The Sparrows Point Shipyard outside Baltimore has a history dating back to 1887.
She is one of the many neglected and underused monuments to a once great industrial power just waiting for the right people with the right vision to return.
I think we have it.
Via Howard Altman and the good people at TWZ,
…the Trump administration on Tuesday announced that Anduril is building a new two-million-square-foot facility in Baltimore designed to help speed up the production of Virginia class nuclear-powered attack submarines. The plant, dubbed Arsenal-2, will eventually produce components like torpedo tubes and spherical air flasks, which will then be sent to the two shipyards that build nuclear submarines, General Dynamics Electric Boat and Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding. Anduril’s plan to build complex submarine components is a huge leap for a company with a shipbuilding portfolio consisting of a limited number of smaller craft.
The submarine component plant announcement was made as the Navy is struggling to keep up with its goal of producing two of these boats per year amid a wider issue of construction and delivery delays across the service. However, it will be years before the first Anduril-produced components are placed on a submarine…
…
“Today’s $6.6 billion investment represents the president’s commitment to restoring American maritime dominance by constructing new vessels in communities like Baltimore and across the country,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told a group of reporters, including from TWZ, at a Tuesday morning press conference.
Those funds include a $3.7 billion investment from Anduril to build and staff the new facility, and a contract worth up to $2.9 billion awarded to Anduril by the Navy to produce the components.
…
“Today’s $6.6 billion investment represents the president’s commitment to restoring American maritime dominance by constructing new vessels in communities like Baltimore and across the country,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told a group of reporters, including from TWZ, at a Tuesday morning press conference.
Those funds include a $3.7 billion investment from Anduril to build and staff the new facility, and a contract worth up to $2.9 billion awarded to Anduril by the Navy to produce the components.
As Anduril is a privately held company, we can safely assume that none of that $2.9 billion from the government will be put towards stock buybacks.
Ahem.
Anyway, the Primes cannot get to 2.0, so we need more industrial capacity. If Anduril can bring it, bring it in style.
So much is going on.
If you are having trouble keeping up with all the good news happening in the shipbuilding space, you’re not alone.
This next bit is incredibly smart.
Before Arsenal-2 is up and running, Anduril said it plans to “manufacture critical Virginia class submarine components at a new 160,000-square-foot facility in Orange County, California, purpose-built to support key submarine construction processes and SUBSAFE-qualified production qualification [efforts].”
The Orange County facility will give Anduril “a two-year operational head start to develop and validate manufacturing methods, production workflows, and quality systems before Arsenal-2 comes online,” the company noted. “It will support prototyping and production of Virginia-class test assets and critical maritime components, including torpedo tubes, while allowing Anduril to recruit and train the early workforce on the systems and standards that will ultimately scale at Arsenal-2. Once Arsenal-2 comes online, the Orange County facility will continue supporting broader maritime manufacturing efforts across Anduril’s industrial network.”
In case you are wondering what Arsenal-1 is…
Arsenal-2 follows the development of Anduril’s Arsenal-1 plant in Ohio, first announced two years ago. That five-million-square-foot facility, once fully up and running, will be able to “produce tens of thousands of autonomous weapons systems addressing the urgent needs of the United States and our allies,” the company said at the time.
BZ to the New York Post … nice summary video.
I would be remiss if I did not point out this one aspect of this project that gives me pause: the State of Maryland has a pernicious political and regulatory environment, not to mention labor rules. I assume this has been mitigated to an acceptable level in back-room discussions. That’s my planning assumption. If not…ick.
I’m going to have to do a ‘Gulf of America’ post next week just to review with you what’s happening in Texas and Louisiana, but there is exciting “creative friction” happening all over the national security space.
Here’s another example.
As I mentioned on yesterday’s UNCLAS Read Board Podcast, you absolutely have to give a listen to the Ruthless Podcast interview with Joe Lonsdale on Rebuilding American Shipbuilding, AI, Data Centers, and America’s Industrial Boom. His comments about the Pentagon bureaucracy and the Primes are so spot on…you just need to hear it from him.
The interview starts at about the 41 minute mark.
