Kim Budil was set to take over as the 13th director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California on Tuesday.
The younger of the two nuclear weapons design laboratories announced the change at top in late January. Budil replaces William Goldstein, who was to retire after six years as director and 36 years at Livermore.
Budil takes over with the Livermore prime contractor, the Bechtel-University of California-led Lawrence Livermore National Security, assured of its job as lab manager through at least fiscal year 2025, under a roughly $2-billion-a-year contract awarded by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) in 2007.
On Budil’s watch, Livermore will lead the refurbishment of warheads for the military’s next-generation air-launched cruise missiles and silo-based intercontinental ballistic missiles: respectively, the Long Range Standoff weapon and Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD). Each of these weapons is scheduled to go into service around 2030.
The cruise missiles will use W80-4 warheads, a refurb of the W80-1 warhead that tips the current generation of AGM-86B air-launched cruise missiles, while GBSD will use W87-0 and eventually W87-1 warheads. W80-4 is slated to enter the NNSA’s production pipeline after a first-production unit due in fiscal year 2025. W87-0, the name for existing Minuteman III warheads adapted for GBSD, will first be integrated with the next-generation missile during flight tests in the early 2020s, the Air Force has said.
In a media availability in January, shortly after the lab announced her then-impending promotion, Budil touted the warhead refurbs as “an incredible opportunity” for the entire NNSA production complex to “stand up modern and efficient production capabilities.”
In that respect, it’s a pretty smooth baton pass to Budil from her immediate predecessor Goldstein, who discussed the opportunities and perils of modern manufacturing techniques in some of his last public writing as Livermore’s director.
