Navy and shipyard sign $745 million Enterprise contract
June 29, 2013|By Michael Welles Shapiro
What does it cost to defuel and take apart one of the Navy's most famed ships?
About $750 million, it turns out.
The Navy and Huntington Ingalls Industries came to terms on a contract for the inactivation of the USS Enterprise. The cost-plus-incentive fee contract allows for the ultimate price tag to be adjusted based on a formula under which the Navy and the shipbuilder would both share some of the burden of cost overruns.
The work will be done at Newport News Shipbuilder, the sole builder of U.S. aircraft carriers, which built the Big E and has handled its spent nuclear fuel rods in the past.
The 51-year-old Enterprise is the country's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, and as a result the contract is the first inactivation of such a ship.
"Although Newport News Shipbuilding has defueled and refueled many ships, including Enterprise, this is the first inactivation of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier," said Chris Miner, the shipyard's vice president, of in-service aircraft carrier programs.
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