Life in the fast lane: Rapid manufacturing speeds things up
When Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) needed specially machined components for critical tests on an accelerated timeline for delivery in the summer of 2025, they asked the Kansas City National Security Campus (KCNSC) to collaborate on a solution. While KCNSC regularly creates highly sophisticated parts and components to support nuclear weapons production, it frequently takes months or even years to plan, design, test and ultimately deliver a specialized part like LANL was seeking. And even though the parts created were development-level in design, they still required high-precision fabrication and inspection.
But thanks to recent innovations in business functions and manufacturing processes, the first parts were fabricated and inspected in 17 workdays and delivered to LANL by KCNSC in October 2025. In December, LANL requested a second set of hardware, which was delivered roughly six weeks after a final definition was agreed upon.
Rapid‑response manufacturing
Today, manufacturing “rapid prototyping” utilizes a lot of additive manufacturing, which is akin to 3D printing. Yet many customers within the Nuclear Security Enterprise still need parts fabricated by conventional machining where material is removed to form a desired shape. And at times, they need their parts fast.
“Rapid Manufacturing involves more than just making the parts,” said Director of Program Development Jay Hass. “Project funding, design for manufacturability and design intent communication, material acquisition and many other aspects of a project must be in place in order to move quickly.”
Consequently, in 2025 KCNSC implemented a strategic imperative to Enable Early Product Development (EEPD) that included a blueprint to establish a rapid ‑manufacturing concept of operations. This cross-functional team brought together members from Nuclear Weapon Programs, Systems Engineering, Global Security, New Mexico Operations, and Integrated Supply Chain functions to deliver quick turn results within existing business structures while maintaining high production, quality and security standards.
“This team’s success lies within the ability to attack a problem from multiple angles with team members from many divisions acting as one,” Hass noted. “All in the best interest of getting the job done.”
Although similar parts in War Reserve production often take 8-12 months to produce and deliver, the parts LANL ordered only took a total of 36 workdays from initial funding to delivery. “Components of this complexity typically take much longer to produce,” said Skyler McElwain, Technical Project Lead - Senior Mechanical Engineer. This success “was enabled by maintaining close coordination between the KCNSC Applied Processing and Prototyping Advancement (KAPPA) and Global Security teams, along with having the necessary priority within the manufacturing centers to perform quick-turn development work.”
Indeed, KCNSC’s ability to deliver was based on the foresight of the need to create space where manufacturing challenges such as this could be addressed rapidly – which ultimately creates a benefit for the entire NSE. Or as McElwain puts it: “High-pedigree hardware produced quickly is possible with the appropriate resources in place.”
While there are additional requirements of this specific project that will be managed throughout 2026, the bigger win lies in how this project demonstrates that NSE entities with different skills sets can work together to accomplish a highly specialized, critical need with increased responsiveness.
