The Navy’s new $13 billion carrier has run into trouble, and the Navy has called in some outside help.

The Navy’s most expensive shipbuilding program and the key to the country’s nuclear triad is under increasing pressure to keep to its tight schedule, and hit its budget.

The Navy is set to release plans to buy an extra fast-attack sub, another destroyer, and a handful of unmanned boats. Next step: Congress.

The move could save more than $30 billion over 25 years to invest in high-tech weapons — but Congress is sure to explode in outrage.

WASHINGTON: The Navy signed a massive, $15.2 billion contract with Huntington Ingalls Industries-Newport News Shipbuilding this evening for two more Ford-class aircraft carriers, hours after a Pentagon report listed a litany of problems with the ambitious program. The contract pays for completion of in 2028 of the USS Enterprise, which began in 2017. It also… Keep reading →

Congress is evaluating the proposal to issue a $24 billion contract for the Navy’s next two carriers, as the service looks at months of work to fix ongoing problems with the Ford-class’s first ship.

General Atomics says it is launching new, heavier planes from its EMALS carrier launcher. The launches are taking place on land, and won’t be attempted on board the $13 billion Ford for some time, however.

“Each of your crafts — electrical, pipefitting, pipe-welding, painting, your riggers… still require some human touch,” Kastner told me. “Digital tools… free the craftsman up a bit to not do the grunt work.”

The Navy hasn’t done a two-carrier deal since the Reagan buildup of the 1980s, when the Nimitz-class carriers being built, the state of the industrial base, the size of the budget, and the statutes governing shipbuilding were all very different. So how would it work today?

SAN DIEGO: Newport News Shipbuilding is reaping “huge savings” on the next Ford-class carrier, the Kennedy, through “creative” use of digital models instead of paper plans, the new head of Navy acquisition told reporters today. It’s an approach that can increase efficiency and reduce costs on all big Navy programs, said assistant secretary James “Hondo”… Keep reading →