GD Electric Boat awards HII $567M contract for Columbia-class submarine work

Washington D.C. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton speaks during the keel laying ceremony for the future USS District of Columbia. (Photo courtesy of General Dynamics Electric Boat

WASHINGTON — HII Newport News Shipbuilding today announced it received a $567 million subcontract modification from General Dynamics Electric Boat for “long-lead-time material and advance construction activities” for the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine.

“This contract modification underscores the critical manufacturing work our shipbuilders do for the U.S. Navy, as major contributors to the Columbia-class,” Brandi Smith, Newport News Shipbuilding vice president for Columbia-class construction, said in the announcement.

The Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine program, which the US Navy has repeatedly named its top acquisition priority, will replace the Pentagon’s legacy Ohio-class submarines, for a price tag estimated at $132 billion for 12 boats — a figure that includes both procurement and research and development.

General Dynamics Electric Boat, which declined to comment beyond HII’s announcement, is the program’s prime contractor while HII is a “major shipbuilding partner” and is delivering six module sections per submarine under its contract with GDEB, according to HII.

The purpose of “long-lead-time material and advance construction activities” on a shipbuilding program is to effectively give HII’s supply chain enough time to gather, build and prepare all of the components necessary to ultimately assemble the boat’s modules, and eventually, the submarine itself.

Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro last month told lawmakers the submarine program’s lead ship, the District of Columbia (SSBN-826), which has a notoriously strict timeline that leaves little room for errors, is “10 percent behind schedule.”

In follow up comments to reporters during the Sea Air Space exposition this month, Del Toro and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday clarified the delay as relative to an internal “accelerated schedule,” the Navy and General Dynamics has set for themselves, rather than the contract’s stated timeline.

“The contract delivery is 84 months. Our goal is 78 months,” said Gilday. “So, what we’re doing is giving ourselves some margin… What the secretary stated was that we’re 10 percent behind on the on the 78-month goal, the accelerated goal. Our goal is to get that back to 78.”