The Navy awarded Huntington Ingalls Industries [HII] another $146 million undefinitized contract action to procure long-lead time material for the amphibious assault ship LHA-9.
The Navy first awarded HII a $187 million contract to procure long-lead time materials for LHA-9 in April (Defense Daily, May 1).
LHA-9 will be the fourth America-class amphibious assault ship and second LHA configured as the Flight 1 Amphibious Assault Ship Replacement, compared to earlier Flight 0 configuration ships.
This set of work will mostly be split among Milwaukee (42 percent), Baltimore (24 percent); and Pascagoula, Miss. (17 percent) and is expected to be finished by February 2024.
HII said this contract raises the total advance funding for LHA-9 to $350 million.
“This advance procurement contract will help protect the health of our supplier base and strengthen our efforts to efficiently modernize the nation’s amphibious fleet as we continue to build amphibious ships for the Navy,” HII Ingalls Shipbuilding president Brian Cuccias said in a statement.
Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition James Geurts told reporters last month the initial $187 million LHA-9 contract would help fund smaller subcontractors dealing with repercussions from the COVID-19 pandemic (Defense Daily, May 5).
“That’s almost exclusively going to suppliers because that’s long-lead materials and so that’ll be an immediate infusion…because most of the prime contract dollars in that are on the construction side of things,” Geurts said at the time.
Last week, the Senate Armed Services Committee’s version of the FY ’21 defense authorization bill included $250 million more than requested to accelerate LHA-9’s construction (Defense Daily, June 11).