Brian Bradley
NS&D Monitor
7/31/2015
The Ohio-class Replacement (OR) was one of two main drivers for General Dynamics’ 5.5 percent revenue increase from the second quarter of fiscal 2014 to the second quarter of fiscal 2015, as sales rose from $7.5 billion to $7.9 billion, company officials said this week. GD CEO Phebe Novakovic said the ballistic missile submarine program is on schedule.
“Ohio[-class Replacement] engineering and Virginia[-class submarine] construction are really the two main drivers of increased revenue,” she said Wednesday during the company’s quarterly conference call. “We are the prime and we are working on all of the ship arrangement systems, components, development, missile system compartment in order to support the start of the lead ship, which is in 2021. So we are doing very, very well by all indicators in our engineering design efforts.”
The Navy aims in 2021 to start procuring the 12 boats it plans to eventually roll out, launching the first ship in 2031. Navy officials estimate the program will cost roughly $100 billion.
Citing company policy, GD declined to release OR revenue for the second quarter of fiscal 2015 to NS&D Monitor.
Yet on July 15, the Defense Department announced that the Navy awarded a not-to-exceed, undefinitized $9.8 million contract modification for the procurement of the first article common missile compartment—which will be integrated on both ORs and the United Kingdom’s Successor-class ballistic submarine— tube-to-keel robotic weld skids to the robotic welding integrator, and engineering services for the programs.
“The contractor will be procuring hardware relating to the fixture personnel access platforms in support of the Ohio replacement program,” the announcement states.
The U.S. and U.K. navies are each contributing half of the contract dollar amount under the Foreign Military Sales program. Work is expected to complete by June 2016; $4.9 million in fiscal 2015 research and development and foreign military sales funding will be obligated at the time of award and will not expire at the end of this fiscal year.
