The Kansas City, Mo., National Security Campus plans this coming spring to open a small satellite factory about 1 mile east from the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) main workshop for non-nuclear components of nuclear-weapon.
“Occupancy is expected to begin next spring after tenant improvements such as utilities and furnishings are completed,” a spokesperson for Kansas City prime contractor Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies wrote in an email last week to Weapons Complex Morning Briefing. “Relocation of a portion of the light manufacturing and warehouse operations will relieve existing space to support the increased workload to meet mission requirements.”
The contractor signed a lease for the 275,000-square-foot building, located next door to a Wal-Mart distribution center, on Oct. 1, the Honeywell spokesperson wrote. Initially, the contractor will relocate about 150 people to the facility formerly known as Building 23. Among other things, the satellite site will handle plastic molding, testing of electrical components, and parts fabrication, according to an environmental review the NNSA prepared this year.
The contractor ultimately plans to move about 500 people to Kansas City East, the agency stated in the environmental review. The Kansas City National Security Campus expects to employ the equivalent of 5,000 full-time employees by year’s end, including 300 at the Sandia National Laboratories, the Honeywell spokesperson said.
Kansas City East is among the expansions the NNSA plans for the Kansas City, Mo., facility as the agency ramps up life-extension programs for the B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb and the W80-4 air-launched cruise-missile, plus a major alteration for the W88 submarine-launched ballistic-missile warhead.
The B61 and W88 life-extension programs fell behind schedule this year after the NNSA officially decided that commercial off-the-shelf capacitors planned for use in the weapons would not function correctly over their extended lifetimes. Replacement capacitors, and the subsequent logistical changes required to install them without badly disrupting future life-extension programs, increased the price tag for the bomb and warhead refurbishments by about $850 million, the NNSA said this year.
