The National Nuclear Security Administration sole-sourced a real-estate development contract to Tucson, Ariz.-based Tierra Right of Way to procure a parcel of land for the Kansas City National Security Campus in Missouri, which is “in dire need of new facilities.”
The Kansas City National Security Campus, operated by Honeywell Federal Manufacturing and Technologies, is the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) manufacturing hub for non-nuclear nuclear-weapon parts.
NNSA is eyeing a parcel of land adjacent to the Kansas City plant’s main Botts Road Campus, according to the procurement notice posted online Wednesday. The notice did not quantify the size of the parcel NNSA wants to acquire.
Earlier this decade, problems with commercially sourced non-nuclear components delayed the first copies of the B61-12 gravity bomb and the W88 alt-370 submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead by about two years.
Now, the NNSA finds itself with an undersized non-nuclear production complex for the parts that have to be assembled, or even manufactured, in-house.
“[T]he biggest concern with non-nuclear components is that our enterprise was designed to handle one-and-a-half programs of record at any given time,” Brig. Gen. Stacy Jo Huser, NNSA’s Brig. Gen. Stacy Jo Huser, principal assistant deputy administrator for military application, said during a webcast presentation hosted by Washington-based non-government groups this week. “We’re currently handling five.”
Meanwhile, Honeywell and the NNSA are working to expand the Kansas City National Security Campus’ footprint in other ways.
The agency and its contractor have worked to open Building 23, also called Kansas City East, down the road from the campus’ main plant. The NNSA expects to have about 500 people working there in fiscal year 2023, which begins in one month on Oct. 1. Building 23 was to handle plastic molding, testing of electrical components, and parts fabrication, among other things the NNSA has said.
