General Dynamics, Huntington Ingalls to Compete for US Navy’s Flight III Arleigh Burke-class Project

The US Navy released the final request for proposal Thursday for a multi-year contract to build the Flight III Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer.

USNI News said James Geurts, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development, and acquisition, announced the release while speaking at the WEST 2018 conference.

The competition for the contract is limited to two vendors – General Dynamics – Bath Iron Works and Huntington Ingalls Industries.

“I’m very confident they will be creative in the competitive process to give us really great options to build those ships,” USNI News quoted Geurts as saying.

The  Flight III configuration and incorporates the Raytheon-built AN/SPY6(V)1 Air and Missile Defense Radar into the design. “We’ve got a mature Flight III design now which is going to give us great increases in lethality on those ships,” Geurts said.

“Now we’re looking to the shipbuilders looking at how they can build those ships as effectively and quickly as possible.”

This procurement will continue production of the DDG-51 class shipbuilding program, which so far has delivered 65 ships to the Navy.

During his remarks at WEST 2018, Geurts called the new Flight III design process a great example of how the Navy can deliver lethal capacity while working to reduce production costs.