HII’s Ingalls Shipbuilding has been awarded $9.6 billion in contracts to build four amphibious warships, according to a Tuesday announcement from the Pentagon.
A $5.79 billion award funds the detailed design and construction of three Flight II San Antonio-class amphibious warships – LPD-33, LPD-34 and LPD35. A second $3.8 bill award funds the advanced procurement and detailed design and construction for the future big deck amphib Helmand Province (LHA-10), according to the contract announcement.
“We greatly appreciate the stability that this award provides to all Ingalls shipbuilders and our surrounding communities,” Ingalls president Kari Wilkinson said in a statement to USNI News.
“It is an honor to continue our support of the joint Navy and Marine Corps mission to meet the minimum 31 amphibious ship requirement.”
Last month, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro notified Congress of the pending contract award in a letter to Congress.
The contract award is the official end to the Navy’s strategic pause in building San Antonio-class warships after the Pentagon sought to stop the line as part of the Fiscal Year 2023 budget submission after an amphibious study overseen by Del Toro.
The new award comes following an effort from the Marines and members of Congress to push the Pentagon and the Navy to commit to a minimum of 31 amphibious warships to meet the Marine Corps’ minimum amphibious lift requirement.
As of Tuesday, the Navy had 32 amphibious warships in its inventory, Marine Lt. Gen. Eric Austin, deputy commandant for combat development and integration, told reporters after the contract award.
“What this multi-ship procurement allows us to do is retire some of the older ships as we replace them in the out years and maintain that 31 amphibious ship floor… that’s 10 big deck amphibs and 21 LPDs. [That] is where we think we need to sustain our floor of amphibs,” Austin said.
“It essentially is a one in, one out… that’s what we’re going to have to do. Congress has asked us to report annually to make sure we’re maintaining that right balance for amphibs.”
The new amphibs will be built on a predictable basis allowing Ingalls to sustain a workforce to build the ships with more predictability, said Tom Rivers, the executive director for amphibious, auxiliary and sealift programs and the Navy’s program executive office ships.
“In our negotiations with Huntington Ingalls, we wanted to make sure that we had the labor force to build these ships on the sequence that we’re looking to do, which is a two-per-year cadence on the LPDs and a four-year cadence on the LHA,” Rivers told reporters.
Rivers said the structure of the multi-year deal saved the Navy roughly $901 million for the four ships mostly due to economics of scale in material purchases.
The new contracts follow the delivery of San Antonio USS Richard M. McCool Jr. (LPD-29) to the Navy earlier this year. Richard M. McCool Jr. (LPD-29) will be the first LPD to feature a variant of the AN/SPY-6 air and missile defense radar.
Ingalls is currently building America LHAs Bougainville (LHA-8) and Fallujah (LHA-9) and San Antonio Flight IIs Harrisburg (LPD-30), Pittsburgh (LPD-31) and Philadelphia (LPD-32).
