HII Wins Aircraft Carrier Advanced Planning Contract

Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) was awarded a $224 million modification to an existing contract for advanced planning of the refueling and complex overhaul (RCOH) of the aircraft carrier USS George Washington (CVN 73). The work will be performed at the company's Newport News Shipbuilding division.

The contract funds continued planning work for the RCOH as well as the procurement of long-lead materials, including items such as pumps, breakers, valves and steel to support fabrication of structural units.

"The company has worked closely with our Navy partners, performing ship checks and selected planning tasks associated with the defueling of the ship," said Chris Miner, Newport News Shipbuilding's vice president, in-service aircraft carrier programs. "This contract award allows us to move beyond defueling and plan all the work associated with a full RCOH, which underscores the Navy's continued commitment to ensuring this great national asset remains in the fleet and operational for another 25 years."

Newport News has completed RCOH work on the first four Nimitz-class ships, and work on the fifth ship, USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72), is about 60 percent complete and on track to deliver in the fourth quarter of 2016.

An RCOH is a full recapitalization of the ship that represents greater than 35 percent of all maintenance and modernization in an aircraft carrier's 50-year service life. Work includes the refueling of the ship's reactors, as well as extensive modernization work to more than 2,300 compartments, 600 tanks and hundreds of distributive systems. In addition, major upgrades are made to the ship's food service areas, aircraft launch and recovery systems, combat systems and the ship's island. The support of about 3,700 shipbuilders from all areas of the company, including engineering, planning, supply chain, the shops and trades is required to successfully accomplish an RCOH.