Ingalls Subcontracts Out Destroyer Blocks to Eastern Shipbuilding

 

Eastern Shipbuilding Group has reached a deal with Huntington Ingalls Industries to build blocks for the Ingalls yard's flagship product, the Navy's Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. The Flight III is the new backbone of the U.S. Navy's overseas presence, capable of escorting a carrier strike group, shooting down ballistic missiles or operating independently on blue water missions. 

HII's high-spec warship programs are behind schedule, in part due to a workforce shortage, and the Navy is pushing hard to speed up production. One way to do it is to distribute some of the work of blockbuilding to subcontractors, as demonstrated by the Royal Navy's Queen Elizabeth-class carrier program, which relied on blocks built at subcontractor yards around Britain. HII is experimenting with similar trials with yards like Eastern, which has built a limited number of blocks for the DDG program under an HII pilot program. HII and ESG have now formalized the agreement.

“With nearly fifty years of experience delivering some of the most reliable and highest-performing steel and aluminum vessels, we’re proud to partner with HII to support production of the U.S. Navy’s destroyer fleet,” said Joey D’Isernia, CEO of Eastern Shipbuilding Group, Inc. “This collaboration strengthens our national shipbuilding capability—expanding industrial capacity and enhancing our nation’s competitive advantage.”

According to USNI, HII is initially focusing its outsourcing efforts on simpler modules, saving the complex hull shapes with more sophisticated contents for its own shipbuilders to build. The grand blocks built by ESG are sealed in plastic (like a superyacht in transit), loaded out on a deck barge, then shipped west to the Ingalls yard in Mississippi. ESG says that it is continuing to invest in its government-focused yard location to support more defense work, enabling it to "construct and deliver multiple ships per year."

HII's workload-distribution efforts extend beyond the Gulf Coast. It has multiple new subcontractors working for its Newport News Shipyard to build assemblies for carriers and subs (including Austal, which is constructing modules for Virginia-class attack subs). It has also bought its own new fabrication facility in South Carolina, drawing in a new workforce for HII without requiring the workers to relocate. 

"This evolution to a more distributed shipbuilding model will expand production of the next generation [of warships]" HII said in a statement last week.