LANL: The Corporate Story

[This post by John Pedicini is in response to a "rather" ignorant earlier comment on this blog, which claimed that the LANL design was 15 years old. In fact, the LLNL RRW is, more or less, a 20-year-old design, but LANL's is truly brand new. --Pat]

Pat,

Please post this in response to the 03/06/2007 6:18 post stating the the LANL RRW design was in my safe for 15 years.

The LANL RRW design was not sitting in my safe for 15 years. I have proposed what became RRW for more than 15 years, but refused to design it until there was a chance for training new designers. At age 49, I am the youngest of the seriously experienced NTS tested designers and the last chance for generational transfer of knowledge and art form.

I have used the RRW to teach new designers the art of design from the most basic physics principles. LANL did not start the design of what is a fundamentally nonlinear object, from an existing design, but began with only the basic physics. Notably, this will lead to a design closer to tested configurations than piecewise linear steps from an existing design, Mr. D'Agostino's comments notwithstanding. The new designers were present for every step and derivation of the actual design. The only work done prior to the detailed design was the theoretical work supporting certification without testing and some basic materials research. These were necessary before proposing the project now known as RRW.

This type of design process focusses heavily upon physics understanding of non-linear relationships and less upon brute force computational power. We used less than 1% of the computing power of the lab to design the RRW weapon. This low computer usage infuriated NNSA who personally berated me for placing understanding ahead of computer usage.

The LANL team also placed heavy emphasis upon the old fashioned scientific method and conducted many experiments to test the theoretical and computational findings. The team is proud to say that all experiments were 95% or better confirmation of the underlying hypotheses and all experiments were 95% or better refutation of the peer review. All of the experiments were delegated to and led by the new designers to further reinforce the need to constantly test one's understanding. The performance of the LANL experimental teams was exemplary. This, also, was not popular with NNSA, who are in the midst of a paradigm shift in the scientific method. Much of this data was suppressed.

The post-9/11 and post-Cold War worlds required something different than a Cold War design. The safety and security requirements of the Navy, prior to NNSA redefinition of the threat, could not be met with a Cold War design, and RRW provided the perfect opportunity to train new designers to think about the problem and the physics and not just the name or computer.

The generational transfer was about 50% completed prior to the recent RRW decision. This training process was terminated per NNSA requirements when the Navy POG [Project Officers Group] was overruled.

--John M. Pedicini

(As always, the views are my own and the posting has been ADC reviewed.)