The solution to the problems plaguing National Nuclear Security Administration aren’t likely to be solved by a radical makeover for the agency, the co-chairman of a Congressionally created NNSA governance panel said yesterday. The 12-member panel began its work in September, and in his first public comments, panel co-chairman Adm. Richard Mies, the former commander of U.S. Strategic Command, emphasized that there was “no easy answer” to the agency’s woes. But he suggested potential fixes are not likely to include some of the more dramatic options to revamp the agency, including moving it to the Department of Defense or having it reabsorbed into the Department of Energy. “I would just say that in my mind the major changes that need to be made to become more efficient and make the enterprise healthier and more robust involve process and cultural changes more than they involve just structural reorganization. I think it’s too early to get into some of the specifics but I really believe that’s where a lot of improvement can be made,” Mies said at an event yesterday at the Hudson Institute, emphasizing that he was speaking for himself, and not for the panel. The panel is still in the fact-finding portion of its work and has not discussed potential recommendations. Mies is co-chairing the panel along with former Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine.
Mies acknowledged the problems facing the agency, which include cost overruns on major construction and warhead life extension projects, bureaucratic inefficiency, eroding scientific expertise, and a lack of trust between headquarters staff and officials at the agency’s plants and labs. “It is a troubled enterprise,” Mies said. “They are facing huge cost overruns and schedule delays on a number of modernization programs, both infrastructure and weapons modernization, which concerns both DoD and others for obvious reasons.”
