CHARLESTON, SC -- On a spring day in South Carolina, shipyard workers at HII's newly acquired facility here were laying the groundwork for submarine modules and putting the finishing touches on an initial aircraft carrier "structural unit" that will soon become part of future Ford-class aircraft carrier Doris Miller (CVN-81).
Fewer than 60 days have passed since HII took over this 480,000 square foot metal fabrication facility from previous owner W International, and the team has just finished building this first carrier unit, which was loaded onto a truck on Friday and driven some 400 miles to HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia for installation on CVN-81.
For the company, the acquisition of this facility -- now dubbed Newport News Shipbuilding-Charleston Operations -- is part of a two-pronged strategy to boost shipbuilding capacity: outsourcing a larger share of construction work to auxiliary facilities and moving production to locations where there is already available labor.
According to Matt Needy, vice president and general manager of the site, the presence of “ready-made” shipbuilding equipment and almost 500 trade workers already accustomed to metal fabrication work drove HII’s acquisition and have allowed the site to begin carrier and submarine work almost immediately.
“We looked, probably starting more than a year ago, up and down the East Coast at different facilities, different shuttered shipyards down the Gulf Coast to see where could we most rapidly expand capacity and throughput to support the ships that we're building today,” Needy told reporters during a March 12 tour of the site.
“This facility, because of the buildings, because of the people that are here, because of the pipelines, because of the state and regional and educational relationships that we already had the foundation of [here], this became really just the obvious choice to most rapidly expand capacity and throughput for Newport News,” he continued.
The facility has been the beneficiary of Navy investments, which helped W International upgrade it for modern shipbuilding work during the company’s five-year stint as the site owner.
Though W International took on defense contracts, including a partnership with Newport News to produce ship components, problems soon emerged. Newport News reportedly canceled its contracts with the company in 2022. Later in 2023, the Justice Department announced an investigation into W International’s potential misuse of federal funds.
However, investments from the former owner and from the Navy have yielded a “strong foundation” for HII to build on, Needy said. HII also inherited minimal legacy work from the former owner, he added, allowing Navy shipbuilding to begin right away following the ownership change.
Now, HII plans for the site to reach full capacity by 2027 or 2028, Needy said, producing carrier structural units and building and outfitting submarine modules designed to slot into the pressure hulls of Columbia- and Virginia-class vessels.
“The things that could help us most get submarines and aircraft carriers to the fleet faster are specific modules that would unburden Newport News proper, and we could dedicate and bring that work down to a workforce that was capable of doing that work,” Needy said.
For both submarine programs, the facility will build habitability modules containing various crew living spaces like the galley in addition to auxiliary machine room modules housing equipment like the pumps that enable the vessels to submerge and surface. Additionally, it will build weapons modules that house torpedoes and other combat capabilities exclusively for the Virginia program.
Once completed, these modules will be loaded onto barges -- the site has easy access to the Cooper River, connecting it to a network of intercoastal waterways -- or onto trucks for transport up the East Coast to Newport News, Needy said.
Demand for labor
Back at Newport News Shipbuilding -- the sole builder of the Navy’s nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and one of two yards that collaboratively produces nuclear-powered submarines -- and at shipbuilding sites across the country, industry is struggling to deliver vessels at the Navy’s desired pace.
After years of consolidation and relatively modest demand for warships, the maritime industrial base is now facing heightened demand along with supply chain issues and labor shortages exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Demand is especially high for Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines and Virginia-class fast-attack boats. A poster on the wall in one of the Charleston facility buildings reads “one + two + sustainment all by 2028” in reference to the Navy’s desire for industry to deliver one new Columbia and two new Virginia boats annually by 2028, all while keeping pace with growing fleet sustainment needs.
Together with General Dynamics Electric Boat, the other U.S. submarine producer, HII must accelerate production to meet this goal.
According to Navy estimates, the industrial base will need to hire 25,000 new skilled trade workers annually for the next 10 years to meet production and sustainment needs. Despite substantial recruiting and training investments from the government and industry, skilled trade workers -- like welders, machinists and pipefitters -- are still hard to come by.
During an October 2024 earnings call, HII CEO Chris Kastner said the company was altering its hiring approach to focus on experienced employees, pointing to challenges getting a green workforce up to speed. During the following call in February 2025, Kastner said the company will look to increase outsourcing by 30% in the coming year in a bid to boost production throughput by 20%.
According to Needy, expanding shipbuilding work to the Charleston area allows HII to take pressure off the Newport News region’s already-strained workforce and supply chain, and lets the company tap a new labor pool with experience and interest in the trades.
“Newport News is the largest industrial employer in the state of Virginia, and we have a lot of suppliers around that Newport News region,” Needy said. “Quite frankly, we said we needed to move out of the region to really bring the work to a different workforce, so that we didn't put further strain on the supply base or the other public yards or Newport News proper in Virginia.”
Groton, CT-based General Dynamics Electric Boat is pursuing a similar outsourcing strategy, partnering with companies like Austal USA which is now building submarine modules at its Alabama-based yard.
At the Charleston facility, HII has taken care to retain the majority of the yard’s roughly 500 employees who had previously worked for W International. About 460-475 of these personnel, consisting of welders, machinists and other skilled trade workers, have agreed to stay on at the yard, Needy said.
Under W International, the yard established a training center in 2021 that has now graduated about 1,200 students from a 12-week curriculum preparing them for work at the yard, according to Mark Schmitt, director of plant services at the Charleston facility.
Upskilling
With 20 weld booths and space for structural fitter lessons, the training center also serves as an area employees can return to for upskilling. During the March 12 tour, 18-year-old Ashanti Grant was in the training center completing a welding certification for new work at the yard.
Grant said he has been working as a welder at the facility for about eight months and initially began the 12-week introductory curriculum after hearing about the opportunity during a job fair at nearby Goose Creek High School.
The facility has established a connection with multiple local high schools, according to Schmitt, who said these schools partnered with W International and now HII to teach shipyard welding techniques in their shop classes.
With plans to scale up production of carrier units and submarine modules, HII will look to increase this workforce by “hundreds” in the coming years, Needy told reporters.
Unlike the carrier structural units, the submarine modules will be outfitted with items like doors and bedframes. Adding these features will require HII to expand the yard’s workforce to include additional trades like sheet metal workers, electricians, painters and insulators, Needy said.
“Right now, we're basically getting the facility up to full [capacity] with the fitting and welding [and] a lot of structural work. But as we grow into the outfitting trades over the next two to three years, we’re going to add literally hundreds of folks,” he said.