The mechanism: For two decades, Howmet Aerospace HWM has been valued mostly as a bet on Boeing and Airbus build rates — a supplier whose fortunes rise and fall with 737 MAX headlines. That thesis was always incomplete. Howmet makes over 90% of the large structural and rotating investment castings — turbine airfoils, seamless rolled rings, titanium and nickel superalloy forgings — that go into every Western jet engine and fighter airframe. Those same castings are on the Pentagon's list of things it cannot afford to lose to China. The U.S. imports essentially all of its titanium sponge, and Beijing has floated titanium and rare-earth export controls as leverage in the trade fight. Washington's answer has been the Defense Production Act's Title III authority, which the Pentagon's Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment office has used to fund domestic titanium capacity directly — money to Selmet (a Consolidated Precision Products company) for specialty titanium castings feeding F-15/F-16/F-22/F-35 engines, and to IperionX to scale non-China titanium powder and sponge production. That's the same alloy category Howmet has processed at industrial scale for decades. Every dollar of DoD money that de-risks domestic titanium supply makes Howmet's existing furnaces, certifications, and decades of qualified-supplier status more valuable, not less — because reshoring favors incumbents with the metallurgical know-how already proven out, not new entrants starting from zero.