Navy to build two more carriers at Newport News
I assume they will be Ford Class carriers. (The navy is also now building light carriers).
The Navy awarded Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding a contract for two aircraft carriers, the first of its kind since the 1980s.
Thursday’s contract modification is worth $14.9 billion to cover remaining ship design and construction costs of CVNs 80 and 81. Once government-furnished equipment is added in – including systems such as the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System and the Advanced Arresting Gear – the Navy will spend about $24 billion on the two aircraft carriers, compared to a predicted cost of $28 billion if the sea service had purchased them separately.
The Navy originally thought the combined purchase would save them about $2.5 billion across the two ships, but estimates have since risen to about $4 billion by combining the two ships into a single purchase, allowing for better sequencing at the shipyard and avoiding duplication in planning.
“Today marks a great team effort to drive out cost and maximize efficiency in government procurement,” Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer said in a statement this evening.
“Focusing on optimizing construction activities and material procurement, the team was able to achieve significant savings as compared to individual procurement contracts. One contract for construction of the two ships will enable the shipbuilder flexibility to best employ its skilled workforce to design once and build twice for unprecedented labor reductions while providing stability and opportunities for further efficiencies within the nuclear industrial base.”
Navy acquisition chief James Geurts told reporters at the Pentagon that “I’d like to applaud the team for doing that on a timeline that is both rapid and meets the secretary of defense’s and the secretary of the Navy’s call for urgency and ensuring we do everything with the urgency that’s required to meet the National Defense Strategy.”
Geurts said the Navy had already seen a 16-percent cost reduction going from first-in-class USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) to John F. Kennedy (CVN-79); the contract is expected to achieve an additional 18-percent savings from 79 to 81.