HII's Ingalls Shipbuilding division has installed the first grand blocks built by off-site fabrication partners for the Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyer Thad Cochran (DDG 135), as part of the shipyard's distributed shipbuilding initiative.
The three units were fabricated by Gulf Copper, Galveston, Texas, and Eastern Shipbuilding, Panama City, Fla., and delivered to Ingalls before the ship's keel authentication in October 2025. According to HII, the early deliveries allowed work to begin sooner in the ship's construction sequence.
"This milestone reflects the strength of our partner network and the efficiencies of distributed shipbuilding for our destroyer production line," Ingalls Shipbuilding president Brian Blanchette said in a statement. "The DDG 135 pilot is proof that we can expand capacity across the program while allowing our skilled Ingalls shipbuilders to focus on final assembly, integration and testing."
Ingalls began developing its distributed shipbuilding network in 2023 through a qualification process that included technical capability assessments, workforce reviews, quality system verification and coordination with the Navy's Supervisor of Shipbuilding, Conversion and Repair Gulf Coast. According to HII, partner shipyards are integrated into the company's quality and material control systems.
The effort has since expanded to additional Flight III destroyers. HII said five partner companies are fabricating 32 structural and pre-outfitted units for John F. Lehman (DDG 137) and 37 units for Telesforo Trinidad (DDG 139). The first two units for DDG 137 have already been delivered to Ingalls ahead of the ship's July 1 fabrication start.
"Early deliveries for DDG 137 units show the model is not only repeatable but scalable," Blanchette said. "Pushing work outside yard increases capacity. We have more hands working on more units that enables more work to be done in parallel and can contribute to accelerating the build by the Ingalls team."
HII said the company currently has 40 ships under construction across its Ingalls Shipbuilding and Newport News Shipbuilding divisions and expects to deliver five vessels over the next 12 months, including an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. The company said it doubled the amount of work performed through distributed shipbuilding in 2025 and plans to increase that volume by another 30% this year.
