Posted on July 25, 2022
The Navy on Friday announced contract awards to HII’s Ingalls Shipbuilding and General Dynamics’ Bath Iron Works to work on the design and engineering of the service’s next-generation guided-missile destroyer, also known as DDG(X).
The award is for the “shipbuilder engineering and design analysis in order to produce design products in support of the Guided Missile Destroyer (DDG(X)) preliminary design and contract design,” according to the July 22 Defense Department contract announcement.
“The specific contract award amounts for these requirements is considered source-selection sensitive information and will not be made public at this time,” the announcement reads.
The Senate and the Navy are pushing for a teaming arrangement between Ingalls and BIW, which both build the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, to build DDG(X), USNI News reported this week.
“We are excited to continue on this path with our Navy and industry partners,” Kari Wilkinson, the president of Ingalls, said in an HII news release. “It provides us a tremendous opportunity to bring best practices and innovation from our experienced engineering team to the design of this important future surface combatant.”
DDG(X) is slated to succeed the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers and the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers.
“Bath Iron Works is eager to bring our cutting edge engineering and design expertise, now applied to the DDG 51 program, to the next generation of large surface combatants,” Chuck Krugh, the president of BIW, said in a company news release. “The opportunity to work alongside HII and our industry partners to meet the Navy’s needs for capability, schedule and cost will result in synergies that build on other extremely successful Navy construction programs.”
The Navy earlier this year disclosed plans to use the combat system from the Flight III Arleigh Burkes and the propulsion system from the Zumwalt-class destroyers for the future DDG(X). The service wants to field directed energy and hypersonic weapons on the next-generation destroyer.
The Friday contract announcement notes the awards were not issued through a “full and open competition.”
