USNI News:
Huntington Ingalls Industries won an award to build the first of a new configuration of Arleigh Burke guided missile destroyers, according to a Tuesday Pentagon contract announcement.
HII’s Mississippi Ingalls Shipbuilding is now set to construct the first Flight III DDG that will be built around an air search radar that promises to be 30 times more powerful that the current crop of AN/SPY-1D(V) and built from the start for complex ballistic missile defense missions.
“We have proven our success in the DDG-51 class over the past 30 years, and our shipbuilders are ready now to build the first Flight III ship,” Ingalls Shipbuilding President Brian Cuccias said in a Tuesday statement from the company.
“These ships are in high demand, and this Flight III ship will be the most capable DDG-51-class ship ever built.”
The award of the first Flight III -– named for Marine Capt. Jack H. Lucas — comes as the service has been in negotiations for more than a year with HII and Bath over the engineering change proposals to modify the current Flight IIA design to accommodate the Raytheon-built AN/SPY-6 radar with the necessary power, cooling and an adequate margin for growth for future systems…
