Key Points
- The U.S. Navy awarded General Dynamics Electric Boat and Huntington Ingalls Industries a combined $76.6 billion for Block VI Virginia-class and Build II Columbia-class submarines.
- The package includes $42.1 billion for nine Virginia-class attack submarines and $29.5 billion for five Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines, with work continuing through July 2038.
The U.S. Navy has committed $76.6 billion to build the next generation of America’s underwater nuclear deterrent, splitting the money between two very different classes of submarine that will define the sea-based side of U.S. military power for decades.
The Department of War confirmed that General Dynamics Electric Boat, based in Groton, Connecticut, and Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding division in Virginia jointly received incentive contract modifications on July 29, 2026, covering construction of nine new Virginia-class fast attack submarines, designated SSN 814 through 822 and known within the program as Block VI, along with material for a tenth submarine, and five new Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines, designated SSBN 828 through 832 and known as Build II. The Pentagon’s own contract notice put the Virginia-class portion at $42.1 billion, and the Columbia-class portion adds another $29.5 billion, with roughly $5 billion more earmarked for shipbuilder workforce and productivity improvements, bringing the combined package to approximately $76.6 billion.
Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao highlighted the Virginia-class figure directly in a post on X the same day the awards were announced.
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“$42.1B. Nine Virginia-class fast attack submarines. Unmatched lethality,” Cao said.
The two submarine classes serve entirely different roles within the Navy’s undersea fleet. A Virginia-class submarine is a fast attack boat built to hunt enemy ships and submarines, gather intelligence, and launch cruise missiles, giving commanders a flexible, stealthy platform for a wide range of combat and surveillance missions. A Columbia-class submarine is a far larger vessel purpose-built to carry the nuclear missiles that make up the sea-based leg of America’s nuclear deterrent, the portion of the country’s nuclear arsenal that stays hidden and mobile beneath the ocean rather than sitting in a fixed silo or aboard a bomber, a survivability advantage defense planners consider essential to deterring a first strike from a nuclear-armed adversary.
Work under the combined award will spread across the country, with 30 percent performed in Groton, Connecticut, 22 percent in Newport News, Virginia, 18 percent at Quonset Point, Rhode Island, and smaller shares scattered across facilities in California, Maryland, South Carolina, Virginia, Minnesota, and Arizona, reflecting how deeply the submarine supply chain reaches into the broader American manufacturing base beyond the two primary shipyards. The Pentagon expects the work to continue until July 2038, a timeline stretching more than a decade into the future that underscores just how long modern nuclear submarine construction takes from contract signature to finished vessel.
The funding behind the award draws from several different budget years and accounts, with the largest share, 54 percent, coming from Fiscal Year 2026 shipbuilding funds, followed by 32 percent from Fiscal Year 2025 shipbuilding funds, 11 percent from a fund supporting the broader maritime industrial base, and smaller contributions from a national sea-based deterrence fund and Fiscal Year 2024 shipbuilding money. That layered funding structure reflects how Congress has spread submarine investment across multiple budget cycles rather than covering the entire program in a single year, a common approach for defense programs whose total cost stretches across more than a decade.
Congress authorized the Block VI Virginia-class submarines back in 2023, and lawmakers, including Connecticut Representative Joe Courtney, publicly pressed the Pentagon for months to finalize the contract after the award slipped roughly three years behind its original schedule, arguing the delay was creating uncertainty for suppliers and shipbuilders who depend on long-lead planning to produce the components and modules submarine construction requires, according to Breaking Defense‘s reporting on the award. That broader delay reflects challenges the American submarine industrial base has faced in recent years, as both Electric Boat and Newport News Shipbuilding have worked to expand their workforces and production capacity fast enough to keep pace with the Navy’s ambitions for both the Virginia and Columbia programs running simultaneously.
Vice Admiral Robert Gaucher, the Pentagon’s top submarine program official, framed the combined award as a long-term commitment to the entire submarine industrial base rather than a single program milestone. Newport News Shipbuilding will serve as the delivery yard for six of the nine new Virginia-class submarines and will also build six module sections for each Columbia-class submarine as part of the broader award, according to a statement from HII, the shipbuilder’s parent company. To date, the two shipyards have jointly delivered 26 Virginia-class submarines to the Navy, giving the program a lengthy production track record even as this latest contract pushes the total planned fleet further into the future.
Cao followed with a separate post addressing the Columbia-class portion of the award, framing it in similarly blunt terms.
“$29.5B. Five Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines. Uncontested deterrence,” Cao said.
The full Columbia-class program is expected to eventually include 12 submarines at an estimated total cost of roughly $128 billion, according to Navy budget estimates, with the lead vessel, District of Columbia, scheduled to deliver to the Navy by March 2029 and the second submarine, Wisconsin, following in April 2030. Those submarines will eventually replace the aging Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines currently carrying that portion of America’s nuclear deterrent, a replacement the Navy has described as one of its highest acquisition priorities given how central the submarine fleet’s survivability is to the broader logic of nuclear deterrence.
Cao’s framing of the Virginia-class award as delivering unmatched lethality captures the political message the Navy clearly wants attached to this announcement, but the more consequential story sits in the mechanics behind the full $76.6 billion package, a decade-plus construction timeline, a submarine industrial base racing to expand fast enough to deliver two entirely different classes of nuclear-powered vessels on overlapping schedules, and tens of billions of dollars now locked in across facilities from Connecticut to Arizona.
