Builder wins $14b deal for 8 subs

Electric Boat says the work will keep it busy for a decade

In this 2004 photo, the USS Virginia returns to Electric Boat's shipyard in Groton, Conn. The yard will soon be busy building more submarines. (Jack Sauer/Associated Press/File)

WASHINGTON - The Navy yesterday awarded a $14 billion contract to General Dynamics to build eight attack submarines, promising a stable workload at the company's Electric Boat shipyard in Groton, Conn., and its fabrication facility in Quonset Point, R.I., for at least a decade.

Despite the price tag, the deal for the Virginia class submarines, the largest in the history of the submarine force, was hailed by Navy leaders as a model of efficiency.

Officials said the Navy will save an estimated $4 billion by purchasing multiple subs under a single contract and the ability to work on two subs per year starting in 2011 - a longstanding goal - will spread overhead costs over multiple vessels. The Navy also modified the design, which it says will speed up construction of each vessel from 84 months to 60 months.

"This contract is remarkable for two reasons: First, it transitions us to building two submarines per year, and second, it achieves our cost-reduction goal," Rear Admiral William H. Hilarides, the Navy's top submarine procurement officer, told reporters yesterday at the Pentagon.

The announcement was also wel come news for General Dynamics, which employs about 10,500 people between its shipyard in Groton and its hull-fabrication plant about 50 miles to the east along Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island.

The company, headquartered in Falls Church, Va., is the prime contractor on the submarine project and is splitting the construction evenly between its New England facilities and its partner's - a Northrop Grumman shipyard in Newport News, Va.

"Thousands of jobs in Groton, Quonset Point, and Newport News are associated with this contract," said Robert A. Hamilton, a spokesman for Electric Boat. "New submarine construction makes up the majority of Electric Boat's workload, and this will provide us with new construction work for at least the next 10 years."

The multi-year deal will bring the new class of attack subs to a total of 18.

Five have been completed, and five more are under construction.

The most recent addition to the class, the USS New Hampshire, was built by Electric Boat and commissioned by the Navy in October.

Two Virginia-class subs, USS Virginia and USS Hawaii, are currently operational in the Western Hemisphere.

The new contract would provide enough funding to cover one submarine in 2009, one in 2010, and two per year in 2011, 2012, and 2013; all eight would be completed by 2019.

The Navy and others insisted the project is about far more than jobs, noting that the Virginia class is the first to be designed since the end of the Cold War, and "consequently is designed so that it could operate efficiently in the shallows . . . to the deep ocean," said Rear Admiral Cecil D. Haney, director of the submarine division at Navy headquarters.

The subs are 377 feet long, displace about 7,800 tons when submerged, and have a crew of 134, including 14 officers and 120 enlisted sailors, according to informational sheets provided by the Navy.

Among their missions, they seek out and destroy enemy submarines and warships, launch Tomahawk cruise missiles at targets on shore, clandestinely deliver special operations forces, and conduct reconnaissance missions.

Bryan Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com.