From Idea to Innovation: The Role of LDRD Investments in Sandia's Recent Successful B61 Experiments.

Abstract

The Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program, authorized by U.S. Congress in 1991, enables Department of Energy (DOE) laboratories to devote a small portion of their research funding to high-risk and potentially high-payoff research. Because it is high-risk, LDRD-supported research may not lead to immediate mission impacts; however, many successes at DOE labs can be traced back to investments in LDRD. LDRD investments have a history of enabling significant payoffs for long-running DOE and NNSA missions and for providing anticipatory new technologies that ultimately become critical to future missions. Many of Sandia National Laboratories’ successes can be traced back to investments in LDRD. Capabilities from three LDRDs were critical to recent tests of the B61-12 gravity bomb—tests that would previously have only been performed experimentally.