Nuclear Security Enterprise: Strategic Partnership Projects Can Support Mission, Operations, and Research

Filed 46m ago · Via GAO · The Buffoon Desk

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Kings of Tara

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Tim Evanson · CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

A GAO report finds NNSA's eight national labs and sites, tasked with maintaining the nuclear weapons stockpile, also perform reimbursed outside work called Strategic Partnership Projects, totaling almost $15 billion in constant fiscal 2024 dollars from 2019 through 2024. Sandia National Laboratories accounted for more than half that total, the Department of Defense was the biggest sponsor, and most projects were categorized as national security-related.

GAO warns that if NNSA had to scale back this outside work, its own costs would rise since partner funds currently offset the indirect costs of running and maintaining facilities. Every federal partner GAO interviewed said the arrangement was essential to their mission, largely because NNSA sites are sometimes the only place with the needed capabilities, even as NNSA's core weapons workload keeps growing.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

So the outfit built to maintain the nation's nuclear stockpile is also renting out its lab space like a barn that hosts weddings on weekends, and it turns out those side gigs are quietly paying part of the light bill. GAO's warning is really just simple arithmetic: take away the renters and the core mission gets more expensive, not less. Nobody planned it that way, it just worked out convenient, which is usually when Washington likes it least when someone points it out.

Source: Read the original at GAO → Scored: Kings of Tara · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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