximately 15-40 Moz annually. This is my analytical inference, not a published figure from any authoritative source. That range is wide because the data is structurally thin. This demand is already embedded within the Silver Institute's broader "Electrical & Electronics" and "Other Industrial" categories, which together totaled 629 Moz in 2024. It is not an additional layer on top of the reported totals. It is a component within them that is not separately visible.
The Forward-Looking Case
Even without a confirmed baseline, five structural drivers point to defense silver demand growth from here:
Global defense spending at record levels. Global defense spending reached $2.63 trillion in 2025 per the IISS Military Balance 2026. NATO members agreed at the Hague Summit in June 2025 to target 5% of GDP by 2035. China's 2026 defense budget is approximately $275 billion, up 7%.
Drone proliferation at scale. Military drone markets are projected to grow at 7-14% CAGR through 2030 per MarketsandMarkets and Fortune Business Insights, with single-use loitering munitions multiplying unit counts across all major armed forces. Each drone carries silver in electronics and guidance systems. Volume multiplication matters even at modest per-unit loadings. The World Silver Survey 2025 specifically identifies the drone market as a growth area for silver in its Focus Box on novel applications.
Missile restocking. The restocking pipeline is active across NATO and allied nations. At even CPM's 10-15 oz per unit, procurement at wartime replacement rates adds up across hundreds of thousands of units in active inventories.
Hypersonic competition. Russia and China are fielding hypersonic systems that are forcing NATO to accelerate its own programs. Silver is used in the thermal control and sensor electronics of these platforms, an application class that did not exist at meaningful scale a decade ago.
Project Vault. The Trump administration's $12 billion strategic minerals initiative, backed by $10 billion in EXIM Bank financing, covers all 60 minerals on the 2025 USGS Critical Minerals List. Silver was added to that list on November 7, 2025. A formal government procurement channel for silver now exists that did not exist a year ago. That said, Project Vault is demand-driven, and active stockpiling depends on OEM purchase commitments from participants.
At even conservative per-unit loadings, volume multiplication at current procurement rates adds up. My 15-40 Moz estimate is wide, and it may be an undercount. It is also the range I think is defensible from public data. The structural case for growth is clear even when the baseline is not separately quantified.
This is the central discussion for Catalyst #82: Military Electronics Demand Acceleration from "Silver Rising".
The full Silver Catalyst Issue #11 covers six more Deep Dives beyond this one, including the Phase 1/Phase 2 framework for oil shocks and what the 1979 precedent predicts follows the current correction, the extraordinary event inside the COMEX delivery system on March 19, Turkey's 20.34 Moz physical import surge, the Section 301 investigation calendar, Micron's record Q2 results, and the peer-reviewed 2030 solar supply gap model. This is where the timing and the structural picture come together.
If you want to see the full analysis and what it implies from here, you can access it below:
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Thank you.
The Silver Engineer