November 14, 2025 - America’s enemies don’t have to launch a missile to cripple us. They only have to take down the power grid. When the lights go out, everything stops—our defense plants, our military bases, our hospitals, our data networks, even the satellites guided by ground-based control stations. Power is the foundation of national defense, and coal is the foundation of that power.

For more than a century, coal has powered the arsenal of democracy. It forged the steel in our ships, tanks, bridges, and munitions; it kept the factories humming through two world wars and the Cold War that followed. The B-17s that flattened Nazi industry, the carriers that turned back the Imperial Japanese Navy, the tanks that broke through at Bastogne—all owed their existence to coal. Every modern fighter, destroyer, and aircraft carrier still depends on electricity that—somewhere down the line—comes from a coal-fired generator. Even the steel that shapes them is born from American metallurgical coal.

Producing the steel embedded in our current combat fleet alone required nearly 850,000 tons of coking coal—the high-temperature fuel that hardens iron into armor plate and deck steel. Maintaining and resupplying that force consumes roughly 230,000 tons of metallurgical coal every year, used in the constant churn of replacement vehicles, new construction, and ammunition. That’s the invisible coal line behind every production line.

Yet Washington is tearing down this shield with its own hands. In the name of “transition,” we are discarding the one resource that guarantees round-the-clock reliability. The same politicians who preach about resilience are dismantling the system that provides it.

When temperatures plunge or cyberattacks strike, wind and solar wait on weather. Natural-gas pipelines can freeze. But coal plants keep producing because their fuel sits on site—weeks or months of supply, stacked beside the boiler. That difference—physical stockpiled fuel—is the difference between endurance and collapse. When the grid is under siege, that pile of coal becomes the last line of defense for every home, every base, every command center in America.

Every major defense installation in this country relies on the civilian grid. The Pentagon knows it cannot run radar arrays, missile-tracking systems, or satellite uplinks on intermittent power. That’s why our largest bases—from Norfolk to Minot—remain tied to dependable baseload generation, much of it coal-fired. A blackout doesn’t just darken cities; it blinds satellites, halts production lines, and silences command networks. Coal’s stability is not nostalgia—it is strategy.

And when the nation must fight, coal becomes the silent quartermaster. A modern war is as much an industrial contest as a military one. To supply the steel and electricity for two simultaneous regional ground wars, the United States would require roughly 420,000 tons of metallurgical coal each year for steelmaking and about 28.5 million tons of thermal coal to generate the extra electricity needed for surge production. That’s around 6% of total U.S. coal output, devoted solely to war-related manufacturing. Those tons would fuel the blast furnaces, foundries, munitions plants, and logistics depots that sustain the battlefield.

Break that down and it becomes clearer: about 200,000 tons of steel for new munitions and shell casings, 100,000 tons for tactical vehicles and light armor, 200,000 tons for ship and aircraft overhauls, 120,000 tons for rapid base construction, and another 80,000 tons for field structures, containers, and equipment. Each ton of steel requires roughly six-tenths of a ton of coking coal. The math is simple, the truth profound: without coal, the arsenal stops.

The same holds for power. An extra 60 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity—roughly the wartime surge needed for factories, depots, and data centers—would demand around 28.5 million tons of thermal coal. No other domestic resource can deliver that much dispatchable energy that fast. That coal is more than fuel; it is deterrence you can stack, measure, and store.

No foreign cartel, no pipeline, no dictator stands between a coal plant and its mission. You can mine it, ship it, and burn it entirely within U.S. borders. That is what strategists call depth—energy depth—and we are squandering it.

Metallurgical coal is equally irreplaceable. There is no tank armor, carrier deck, or missile silo without steel, and there is no steel without coking coal. The much-touted “green steel” projects remain years away and rely on imported hydrogen or subsidized gas. Meanwhile, China and India are expanding their coking-coal capacity and locking up global supply. Beijing’s navy runs on coal power and coal steel. Ours runs on press releases. You cannot outsource steelmaking and still call yourself an industrial power.

Energy security is national security. The next wars will be fought not only with missiles but with megawatts—cyber strikes that darken grids, supply chains that seize up when power fails, propaganda that convinces free nations to dismantle their own strength. Europe learned that lesson when Russian gas went offline; Germany now scrambles to reopen mines it once condemned. America should not have to relearn it the hard way.

Coal is the only fuel that offers both immediacy and independence. Nuclear energy is strategic but slow to build. Gas is flexible but dependent on pipelines and global price swings. Wind and solar depend on weather and Chinese supply chains. Coal is ours—accessible, storable, and ready. Every ton in reserve is a quiet act of deterrence.

A modernized coal fleet, upgraded with high-efficiency turbines and carbon-capture systems, could anchor American power for another half-century. The cost would be trivial compared with the price of failure. For less than 1% of the Pentagon’s annual budget, we could fortify our entire energy base, guaranteeing that our grid—and our defenses—never go dark. What good are advanced weapons if the factories that build them can’t keep the lights on? What happens to missile guidance systems when power flickers? These are not hypotheticals. They are foreseeable failures of policy.

Coal miners and plant operators are as essential to the nation’s defense as the soldiers they power. They fight their battles underground and in control rooms, ensuring that the arsenal remains ready. They are the unsung sentinels of national strength. To abandon them is to weaken the sinews of American power. Real readiness begins with generation readiness—the ability to produce and project power, literally.

Coal gives us that ability. It is the quiet sentinel beneath our feet, the furnace that never sleeps. In a crisis, it powers the steel that builds our weapons and the electricity that drives our command systems. It cannot be hacked, embargoed, or shut off by clouds. It is there when nothing else is.

Our adversaries respect power in every form. They build their militaries on it. China’s buildup runs on coal-fired energy. Russia’s war machine, for all its oil, relies heavily on coal to fuel its industrial base. India is adding record new capacity because its leaders understand that reliable energy equals sovereignty. Only in America do we mistake self-sufficiency for sin.

If we want peace, we must project strength not only through our military but through our energy independence—the unshakable confidence that our lights, our bases, and our industries will stay on when others go dark. Coal gives us that confidence. It has never failed us.

T.L. Headley, MBA, MA, is a communications strategist, researcher, and writer with more than twenty-five years of experience in the energy industry. A former journalist, he has served as Communications Director for both the West Virginia Coal Association and the American Coal Council, where he helped lead national efforts to defend and promote America’s coal industry. Headley is the founder of The Hedley Company, an energy-focused communications and policy research firm based in West Virginia. His work has been featured in trade publications, newspapers, and policy forums nationwide. He is also the author of several books, including The Green Lie, Friends of Coal: The Story of America’s Coalfield Voice, and The Art of PR: Sun Tzu Strategies for Defending America’s Coal Industry.