An auxiliary manufacturing space, known as Kansas City East and Building 23, should be christened in the fall, the president of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s main non-nuclear parts maker said Tuesday.
The headcount at the Kansas City National Security Campus (KCNSC) is “currently around 5,500 with plans growing to 6,000 here before the end of the year,” Eric Wollerman, the president of site prime Honeywell Federal Manufacturing and Technologies, said in an online forum Tuesday. “We’ve seen unprecedented growth.”
With the overlapping B61-12 gravity bomb and W88 Alt-370 submarine-launched ballistic missile refurbishments both on the cusp of entering years-long production phases — and with the W80-4 air-launched cruise-missile warhead and W87-1 intercontinental ballistic missile refurbs behind them in the pipe — Kansas City has had a growth spurt.
The 275,000-square-foot Kansas City East, about a mile down the road from the main campus, is about a million-dollar annual lease, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) fiscal 2022 budget request, and was to accommodate some 500 employees, the site has said.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, KCNSC said Building 23 would start light manufacturing of nuclear-weapons parts either in late 2020 or early 2021. The facility was, among other things, to handle plastic molding, testing of electrical components, and parts fabrication.
As part of an expansion KCNSC slated to kick off in fiscal year 2022, Building 23 will get electrical and ventilation upgrades, plus some new foundations for equipment needed for the W87-1 program, according to the NNSA’s latest budget request. The expansion will cost about $13 million, according to the request, and be finished in fiscal year 2023.
