Newport News Shipbuilding has modified Dry Dock 12, shown here with with a mid section of carrier Enterprise , to work on two carriers at one time. (Michael Fabey)
Completing another renovation of its Dry Dock 12 that enables concurrent construction of two aircraft carriers for the first time, HII's Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS) unit is set to build two Ford-class ships simultaneously, HII officials confirmed on 19 November.
Located in a section of NNS known as the North Yard, Dry Dock 12 measures 662×76 m and is the biggest construction dry dock of its type on the hemisphere.
Most recently, NNS has been building carrier Enterprise (CVN 80) in the dry dock. The most recent carrier to be launched from the dock was carrier John F Kennedy (CVN 79) in 2018. To float John F Kennedy , the yard flooded the dock with 160 million gallons of water, enough to fill about 242 Olympic-sized swimming pools, a task that took about 10 hours.
Before building John F Kennedy , NNS had installed a new elevator and additional ramps connecting the dock wall to the ship to make it easier to move shipbuilders, equipment, and other material in and out of the dock and the vessel.
To ready Dry Dock 12 for concurrent dual-carrier construction, NNS put a new sill in the dock to float off one section of it, Chris Kastner, HII president and CEO, noted during a roundtable media discussion on 4 April in advance of the Navy League Sea-Air-Space 2024 global maritime exposition, which started on 6 April in National Harbor, Maryland.
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