How Long Can the U.S. Rely on Russian Titanium?

With the U.S. ratcheting up Russian sanctions in response to Vladimir Putin's unrepentant assault on Ukraine, word comes that U.S. manufacturers Boeing and United Technologies are building up aerospace-grade titanium stocks from their key supplier in Russia. Given that Russia's VSMPO-Avisma is, as the Wall Street Journal reports, a subsidiary of Rostec, the government-owned defense conglomerate whose CEO Sergei Chemezov (in the 1980s, he and former KGB officer Vladimir Putin lived in the same apartment building in East Germany) is on the U.S. sanctions list -- stocking up on titanium parts isn't a bad idea. After all, titanium is critical for jetliner fuselage skins like Boeing's 787 Dreamliner. Not noted in the news reports is that titanium is also must-have metal for advanced military aircraft like Boeing's F/A-18 Super Hornet. A RAND study notes that the F/A-18 -- which has just completed bombing missions against the ISIS terror group in northern Iraq -- contains "21 percent titanium in its airframe structure."