DFARS 252.225-7009: Specialty Metals Restriction and Exceptions

DFARS 252.225-7009 is the Department of Defense contract clause that restricts the purchase of certain defense items containing specialty metals unless those metals were melted or produced in the United States or a qualifying country. It implements 10 U.S.C. 4863, a statute Congress passed to keep the domestic supply chain for critical defense metals intact.¹ If you supply anything containing specialty metals into a DoD program, the clause almost certainly reaches you, whether you sit at the prime level or several tiers down.

Metals the Clause Covers

Compliance starts with identifying whether your material is a specialty metal in the first place. The clause covers four categories.

Steel is a specialty metal when its alloy content exceeds 1.65 percent manganese, 0.60 percent silicon, or 0.60 percent copper. Steel also qualifies if it contains more than 0.25 percent of any of the following: aluminum, chromium, cobalt, molybdenum, nickel, niobium, titanium, tungsten, or vanadium.

Nickel, iron-nickel, and cobalt superalloys are covered when the total of all other alloying elements exceeds 10 percent (excluding iron in nickel and iron-nickel alloys, or excluding iron in cobalt alloys). Read that threshold carefully: it applies to the non-base alloying metals, not to the nickel or cobalt content itself.²

Titanium and titanium alloys are covered without any percentage threshold. Zirconium and zirconium alloys are also covered categorically, which reflects zirconium’s role in nuclear and high-temperature military applications.

Defense Items That Trigger the Restriction

The clause does not apply to every DoD purchase. It applies only when a specialty metal ends up in one of six end-item categories or their components:¹

Aircraft
Missile and space systems
Ships
Tank and automotive items
Weapon systems
Ammunition

The restriction also reaches direct purchases of specialty metal as raw stock by DoD or a prime contractor. That closes the workaround of buying foreign-melted material as ingot or plate and then fabricating a covered item domestically.¹

If your part contains a specialty metal but the end item is not in one of the six categories, the clause does not restrict your sourcing.

The Melted or Produced Standard

For the metals covered here, melting is the step that controls. The primary melt must occur in the United States or a qualifying country. Subsequent processing performed domestically (remelting, electroslag remelting, vacuum arc remelting, or other refining) satisfies the standard, but the initial melt cannot have happened somewhere non-qualifying.²

Downstream fabrication does not cure a foreign melt. Importing titanium ingot from a non-qualifying country and machining it into an aircraft part in Ohio is still non-compliant. You need certifications from your metal suppliers that trace the melt back to a qualifying source, and those certifications should carry more weight than a box checked on a purchase order.

Qualifying Country Sources

Metal melted or produced in a qualifying country satisfies the clause the same way domestic metal does. Qualifying countries are those with reciprocal defense procurement agreements with the United States. The current DFARS list identifies 28 such countries, including most NATO members along with Australia, Japan, Israel, Egypt, and Switzerland, among others.³

Verify the list before you commit. Qualifying status can change as agreements are renegotiated, and last year’s list is not a guarantee. The metal must actually have been melted or produced in the qualifying country, not just shipped through it.

Exceptions to the Restriction

Several exceptions carve out situations where strict compliance is impractical or unnecessary. None of them is a loophole; each has boundaries that catch people who read only the headline.

Electronic Components

Electronic components are exempt. An electronic component is an item that works by controlling the flow of electrons or charged particles in circuits, such as resistors, capacitors, diodes, transistors, and integrated circuits. Structural or mechanical parts of an assembly that happens to house an electronic component are not exempt, and neither are high-performance magnets used in those components.⁴ A titanium bracket holding a circuit board is not an electronic component.

Commercially Available Off-the-Shelf Items

Items sold in substantial quantities on the commercial market and offered to the government without modification qualify for the COTS exception. Four carve-outs limit it:⁴

Mill products such as bar, billet, slab, wire, plate, and sheet do not qualify unless already incorporated into a finished COTS item.
Specialty metal forgings and castings are excluded unless already incorporated into COTS end items, subsystems, or assemblies.
High-performance magnets containing specialty metal are excluded unless incorporated into a COTS end item or subsystem.
COTS fasteners are excluded unless incorporated into a COTS end item, subsystem, or assembly, or unless the manufacturer meets a separate fastener certification.

