The Navy last week awarded General Dynamics (GD) Electric Boat a contract worth $76.6 billion to build nine Virginia-class Block VI attack submarines (SSNs) and five Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) after years of delays.
The Navy has been negotiating this deal with prime contractor Electric Boat and HII for up to 10 Block VI SSNs as well as a contract for another five Columbia-class SSBNs for years. Congress first authorized the Navy to award this contract in the fiscal year 2024 defense authorization act and they were expected to be procured for the funding period of fiscal 2024 to 2028.
General Dynamics is the prime contractor but Electric Boat and HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding split production on each attack and nuclear ballistic missile submarine.
The award is split into $42.1 billion for Virginia-class submarines SSN-814 to 822, $29.5 billion for Columbia-class submarines SSBN-828 to 832, and $5 billion for shipyard enhancements. According to a Navy statement, the Virginia-class submarines cover fiscal years 2025 to 2029.
With this contract, the Navy has seven Columbia-class submarines under contract, 26 operational Virginia-class boats and 23 more SSNs set to be built.
Beyond the 14 submarines, the award includes a 10th shipset of SSN material and investments in shipbuilder productivity efforts.
“The Block VI award includes previously announced material awards (including long-lead-time material and economic ordering quantity material). The announcement also includes previously awarded investments in shipbuilder productivity efforts,” the Navy announcement said.
The work is expected to run through July 2038.
When asked about the reports of Pentagon approval for Block VI boats during GD’s second quarter earnings call on Wednesday morning, Chairwoman and CEO Phebe Novakovic said they were “told that these contracts will be coming soon.”
Novakovic said she thinks “the customer and the submarine industrial base are aligned around the need for getting these contracts out, particularly to stabilize the industrial base and to ensure that we continue to have long lead material for these contracted in advance of these long-term development programs.”
“We’re confident that when they come out, I think it will be as we expected and very welcomed by the supply chain in particular,” Novakovic continued.
Block VI submarines are the second group of boats, after Block V, to feature the new middle section Virginia Payload Module (VPM) that adds four large diameter payload tubes. The VPM will make each submarine capable of fielding up to 28 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles.
In recent years leading up to this award, the Pentagon awarded GD related contract work preparing for the Block VI submarine production.
In March 2025, the Navy awarded the company a contract modification worth up to $1.1 billion for long lead time material for Block VI boats, in October 2024 it awarded Electric Boat a not-to-exceed $350 million contract action for long lead material for Block VI submarines, and in August 2024 it awarded Electric Boat a $1.3 billion contract modification for economic ordering quantity material in support of Block VI submarines.
The new contract announcement said the work will be split between 30% at Electric Boat’s Groton, Conn., facility, 22% at HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding shipyard in Virginia, 18% at Electric Boat’s Quonset Point, R.I., facility, and several other locations. The announcement listed about $12 billion obligated from several accounts at the time of award.
In March, Mark Rayha, president of Electric Boat, told reporters the government and industry were close but it was probably still “just a few months out.”
That same day, Duffey told Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) during a House Armed Services Committee hearing that DoD was “very close” on closing the contract.
In a May earnings call, HII CEO Chris Kastner and President of Newport News Shipbuilding Kari Wilkinson said they expected the Block VI contract as well as the next Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine contract to be awarded in the second quarter of this year.
The submarine program is currently led by the new office of the Direct Reporting Program Manager (DRPM) for submarines. The leaders of both companies in March noted DoD setting up the DRPM was possibly a factor in some of the contracting delays as the Pentagon was working to finalize its organizational structure. The Senate confirmed Vice Adm. Robert Gaucher to be the DRPM for submarines in January.
Earlier this month, Bill Toti, performing the duties of Under Secretary of the Navy, said part of the push to move submarines under the DRPM model where the program official responds directly to Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg was to protect funding from being harvested and used for other program emergencies.
Exchange Monitor affiliate Defense Daily first published a version of this story.