October 2006
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The View from HQ 
Dimitri Kusnezov
Director, NA-121.2
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As I write this, we don’t know the result of the upcoming elections, but whichever direction the elections go, we can expect the strong support of both sides of Congress to continue for the ASC program. We have a critical leadership role in national security and have demonstrated success in managing the program and delivering high-quality products.
Looking back over our accomplishments from last year there are several that demonstrate the reach of our program. Our influence on the computing industry is profound. We delivered on our long-term goal this year of making available to users a 100 TF computer system—the Purple computer at Livermore. Also, because of ASC leadership there were two new commercially successful product lines introduced last year by our industry partners: the Blue Gene/L computer at Lawrence Livermore and Red Storm at Sandia. We also completed the initial phases of another potentially ground-breaking computer, the Roadrunner computer at Los Alamos.
But we are primarily measured on what we deliver using these advanced computer systems. The most visible product over the past year was the RRW feasibility study. This study involved all three national weapons laboratories. It was completed in a remarkably short time—a few months rather than the historical time of years—because of the dedication of our people at the labs and because of tools that ASC has made available to stockpile stewards over the past decade.
As the codes are the repository of our nuclear weapons expertise, we recognize the broad national needs we must meet, such as forensics, attribution, accident scenarios and emerging threats. This is an important role that is especially timely because of the recent Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea incident and the growing concern in the international community regarding proliferation of nuclear devices.
We as a program are in a time of transition that reflects the changing world. But we have an important job to do for the nation, and I’m proud to be part of this team.
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