Fogbank Lessons

The GAO recently released the unclassified version (PDF) of their January report analyzing the Life Extension Program (LEP).  In general, the report found that:

NNSA and DOD have not effectively managed cost, schedule, and technical risks for either the B61 or W76 life extension program.

One of the primary problems that NNSA ran into was the recreation of Fogbank for the W76 warhead. Originally created in the 1980's, the production infrastructure for Fogbank was closed in the 1990's spare a small pilot facility.  While NNSA hoped that they could begin reproducing Fogbank with relatively ease, that was not the case:

 Working from lessons learned from the W87 life extension program, NNSA strove to achieve an early operations start date to allow sufficient time to address any potential problems in manufacturing Fogbank.  In 2000, we reported that production problems resulting from such factors as restarting an atrophied production complex and addressing safety and technician training issues led directly to slippage in the W87 life extension program schedule and contributed to increased costs.8 In addition, NNSA's own lessons learned report on the W87 program identified the need to demonstrate processes early and often and stated that, with limited resources, assumptions such as "we did it before so we can do it again" are often wrong.

Ultimately, the entire project suffered a 1 year delay and a $69 million overrun due just to the problems associated with Fogbank production.  This Fogbank case is illustrative in a couple of respects.  First, it highlights the importance of effective DoD oversight and NNSA management of the nuclear weapons complex to try to maintain budget and schedule deadlines (obviously a tough task).  Second, it can serve as an example of the problem with atrophy in the complex. As sophisticated programs will be needed, whether to avoid testing, move to much lower levels, or build a replacement version of weapons, there will have to be scientific leadtime to get these programs off the ground, even if they are very similar to previous programs.