Full Title: National Nuclear Security Administration: Explosives Program Is Mitigating Some Supply Chain Risks but Should Take Additional Actions to Enhance Resiliency
Author(s): U.S. Government Accountability Office
Publisher(s): U.S. Government Accountability Office
Publication Date: March 12, 2025
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Description (excerpt):
According to National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) documentation, the explosives supply chain is vulnerable to risks, such as material supply and manufacturing challenges. GAO found 66 total NNSA-identified risks across the agency’s 11 key explosives products supply chains. Agency officials told us the risks facing the explosives program, if not addressed, could result in delays to nuclear weapons modernization programs and newly designed weapons. NNSA has taken some steps to mitigate these risks, such as maintaining stockpiles of at-risk materials and identifying new domestic suppliers.
NNSA’s nearly $4 billion of existing explosives infrastructure—at five contractor-operated sites that design, produce, and test high explosives—is also facing risks. These include aging facilities, a changing regulatory environment, and budgetary constraints. To mitigate these risks, NNSA is pursuing improvements to some of its explosives infrastructure, including planning between $1 and $2 billion for major construction projects over the next decade, as well as investment in minor construction and recapitalization projects. However, NNSA has paused some of these projects, including two major projects, because of other agency priorities.
GAO found that NNSA’s explosives program generally followed supply chain risk management leading practices. Specifically, NNSA fully or substantially followed five out of eight leading practices and partially followed three. For example, consistent with leading practices, NNSA developed an agencywide supply chain risk management strategy. However, NNSA has not developed a resiliency strategy—a strategy to ensure the supply chain is flexible and adaptable enough to mitigate future adverse events—that comprehensively covers all identified risks. Rather, its strategy covers a more limited set of risks associated with infrastructure and sole-source suppliers. Fully following these risk management practices would help NNSA improve future supply chain resiliency.