Vault Strategic Plans a Technical Report and Drill Permit Applications at War Bond

Vault Strategic Mining has completed the survey that comes before drilling at War Bond, its tungsten skarn property in Nevada, and released the processed maps on October 19, 2026. A skarn is a rock formed where hot fluids from a granite reacted with limestone.

War Bond sits in the Delaware Mining District, in the west of the state. The company says its new magnetic data will support its first NI 43-101 technical report and follow-up surface exploration, and then drill permit applications.

Vault holds War Bond's 20 claims under a property option agreement, according to its audited annual statements, and it now has fresh survey data and new money from a September placement. Tungsten is the hard metal in cutting tools and drill bits, and it is on the United States' 2022 list of critical minerals, which is the policy backdrop for a Nevada tungsten explorer.

A tungsten skarn that has been mined before

War Bond is a package of 20 unpatented lode claims covering about 400 acres in the Delaware Mining District. An unpatented claim gives the holder the right to explore and mine federal land without owning the surface. The claims cover the historical War Bond workings along with two smaller ones, Tactite and Thursday, according to the October 19 release.

The company says historical records describe scheelite, the calcium tungstate mineral that carries most of the world's mined tungsten, in tactite and skarn near the contact between granite and limestone. Vault is careful about the old numbers: its release states that the historical information predates NI 43-101, has not been verified, and should not be relied on as current technical disclosure.

The modern record starts in 2026. Vault reported surface sampling results in a July 2026 release, with tungsten values up to 1,100 parts per million and manganese up to 4,430 parts per million, and in July it engaged Pioneer Exploration Consultants to fly the magnetic survey as a follow-up to that sampling.

What 73.6 kilometres of magnetic lines can find

Pioneer flew about 73.6 line-kilometres over War Bond with a drone, finishing on August 3, 2026. The survey lines were 25 metres apart, with tie lines every 250 metres to check the readings against each other. Close spacing matters on a property of this size, because a skarn body can be narrow, and widely spaced lines can fly straight past it.

A magnetic survey measures small variations in the earth's magnetic field caused by the rocks below. Granite and limestone, and the altered rock between them, often carry different amounts of magnetite, so the survey can trace the contacts where skarn forms even under cover. Pioneer delivered three products: total magnetic intensity, its first vertical derivative, which sharpens shallow features, and the analytic signal, which helps place the edges of magnetic bodies.

The company is exact about what the maps show. "Magnetic responses alone do not establish the presence, grade or continuity of tungsten mineralization," the October 19 release says, and Pioneer's report covers acquisition, processing and quality control rather than geological interpretation. The maps are a guide to where to look, and Vault's own geologists will now set them beside the mapping and the sampling.

The technical disclosure was reviewed and approved by William Feyerabend, CPG, an independent consulting geologist and qualified person under NI 43-101, according to the release.

Three named steps

The October 19 release describes the work the survey is meant to support, summarised here:

1. Integrating the magnetic data with geological mapping and historical information, and with the completed surface results.
2. Preparing and filing a maiden NI 43-101 technical report for War Bond.
3. Guiding follow-up surface mapping and sampling, and refining drill targets for permit applications.

NI 43-101 is the Canadian standard for scientific and technical disclosure on mineral projects, and a technical report under it is written or signed by a qualified person. A first report on a property at this stage typically sets out its geology and history and the exploration completed, then recommends a work program. It is the document Canadian rules require before an issuer can make certain kinds of disclosure about a property.

The release gives no date for any of the three. Vault says any drilling remains subject to technical evaluation and permits, as well as funding and access.

Money to do the work

Vault closed a non-brokered placement of 12,000,000 units at C$0.125 on September 29, 2026, for gross proceeds of C$1.5 million, according to its closing release. Each unit is one share and one warrant, a right to buy another share at C$0.20 for 12 months. Insiders took 900,000 of the units. At the September 29, 2026 closing the company also paid C$80,400 in cash finder's fees and issued 643,200 finder's warrants to four brokerage firms. It says the proceeds go to exploration and general corporate purposes.

The placement's C$1.5 million gross is about two and a half times the cash the company last reported, at May 31, 2026. Vault held C$589,226 in cash at May 31, 2026, its fiscal year-end, against C$1,582,145 in total liabilities, per the audited annual statements, which carry a material uncertainty about the company's ability to continue as a going concern. That auditor's note means the company needed new money to fund its plans, and the September placement is the money it raised.

Vault has also moved to semi-annual reporting under the securities regulators' coordinated blanket order 51-933, the October 19 release says. It will not file interim statements for the quarter to August 31, 2026. The next financial statements will cover the six months to November 30, 2026, and they will be the first to show the placement and what the survey and the follow-up work cost.

What comes after the survey

Guardian Metal Resources, an AIM-listed company, shows the scale a Nevada tungsten skarn can reach. Its December 19, 2025 update put 8.69 million tonnes at 0.206 per cent tungsten trioxide in the indicated category on the Desert Scheelite zone of its Pilot Mountain project in the same state, one of four skarn zones that reach surface there, after drilling dozens of holes. The comparison is for scale only. Any path to a resource runs through the same sequence of filings, and Vault has named its next three.

A technical report would be the first independent, signed account of War Bond under Canadian rules. A drill permit application would name specific targets. Assays from the first holes would give the first modern grades at depth. The semi-annual statements sit alongside these as a financial filing rather than a step toward a resource, and they would show the spending.

In my assessment the October 19 release is a real step for a company of this size. It turns a summer of sampling into maps of the rocks, with a written plan and a qualified person's name on it. The September placement brought in about C$1,419,600 after finder's fees. Vault has not published a cost for the next stage.

Vault has completed the survey, closed the financing and named the technical report as its next filing on War Bond, and its semi-annual statements to November 30, 2026 will show what the company has spent to get there.