Lockheed Out at Sandia

Lockheed Out at Sandia

After the Lockheed scandal on lobbying to extend the contract, it was not likely going to be a Lockheed contract win.
http://time.com/3948974/sandia-national-laboratories-lobbying/

Until the winning team members and organization are revealed we can only speculate, but Honeywell winning rather than Batelle likely means that cost, programs, manufacturing and management were more highly valued than discovery science by NNSA. Not very surprising.

Lockheed is now only a minor player in the complex and may soon exit. They apparently already sold off the bid for Nevada National Security Site to Leidos and are a smaller player in CNS Pantex and Y12.

Batelle is not much of a presence in the complex with only a minor role in LLNL.

What all this means for LLNL and LANL is not clear.

Comments:
AnonymousDecember 16, 2016 at 6:52 PM

What all this means for LLNL and LANL is not clear.

December 16, 2016 at 4:32 PM

LLNL will stay with Bechtel and UC, LANL goes to Lockheed, Batelle is completely out as NNSA hates them.
AnonymousDecember 17, 2016 at 7:45 AM

I am hearing that the Sandia people are completely stunned by the results of the bid and this is the worse case scenario, some though that Lockheed would be out but that nothing so dumb as Honeywell/Northrup would go through. Crazy stuff.
AnonymousDecember 17, 2016 at 7:50 AM

One of the clear messages of the bid announcement is that NNSA does not want to have any University taking part in any kind of management of the NNSA labs. Another rumors is that Bechtel will be putting in a bid for LANL but will dump UC.
AnonymousDecember 17, 2016 at 8:00 AM

If the Bechtel-UC team looses the LANL contract, which is virtually a certainty, then I strongly suspect that UC will drop Bechtel as an LLC partner in running LLNL. No one has every shown that Bechtel (or any of the other industrial partners) have added real value to LLNL operations - only optical type changes that dazzle the NNSA non nothings rating Lab performance.

Keeping in mind that NNSA has publically stated that it is going to substantially reduce the annual award fee for its M&O contracts, 50%. UC would be better served by creating a wholly UC owned LLC to run LLNL, possible with Battelle as a partner. This would make if 100% non-profit LLC, cutting some cost too. Bechtel could still be involved in LLNL but as a supporting partner with a UC LLC or UC-Battelle LLC that is managing LLNL.

Plutonium Shots on NIF.

Tri-Valley Cares needs to be on this if they aren't already. We need to make sure that NNSA and LLNL does not make good on promises to pursue such stupid ideas as doing Plutonium experiments on NIF. The stupidity arises from the fact that a huge population is placed at risk in the short and long term. Why do this kind of experiment in a heavily populated area? Only a moron would push that kind of imbecile area. Do it somewhere else in the god forsaken hills of Los Alamos. Why should the communities in the Bay Area be subjected to such increased risk just because the lab's NIF has failed twice and is trying the Hail Mary pass of doing an SNM experiment just to justify their existence? Those Laser EoS techniques and the people analyzing the raw data are all just BAD anyways. You know what comes next after they do the experiment. They'll figure out that they need larger samples. More risk for the local population. Stop this imbecilic pursuit. They wan...

Trump is to gut the labs.

The budget has a 20% decrease to DOE office of science, 20% cut to NIH. NASA also gets a cut. This will have a huge negative effect on the lab. Crazy, juts crazy. He also wants to cut NEA and PBS, this may not seem like a big deal but they get very little money and do great things.

LLNL un-diversity

Actual post from Dec. 15 from one of the streams. This is a real topic. As far as promoting women and minorities even if their qualifications are not as good as the white male scientists, I am all for it. We need diversity at the lab and if that is what it takes, so be it. Quit your whining. Look around the lab, what do you see? White male geezers. How many African Americans do you see at the lab? Virtually none. LLNL is one of the MOST undiverse places you will see. Face it folks, LLNL is an institution of white male privilege and they don't want to give up their privileged positions. California, a state of majority Hispanics has the "crown jewel" LLNL nestled in the middle of it with very FEW Hispanics at all!

Anonymous said…

LLNL can't just dump Bechtel, they own part of LLNS.

12/18/2016 12:25 PM

Steve Younger is the new Director of NTESS! Wow.

12/18/2016 2:19 PM

Steve Younger, are you sure about that? That would be odd indeed since I thought he
was really in retirement mode at this stage but who knows. He was in charge of the Nevada test site at some point and I thought he shared the profit with the workers one of the years. Does anyone know how he ran NTS?

12/18/2016 4:10 PM

12/19/2016 10:52 AM

Steve was very successful at NNSS. His final year, they scored a 96 on the PER. He has all of the classic tickets for a lab director--weapons designer, worked at LLNL and LANL, was the director of DTRA, PhD in physics. He seems like a good choice.

December 19, 2016 at 10:52 AM

While Steve has all the credentials, he lacks in personal skills and communication skills. He used to hammer folks at LANL whenever ANYONE questioned his decisions. Very directive, arrogant, and autocratic manager. Good luck Sandians! LANL folks are glad he landed on Sandia and not on LANL, we had enough of that guy at LANL before he left, believe me.

12/20/2016 4:07 AM

12/20/2016 4:09 AM

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