The Navy awarded HII [HII] a contract worth up to $913 million on January 25 for the advanced planning and long-lead-time material procurement necessary to prepare for the Refueling and Complex Overhaul (RCOH) of the USS Harry S. Truman
(CVN-75) aircraft carrier.
The award announcement on January 26 said the work will occur at HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS) facility in Virginia and it is expected to be finished by June 2026.
The contract was not competitively procured because HII is the sole builder of Navy aircraft carriers.
The Navy said $250 million in fiscal year 2023 shipbuilding funds were obligated at the time of the award and will not expire at the end of this fiscal year.
HII said the total contract covers engineering, design, material procurement and fabrication, documentation, resource forecasting and pre-overhaul inspections.
“Comprehensive planning is vitally important to the overall success of an engineering and construction project of this magnitude on the aircraft carriers that serve our nation. This contract allows us to properly plan for each step in the overhaul process, from preparing for the ship’s arrival at NNS to its re-delivery back to the Navy, so that Harry S. Truman and its sailors can continue to protect peace and prosperity around the world,” Rob Check, NNS vice president of in-service aircraft carrier programs, said in a statement.
HII delivered CVN-75 to the Navy in 1998. It will be the eighth Nimitz-class carrier to undergo RCOH.
The company said the maintenance and refueling period will represent 35 percent of all the maintenance and modernization work completed on the carrier over its 50-year service life.
In 2019, the Navy’s fiscal year 2020 budget request sought to cancel the Truman’s 2024 RCOH in order to save over $6.4 billion over the long-term and redirect spending to two new Ford-class carriers and additional capabilities like unmanned systems (Defense Daily, March 13, 2019).
Congress ultimately balked and refused retiring the carrier early, approving the dual carrier procurement and refueling of CVN-75.