Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) has awarded a subcontract to Northrop Grumman for supply of the machinery control system (MCS) in support of the US Navy’s America-class large-deck amphibious assault ship, USS Tripoli (LHA 7).
Earlier in 2012, HII was awarded a $2.38bn fixed-price-incentive contract by the US Navy to design and construct the assault vessel.
Under the $50.6m sub-contract, Northrop will deliver 56 data acquisition units, 27 workstations and 1,125 fire sensors for America-class ship.
Northrop Grumman Maritime Systems vice president Bill Hannon said: "This order affirms our customer’s confidence in our ability to design, integrate, test and deliver some of the navy’s most sophisticated distributed control technology on platforms that have significantly reduced the navy’s total ownership costs."
MCS is designed to control major shipboard systems such as the highly automated propulsion, electric plant and fuel fill systems for the navy’s LHA 7 amphibious assault ship.
Powered by a fuel-efficient gas turbine propulsion system, the 844ft-long and 106ft-wide USS Tripoli, along with USS America (LHA 6), form the first two ships of the new America-class of amphibious assault ships.
The 44,971t vessel can transport a marine expeditionary unit (MEU) using helicopters and can carry a crew of 1,059 as well as marine helicopters, MV22 Osprey tilt rotor aircraft and F35B Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) aircraft.
Work will be carried out in Charlottesville, Virginia, US, from 2014-2016, while integration on the LHA-7 will be carried out at HII’s facility in Pascagoula, Mississippi.
The LHA 7 is scheduled to be delivered to the US Navy in 2018.
Image: Illustration of US Navy’s America-class ship, USS Tripoli. Photo: US Navy photo illustration.
