Newport News Shipbuilding

Public rationales for unanticipated shipbuilding costs

By Bill McMichael on February 21, 2012 Carriers, Gerald R. Ford, Navy, Newport News Shipbuilding, Photos, Ships, Shipyard

A euphemism is “the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant,” according to Merriam-Webster. An example might be couching a near-$1 billion increase in the cost of the most expensive ship ever in the most innocuous terms possible. My colleague Chris Cavas has a fine explainer story in the print version of this week’s Defense News on the soaring cost of CVN 78, the Gerald R. Ford. Chris notes that the Navy’s recently unveiled fiscal year 2013 budget request asks Congress for another $811 million atop a total price tag of…

I'm thinkin' that's Lincoln

By Dave Brown on May 31, 2011 Navy, Newport News Shipbuilding, Photos, Ships

An eagle-eyed reader named “Mike” wrote us over the weekend to make an interesting point about the Navy’s photo illustration released the day the Navy announced that the second Gerald R. Ford-class carrier will be named in honor of John F. Kennedy. His point? That ain’t no Ford. “There’s plenty of renderings of the Ford Class available for use, and with the differences between classes you might as well be showing a picture of the Forrestal.” Right you are. The carrier below JFK’s head is actually the Abraham Lincoln. The image was shot March 2 as the ship made its…

It still floats

By Bill McMichael on May 23, 2011 Carriers, Navy, Newport News Shipbuilding, Photos, Refueling and Complex Overhaul, Ships

We’ll let the picture tell the story: The carrier Theodore Roosevelt got underway Saturday for the first time in nearly two years when it left its dry dock at Newport News Shipbuilding and entered James River in southeast Virginia. The move comes in the midst of the carrier’s ongoing 39-month refueling complex overhaul, which began in August 2009 at Newport News, a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries. The work aims to add another 25 years of life to the nuclear-powered carrier, which was commissioned in 1986. The carrier was pushed by five tugs during the very short, yet very slow,…

Back where it belongs … in the water

By Bill McMichael on May 20, 2011 Carriers, Navy, Newport News Shipbuilding, Photos, Refueling and Complex Overhaul, Ships, Shipyard, Video

Twenty months in dry dock will end Saturday, May 21, when the carrier Theodore Roosevelt checks out of Dry Dock 11 at Newport News Shipbuilding (so nice to be able to use the simple name again, though we should note that the yard is a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries …) to a pierside location for the remainder of its 39-month refueling complex overhaul. The hull actually got wet again beginning on May 16, when the shipyard flooded the dock for testing. When the ship actually becomes fully afloat Saturday, the short trip to the pier will be TR’s first…

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