No official word on who else bid on the contract, other than NSTEC run by Northrop Grumman that will soon cease to exist.
Comments:
Anonymous said...This is more evidence that Lockheed is out of Sandia and will get LANL. The question is who is going to get Sandia, Northrop Grumman or Boeing? Since Northrop Grumman had NSTEC I would think the deal is that they are going to get Sandia. Another question is how will Lockheed run LANL? Science has pretty much died at LANL during last 10 years. Lockheed could try and make LANL a sort of Sandia northeast which would mean getting rid of the last little bits of science at LANL, but the bigger question is if LANL can do engineering or how long would it take to get LANL up to speed as an engineering lab. Another issue is that LANL would than be competing with Sandia.
A good strategy would be move as much stuff off from Sandia and transfer it to LANL at the contract change so that LANL could have a chance to compete with the new Northrop run Sandia. I would think this may be toughest on Sandia at first since Lockheed will push to move engineering programs to LANL which will mean a drop in funding for Sandia. A bone to be thrown to Bechtel and LLNL will be to move some non-engineering programs from LANL to LLNL and beef up the bonuses pay for them, also this might add some legitimacy to keeping LLNL afloat. It is in NNSA best interest to keep the complex as large as possible and every lab open, you know too big to fail and the bigger the object you manage the more money for high up managers, also you have to make sure that every corporate player gets some piece of the pie.
Anonymous said...
Northrop Grumman did a lousy job managing Nevada, which is why they lost. Lockheed meanwhile has a pretty good record managing Sandia, so they won. A new LANS minus Bechtel could be a contender for LANL, but there's no reason to think Lockheed won't keep Sandia just because they also manage Nevada. After all, look at Bechtel in LLNS and LANS.
Anonymous said...
Sandia will move move it's Senior Management Team to LANL when Lockheed wins the contract there. An aerospace company leading nuclear facilities. These folks have no idea what they are in for, Lockheed couldn't
A UC-Lockheed Martin owned LLC to bid on the LANL contract makes the most sense for UCOP if they want to continue major involvement in LANL. Making Bechtel the fall guy for the operational ills at LANL is UC's best and most logical move.
