The Wall Street Journal quotes Brent Scowcroft Center Nonresident Senior Fellow for Defense James Hasik on the US Navy’s largest shipbuilder announcing it will likely cut at least 1,500 staff over the next 18 months:
General Dynamics builds parts of the submarines at its shipyards in Connecticut and Rhode Island while Huntington Ingalls’ work is focused at Newport News. Each company constructs about one-half of each ship, with sections sent between them by barge for final assembly, alternating on which company actually launches them.
“There’s nothing obviously efficient about building only half a submarine in Connecticut, and having someone else build the other half in Virginia. So why share?” said James Hasik at the Atlantic Council, a think tank.