Huntington Ingalls Industries [HII] appointed Brandi Smith program director of the Columbia-class submarine program at the company’s Newport News Shipbuilding division, the shipbuilding subcontractor for the Navy’s next nuclear-armed ballistic-missile submarine fleet announced Monday.
There was no incumbent
Columbia program director, an HII spokesperson said by email Tuesday. The company only recently created the job for Smith, who in her new role is responsible “for leading the company’s construction activities” on Columbia, “as well as maintaining strong relationships with General Dynamics Electric Boat and Navy customers.”
Smith was most recently HII’s director of quality control, in which role she was “responsible for all nuclear, non-nuclear, and non-destructive testing inspectors,” the company wrote in a press release. Smith will report to Jason Ward, Newport News vice president for Columbia-class submarine construction.
HII promoted Smith with Columbia prime General Dynamics [GD] Electric Boat buckling down to preserve its margins on the first Columbia boat after subcontractor BWXT Technologies [BWXT] improperly welded 12 missile tubes intended for use on the next-generation subs. In December, Vice Adm. Johnny Wolfe, the Navy’s director of strategic systems programs, said GD still had margin to deliver the first Columbia by 2031.
The Navy plans to replace 14 Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarines with 12 Columbia-class boats beginning in 2031. General Dynamics Electric Boat is the prime contractor for the new fleet, which will be built at the company’s shipyards in Groton, Conn.
Like the Ohio fleet, Columbia will carry Trident II-D5 missiles made by Lockheed Martin [LMT] and tipped with a mixture of W88 and W76 nuclear warheads provided by the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). According to the civilian agency, a “small” number of the W76 warheads will be of the low-yield W76-2 variety.
The NNSA finished building the W76-2 warheads in fiscal year 2019, agency Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty said last week during a breakfast speech in Washington. Congress authorized the NNSA to continue delivering the weapons to the Navy this year.