TIM eMagazine Vol.3 Issue 5
USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78)
is pushed by tug boats as the
ship enters Huntington Ingalls
Newport News Shipbuilding
to begin Post Shakedown
Availability.
Credits : US Navy Photo
ed in 2020, Petters said. HII’s Ingalls Shipbuilding submitted a bid for the
work but has not announced any details. Also, Congress and the Pentagon
are considering a multi-year plan for buying more San Antonio-class am-
phibious warship, Petters said.
In April, USNI News reported that the Navy plans to buy 13 Flight II San
Antonio-class transport dock landing ships, which HII builds at its Pasca-
goula, Miss., shipyard.
“Is this an indication of a new sustained level for the business, or is this
just going to be the rat in the snake where we have a lump in the business
that we’re going work over the next five to ten years?” Petters said. “The
job right now is to get the lump under contract, and then we go figure out
how do we keep it at that sustained level.”
When considering both the FY 2018 and FY 2019 Department of De-
fense budget requests and appropriations, this two-year period increased
the amount of money spent on shipbuilding to a point HII leadership is
confidently predicting annual revenue growth of at least 3 percent for the
next several years.
“This two-year window is really special for shipbuilding. There’s a big
question, really, about what happens in ’20? Sequestration kicks back in;
what happens after that?” Petters said. “Our view is that a lot of the work
we’re going to get under contract before ‘20 puts us in a pretty unique
place.”
If the same type of spending continues in 2020, 2021 and later years,
then the business will be even better, Petters said. But just because HII is
bidding on ship programs, including those already built by the company,
doesn’t mean the Navy will offer new awards to the shipbuilder.
The Navy’s bidding process for its anticipated purchase of 10 Flight III
Arleigh Burke guided-missile destroyers is being run differently than be-
fore, which is why HII officials are optimistic but yet also somewhat unsure
about how the contract awards will shake out.
“We had to price several different schedules and quantities of ships,”
said Chris Kastner, HII chief financial officer. “For us, it created a circum-
stance in the proposal, basically, if you want the ships faster, there’s an
opportunity to do that.”
Meanwhile, HII has kept the cost of the future USS John F. Kennedy
(CVN-79) within expectations, and the company expects launch will
occur by the end of 2019, which is ahead of schedule. The company has a
proposal to build the next two carriers under one contract, which he said
would further reduce costs because of more efficient use of labor and
bulk buys of building materials.
“We are not across the goal line, and we’ve been around long enough
to know you do not get points until you’re across the goal line,” Petters
said. “As far as the longer-term view, I’m encouraged to think that we’ll be
able to get contracts for all of these ships over the next year to 18 months,
and that will set the shipbuilding piece of our business up for the next five
to 10 years. I’m very encouraged about that.”
https://news.usni.org/
Launch of Frank E. Petersen,
Jr. (DDG-121)
Credits : HII Photo
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