The deckhouse of the future destroyer USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000) is craned toward the deck of the ship to be integrated with the ship’s hull at General Dynamics Bath Iron Works. US Navy Photo
Naval Sea Systems Command will decide if the third Zumwalt-class DDG-1000 will have a steel or composite deck house by the end of the year, NAVSEA officials told USNI News on Tuesday. Read More
Avondale Shipyard in New Orleans. The yard historically built amphibious ships for the U.S. Navy. Owners are now exploring using the yard for manufacturing oil and gas infrastructure. Google Photo
Avondale Shipyards, in continuous operation since 1938, is best known in recent years for constructing Navy amphibious ships, including the Whidbey Island (LSD-41) class and the San Antonio (LPD-17) class. The yard was one of three spun off by Northrop Grumman to form Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) in 2011. The company announced it would close the yard in 2013 at the completion of the last LPD scheduled there. At its height the yard employed 6,000; currently there are about 2,200 workers.In December, however, CEO Mike Petters announced HII was exploring use of the yard for the construction of oil and liquified natural gas (LNG) infrastructure around the Gulf Coast.
USNI News spoke with Christopher D. Kastner, HII’s corporate vice president and general manager–corporate development, about the future of the yard, its workforce, and what it means for the U.S. Navy.
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Mike Petters has been the chief executive officer of Huntington Ingalls Industries since the shipbuilder was spun off from Northrop Grumman in 2011. On Thursday, Petters briefed reporters in the state of the company almost 18 months after the spin-off.
It was our first full year as a public company. We spun off in 2011 from Northrop and we did that in the end of March. We really had three quarters in 2011, but last year was the first full calendar year. As a public company there are lots of things you are doing that you weren’t doing before that you do for the very first time. There are lots of things that were done by other people before you became public. And our team did a very credible job working its way through that and we’re at the point where we’re doing it again. . . . We did that in an environment where there’s more than usual uncertainty in the economy, the business environment, and politically. . . . You couldn’t go a day without hearing someone talk about the level of uncertainty in the business climate.
For businesses in that environment it was a turbulent year. Usually aerospace and defense companies tend to be a little bit insulated from that kind of discussion. But I think the Budget Control Act of 2011 put defense contractors front-and-center in that conversation in a way that we were not before. I think as the year played out you saw different companies react to that in different ways. For us the issues were to pay close attention to our own knitting. When we spun the business from Northrop Grumman we said we have five contracts that we have to negotiate. We have five ships that we have to deliver that are troubled ships. It’s going to take us a couple of years to get those ships out of the way.
I’m happy to tell you that three of those five ships have been delivered. In 2012 we delivered LPD-23 and -24. LPD-22 was delivered at the very end of 2011. We still have two ships to deliver this year, LPD-25 and LHA-6. . . . Getting those ships delivered has been our focus. . . . We have to finish those two ships and get them delivered. In that regard execution and operations have been continuing to steadily improve. On LPD-25 and LHA-6 we had quality launches last year.
