The United States Navy awarded Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding a contract for two aircraft carriers, the first of its kind since the 1980s.
A notification from the office of the navy chief of information said that the contract for the construction of CVN 80 and CVN 81 was awarded to Huntington Ingalls Industries-Newport News Shipbuilding (HII-NNS).
The 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.
“Today marks a great team effort to drive out cost and maximize efficiency in government procurement,” said Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer. “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.”
In addition to these savings, the contract includes ship integration costs of several modifications required to meet emerging threats including the F-35C Lightning II, MK 38 gun system and MQ-25 Stingray Unmanned Aircraft System.
These modifications increase the lethality of the FORD Class, and represent an additional $100 million in savings that is in addition to the $4 billion, since these new capabilities were not included in the original single-CVN Navy estimate. Plus, these new savings associated with new capabilities increases to $200 million if installed in the ship before delivery, in comparison to installing after ship delivery.