Newport News Shipbuilding Awarded $407 Million Extension to Construction Preparation Contract for Aircraft Carrier John F. Kennedy (CVN 79)

NEWPORT NEWS, Va., March 22, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Huntington Ingalls Industries  announced today that its Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS) division has received a $407 million contract extension to a previously awarded John F. Kennedy (CVN 79) construction preparation contract. The award extends the period of performance, adds additional efforts for engineering, planning and material procurement through Oct. 31, and authorizes additional manufacturing efforts.
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NNS is performing work on CVN 79 under a construction preparation contract that allows for engineering, planning, long-lead time material procurement and initial manufacturing to begin before the full construction contract is awarded. The full contract is scheduled to be awarded later this year.
"This is a critical phase of construction on John F. Kennedy as key material procurement and production activities are taking place every day," said Mike Shawcross, NNS vice president, CVN 79 construction. "It is very important to get a good start on a ship of this magnitude and complexity, and this contract extension allows for those activities to continue and keep the ship on a path for success in meeting our customer's goals."
John F. Kennedy (CVN 79) will continue the Ford-class legacy of highly capable U.S. Navy nuclear-powered aircraft carrier ship platforms. Ford-class enhancements incorporated into the design include flight deck changes, improved weapons handling systems and a redesigned island, all resulting in increased aircraft sortie generation rates. It will also include new nuclear power plants, increased electrical power generation capacity, allowance for future technologies and reduced workload for the sailors, translating to a smaller crew size and reduced operating costs for the Navy.

Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) designs, builds and maintains nuclear and non-nuclear ships for the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard and provides after-market services for military ships around the globe. For more than a century, HII has built more ships in more ship classes than any other U.S. naval shipbuilder at its Newport News Shipbuilding and Ingalls Shipbuilding divisions. Employing about 37,000 in Virginia, Mississippi, Louisiana and California, HII also provides a wide variety of products and services to the commercial energy industry and other government customers, including the Department of Energy. For more information about HII, visit:

• HII on the web: www.huntingtoningalls.com
• HII on Facebook: www.facebook.com/HuntingtonIngallsIndustries
• HII on Twitter: twitter.com/hiindustries

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Statements in this release, other than statements of historical fact, constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed in these statements. Factors that may cause such differences include: changes in government and customer priorities and requirements (including government budgetary constraints, shifts in defense spending, and changes in customer short-range and long-range plans); our ability to obtain new contracts, estimate our costs and perform effectively; risks related to our spin-off from Northrop Grumman (including our increased costs and leverage); our ability to realize the expected benefits from consolidation of our Gulf Coast facilities; natural disasters; adverse economic conditions in the United States and globally; and other risk factors discussed in our filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. There may be other risks and uncertainties that we are unable to predict at this time or that we currently do not expect to have a material adverse effect on our business, and we undertake no obligations to update any forward-looking statements.