Honeywell executive Eric Wollerman on April 30 will become president of the subsidary that manages the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Kansas City, Mo., National Security Campus.
At the end of the month, the buck will stops with Wollerman at the NNSA-owned manufacturing hub for the non-nuclear parts of nuclear weapons. The Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies contract, awarded in 2015 and worth about $1 billion a year, with fees has options that would keep the wholly owned subsidiary on the job through September 2025.
Wollerman is coming from Honeywell’s aerospace division, where he has worked for the past 10 years, according to an April 2 press release.
Wollerman succeeds John Ricciardelli, Kansas City’s president for the past four years, Honeywell said.
Honeywell did not say why Ricciardelli is leaving his post, or where his next assignment might be. A company spokesperson said Ricciardelli had not announced any post-Kansas City plans. Ricciardelli declined an interview request, through the spokesperson.
The Kansas City National Security Campus (KCNSC) had a rough 2019, as reflected in Honeywell’s most recent performance evaluation. In the evaluation, the NNSA said the contractor did not do a good job supporting changes to the B61-12 and W88 Alt-370 nuclear-weapon refurbishment programs, which have been delayed by almost two years each because of issues with electrical components.
In 2019, the NNSA said commercial capacitors could not be used in either the B61-12 gravity bomb or the W88 Alt-370 submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead, which are being refurbished to serve another three decades in the field. Kansas City and the Sandia National Laboratories are now working on custom capacitors for the weapons. Capacitors store electric charges and can be used in detonation systems.
The issues with B61-12 and W88 Alt-370 have also caused delays to the Air Force’s ICBM Fuze Replacement program, which aims to replace the fuses that set off nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile warheads. The fuses would also be made at Kansas City based on designs by Sandia and the Air Force. Fuse manufacturing cannot start until the B61-12 and W88 Alt-370 work clears the line at Kansas City.
