U.S. Navy awards $5.5 billion 10-ship frigate contract to Italy’s Fincantieri

By Mike Stone

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Navy said on Thursday it awarded a contract worth more than $5.5 billion to Italy’s Fincantieri to build the Navy’s newest class of warships, known as frigates.

The contract is for detailed design and construction of the lead ship, with an option to buy nine more. If the Navy exercised all options on the contract, delivery of the 10th ship would occur in May 2035, according to the Pentagon’s award notice.

The navy estimated the lead ship’s cost to be $1.281 billion, including the cost of design. Subsequent ship options, if exercised, would cost $781 million, on average, in 2018 constant dollars, Navy officials said in a press press.

Competitors for the contract included Huntington Ingalls Industries , a team of General Dynamics and Spain’s Navantia, and Austal , an Australian company with a shipyard in Alabama.

Plans call for the FFG(X), smaller than cruisers and destroyers, to be a multi-mission ship with a combat system, missile launch tubes and radars. But it will carry fewer weapons and have less design redundancy than larger ships in the fleet designed for sustained intense sea battles.

(Reporting by Mike Stone; Editing by Leslie Adler and Dan Grebler)