New Ships
No 19 / 7 May 2020
U.S. Navy awarding more contracts to help economy
The US. Navy said it is continuing to increase the number of new ship contract awards
to help the U.S. economy recover from the impact of coronavirus. The U.S. Navy’s head
of acquisition Mr James Geurts said the U.S. Navy is “basically 32% ahead on contract
awards” of where its planned to be at this point in 2020. He called on U.S. naval shipbuilders
to keep introducing different working techniques to allow efficiency while also
creating some resiliency during the coronavirus lockdown. The largest U.S. shipbuilders
like Huntington Ingalls and Bath Iron Works are staggering shifts and allowing liberal
holiday and teleworking without suffering much disruption so far, company executives
said. Geurts said the lessons the country’s shipbuilding sector is learning under coronavirus
may lead to changes in long-term working. “We cannot operate the way we used to
operate, which had a lot of fragility and brittleness as we are seeing right now,” he said.
Even before coronavirus hit the U.S. economy, the Navy was looking at ways to save money
on repairing ships. This spring the Navy cancelled plans for a class-wide service-life
extension project for its Arleigh Burke-class destroyers that would have added 10 years to
their planned 35-year service lives. Not keeping the Arleigh Burke longer, and saving on
their life extension upgrades, would free up money for the Navy to buy more unmanned
systems and other smaller ships to fit into plans U.S. Defence Secretary Mark Esper is
making with Navy leadership for a smaller, faster, more stealthy fleet. To that end, the
service has been working on changing how it awards ship maintenance contracts. The
Navy is working to bundle multiple ship repair contracts together to give industry a
more predictable work schedule, allowing them to plan long-term. Awarding several ship
contracts at once will allow the shipbuilder to stockpile parts and arrange work schedules
in a more efficient and rational manner, as opposed to the one-off, last-minute contracts
the Navy has traditionally awarded for ship repair.
