Newport News shipbuilding facility expands

NEWPORT NEWS

As it dangled from the end of a crane hook 140 feet in the air, workers in cherry pickers gently nudged a 6,600-pound steel beam into place Thursday atop a new submarine-production facility at Newport News Shipbuilding.

It was the last structural beam to be placed on a 65,000-square-foot hangar-like building that will house the construction of bow sections for Virginia-class submarines.

"This allows us to double the production rate," said Matt Mulherin, president of Newport News Shipbuilding, a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc.

Construction began Sept. 2 at the shipyard on the unnamed SSN 787, the 14th Virginia-class submarine. It's the first Virginia-class sub to be built on an accelerated two-a-year basis.

Early steel fabrication and foundry work for the new sub already have begun at the shipyard, Mulherin said.

The shipyard expects to begin assembling submarine bows in the new building in August. The facility will supplement operations at a 25-year-old, 200,000-square-foot submarine-assembly complex that sits next to it.

The Newport News shipyard splits construction of the nuclear-powered Virginia-class submarines with General Dynamics Electric Boat in Groton, Conn. The submarines are built in sections that are alternately fitted together at one yard and then the other.

Newport News builds the subs' bow and stern sections, encompassing everything from the crew's living quarters to torpedo tubes, vertical launch tubes and some sonar gear, said Chris Miner, Virginia-class program director at Newport News Shipbuilding.

Electric Boat builds the modules containing the subs' engine and control rooms.

Between the two shipyards, six Virginia-class submarines are now being built, Miner said. Eighteen of the subs are under contract, with full funding secured through the 14th sub. Eight already have been delivered, including the California, which is set to be commissioned in Norfolk on Oct. 29.

Asked whether he was concerned about cuts to the sub program in the deficit-reduction efforts in Washington, Miner said the Virginia-class program has a strong track record.

"We delivered the California, the eighth boat in the class, you know, eight and half months ahead of contract schedule, met our target costs, came in at budget," Miner said. "So we're demonstrating that we're certainly providing the value, and I think that puts us in position."

In its mark-up last month of the Pentagon's fiscal 2012 appropriations bill, the Senate Appropriations Committee supported the Virginia-class submarine program.

The committee was the first to consider the bill with the knowledge of the spending constraints imposed by the debt-ceiling bill, or Budget Control Act, passed in early August.

The beam placed atop the new building had a small fir tree at one end and an American flag at the other as it was raised, a custom of ironworkers whenever they complete, or "top out," the frame of a new bridge or building, according to the shipyard.

Robert McCabe, (757) 446-2327, robert.mccabe@pilotonline.com