In a bid to increase capacity and accelerate production of submarines for the Navy, Huntington Ingalls Industries has agreed to acquire the assets of W International.
W International is a 500-employee strong metal fabricator that already supports the submarine industrial base with structures, modules, and assemblies.
The deal for the South Carolina-based company is expected to close in December and begin showing positive results in early 2025 toward increasing submarine production throughput, Jennifer Boykin, president of Huntington Ingalls Industries’ (HII) Virginia-based Newport News Shipbuilding segment, told reporters on Wednesday.
Boykin declined to say when her operation would meet its end of the bargain of helping the Navy get to its goal of producing two Virginia-class nuclear attack submarines annually but said the 45 acres and 480,000 square feet of manufacturing space that W International brings will enable parallel production and outfitting of submarine modules.
Submarine modules are already being built in parallel at Newport News’ 550 acres in Virginia but adding the additional space in South Carolina will mean “more modules being built at the same time, more modules being outfitted at the same time,” she said. She likened the additional space in South Carolina to having another, albeit smaller, production line that will still be picking up the pace because I’ve got more units being made at the same time.”
Modules built at the Charleston, S.C., site, which will be renamed Newport News Shipbuilding – Charleston Operations, will be delivered either to Virginia or Groton, Conn., where General Dynamics’ Electric Boat segment also builds submarine modules and does final assembly, testing and delivery.
Newport News Shipbuilding has capacity planning in place for its own operations and for Charleston where the company already knows the specific locations that Virginia and Columbia-class modules will be built, Boykin said.
“Our expectation is that as the throughput there grows, we know kind of what’s next, and really the intention is for that site in Charleston to become [the] Center of Excellence for particular modules,” she said. “So, they would do work over and over and really be able to leverage a learning curve, very much like we do here in the yard with submarine bows and sterns.”
The price of the pending acquisition was not disclosed.
A version of this story was first published by Exchange Monitor affiliate Defense Daily.