The pattern: the COTS exception protects finished commercial goods that happen to contain specialty metals, not the metals themselves in raw or semi-finished form.

Fastener Certification

A commercial fastener manufacturer can satisfy the restriction by certifying that, during the relevant calendar year, at least 50 percent of the specialty metal it purchases for all fastener production (not just government orders) will be domestically melted or produced.⁴

De Minimis

Non-compliant specialty metal is permitted if it makes up no more than 2 percent of the total weight of all specialty metals in the end item. The percentage runs against total specialty metal weight in the delivered product, not the weight of the whole product. The de minimis rule does not apply to specialty metals in high-performance magnets.²

Other Situational Exceptions

Acquisitions at or below the simplified acquisition threshold are exempt. Purchases made outside the United States in support of combat or contingency operations are exempt. Acquisitions approved under unusual and compelling urgency procedures are also exempt.⁴

Domestic Non-Availability Determinations

When compliant metal genuinely cannot be found, a Domestic Non-Availability Determination is the formal path. A DNAD is a finding that specialty metal of satisfactory quality and sufficient quantity, in the required form, cannot be procured as and when needed at a reasonable price.¹

Getting one is deliberately hard. You need detailed market research showing no domestic or qualifying-country source can meet the quality, quantity, form, and schedule. You also need an analysis of alternatives that would avoid the waiver, plus a written certification from the Program Manager or Program Executive Officer explaining why those alternatives are unacceptable.⁵ Approval sits at the service secretary level for individual contracts and at the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment for class DNADs covering multiple programs.⁶ Treat a DNAD as a last resort.

Flowdown to Subcontractors

Prime contractors must flow the restriction to every subcontractor supplying items containing specialty metals, at every tier. That includes subcontracts for commercial items.² A prime may adjust the de minimis language to manage that threshold at the prime level, but cannot otherwise alter the clause beyond identifying the appropriate parties.

A fifth-tier supplier casting a small specialty metal part for an aircraft engine is subject to the same sourcing rules as the prime building the aircraft. If your customer’s end item falls into one of the six covered categories and your part contains a specialty metal, the flowdown obligation exists whether or not your purchase order spells it out. Ask both questions before you accept the work.

Commercial Derivative Military Articles

A related pathway lives in DFARS 252.225-7010 for commercial derivative military articles, meaning items derived from commercial products but modified for military use. A contractor can certify compliance by committing to purchase domestically melted or produced specialty metal equal to at least 120 percent of the specialty metal needed for the military article, or at least 50 percent of the total specialty metal the contractor will buy for both the military and related commercial articles, whichever amount is greater.⁷ The provision recognizes that manufacturers producing both commercial and military versions of a product cannot always segregate their metal supply chains.

Consequences of Non-Compliance

Violating the restriction can end your relationship with the federal government. The immediate risk is termination for default, which cancels the contract and holds you liable for reprocurement costs. Contractors who knowingly misrepresent metal origin face potential False Claims Act liability, with treble damages and per-claim penalties.

The most severe administrative consequence is debarment. Under the FAR, a debarment period is set proportional to the seriousness of the violation and generally should not exceed three years.⁸ A debarment bars you from all federal contracting and financial assistance government-wide, not only DoD work.⁹ For any company whose revenue depends on federal contracts, that alone is reason enough to build supplier certification into the workflow rather than bolt it on after the fact.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 10 USC 4863 – Requirement to Buy Strategic Materials Critical to National Security From American Sources; Exceptions
2
eCFR. 48 CFR 252.225-7009 – Restriction on Acquisition of Certain Articles Containing Specialty Metals
3
Acquisition.GOV. DFARS 252.225-7002 – Qualifying Country Sources as Subcontractors
4
Acquisition.GOV. DFARS 225.7003-3 – Exceptions
5
Acquisition.GOV. Annex 3 – Domestic Nonavailability Determination and Supporting Documentation
6
Defense Pricing, Contracting, and Acquisition Policy. Restrictions on Specialty Metals (10 U.S.C. 4863)
7
Acquisition.GOV. DFARS 252.225-7010 – Commercial Derivative Military Article Specialty Metals Compliance Certificate
8
Acquisition.GOV. FAR 9.406-4 – Period of Debarment
9
US Department of Transportation. Suspension and Debarment