OMAHA, Neb. — Lawrence Livermore National Securities is negotiating a five-year extension for the management contract of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the director told the Monitor last week.
“We’re in the midst of negotiations now,” Kim Budil, director of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in Livermore, Calif., told the Monitor at the 2024 U.S. Strategic Command Deterrence Symposium this week in Omaha, Neb. “We anticipate… pretty rapid turn on that. We’re eager to provide stability in an important time in the country.”
The Lawrence Livermore National Securities (LLNS) team consists of contractors Bechtel National, University of California, BWX Technologies, and Amentum. The contract to manage LLNL began in 2007, and is set to end in Sept. 2026.
Budil also said “nothing has changed” regarding the timing and scheduling of the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile’s planned W87-0 and W78-1 nuclear warheads, even as the Department of Defense rebaselines the entire development program for the ground based missile. “Both systems are slated to be in the stockpile for quite some time,” Budil said.
Similarly, Budil did not speak to the size of the operation for the W80-4 warhead for the sea-launched cruise missile, but said she did not anticipate a major expansion.
“The administrator has been very clear, we need to work with the capabilities we have and continue to push forward with modernization of the enterprise,” Budil said.
