Austal’s Alabama shipyard impresses US Navy brass as defence work grows

The US Navy’s top-ranking officer has endorsed Austal’s US shipyard as the Australian group seeks to win more work from a fast-growing US defence budget.

A visit to the Mobile, Alabama yard by Admiral Daryl Caudle appears to have made an impression, with the US Navy’s chief of naval operations calling out Austal’s use of modular shipbuilding, particularly to help speed up deliveries of the navy’s new nuclear submarines.

The technique provides for major pieces of a vessel to be assembled with as many of its internal components as possible, then the modules are combined to form the ship.

The process makes it easier for multiple shipyards to contribute to a specific vessel, reducing the risk of manufacturing delays.

Austal and its prime submarine contracting partner, General Dynamics Electric Boat, have invested heavily in the Alabama yard to enable it to turn out command deck and electronic deck modules for the US Navy’s Virginia and Columbia-class nuclear submarines.

Modular construction is not new, but Admiral Caudle cited Austal USA and the submarine program as to how it may be expanded across other shipbuilding programs for the US Navy to increase efficiency.

“I was just down on the Gulf Coast to see how they build three modules there for (the) Virginia class and they’re going to start building for Columbia as well,” Admiral Caudle told a US submarine conference last week, as reported by defence industry newsletter TWZ.

“One of the main modules they build is the entire command and control suite for Virginia class,” he said.

“And when you see that module . . . they had one that was almost ready to be shipped up to Quonset Point. It’s like walking into a Virginia class submarine control room.

“The thing is completely done, built, and the only thing that’s missing is really the computers that we put in for the sonar and fire control system.”

Admiral Caudle said Austal’s construction of the modules had “offloaded hundreds of thousands of man-hours” from Electric Boat, enabling it to deploy labour into other work.

“There’s going to have to be some paradigm shifts with things like modularity,” he said.

“We are, I think, at just the tip of the iceberg on how we’re starting to utilize modularity more effectively.”

Austal is sitting on more than $15 billion of orders, the lion’s share in the US, where it has also built surface vessels for the US and Navy and the US Coastguard. It is in line for a major share of $20b of contracts to build a Japanese-designed new frigate for the Royal Australian Navy.

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