National Nuclear Security Agency

Develop an Integrated Strategy for U.S. Supercomputer Leadership

When Plans Can't Afford to Fail

When America's nuclear security depends on supercomputing supremacy, individual lab plans aren't enough—we built the integrating framework that turned three separate strategies into one coherent national program.

Nuclear security leaves no margin for strategic confusion. The National Nuclear Security Agency's (NNSA) Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) program shoulders one of the nation's most critical missions by simulating nuclear weapons tests without underground detonation to certify the safety and reliability of America's stockpile. Three national laboratories—Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia—along with industry partners and university researchers, form the program's core. They had individual plans, but what they lacked was a plan that worked as one.

The gap wasn't technical capability; it was strategic coherence. Existing plans overlapped in some areas and left critical voids in others. Multiple technology roadmaps existed without an integrating logic to surface dependencies or guide program-level decisions, and no shared framework structured the interactions among the program's many stakeholders. Problems like these accumulate quietly and surface as execution failures.

Management Pro Role

We led a cross-laboratory task force of ASC program leaders through a structured strategic planning process designed for exactly this kind of complexity. The core challenge was building an organizing framework sophisticated enough to hold the program's many moving parts and flexible enough to evolve with rapid technological change For the first time, program leaders could clearly articulate how individual research investments contributed to measurable national-scale energy resilience outcomes.

Outcomes

The result was a portfolio that held together internally and communicated coherently externally. Programs were aligned around explicit objectives, defined success measures, and clearly stated assumptions governing impact.

Lessons Learned

Good science without architectural clarity underperforms. Strategic design ensured Sandia’s research investments translated into demonstrable national impact.