Navy awards $1.1B more for sub construction

General Dynamics Corp.’s Groton, Connecticut-based Electric Boat Corp. has received nearly $1.1  billion more from the Navy to continue building Virginia-class submarines, and its teammate, Newport News Shipbuilding, has received a $305 million chunk of that award to procure long-lead time material and components for the next two hulls.

The contract modification, announced by the Pentagon and Reston-based General Dynamics Tuesday, brings the total contract value to $10.2 billion. It includes procuring materials and major components for the future submarines 812 and 813, which are part of the Block V in the Virginia class of fast-attack nuclear submarines. Newport News Shipbuilding announced its portion of the award, which it received from General Dynamics, Wednesday.

“These funds are critically important to stabilizing and providing predictability to the thousands of suppliers across the country who support the Virginia-class program,” Jason Ward, Newport News Shipyards’ vice president of Virginia-class submarine construction, said in a statement. “The submarine industrial base is crucial to our shipbuilding success and we look forward to continuing to build these vital national security assets that will deliver to the U.S. Navy with the latest technology.”

Electric Boat and Newport News Shipbuilding, a division of Newport News-based Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc., are the nation’s only two shipyards capable of building nuclear submarines. General Dynamics in 2019 won the largest-ever Navy contract for construction of the Block V of the Virginia class, which are capable of launching Tomahawk missiles. The two companies teamed up on a construction agreement to produce the class.

The Navy has said its submarine industrial base needs to hire as many as 100,000 workers in the next decade to keep up with the construction of its new submarines.