SAN DIEGO – Shipbuilder and repair specialist General Dynamics NASSCO closed an eventful year in 2025, one marked by milestones in building fleet replenishment oiler ships and expeditionary staging base ships for the U.S. Navy.
NASSCO is able to move great slabs of steel, employ a small army of workers and maintain a yard on the bayfront because it is part of defense contracting giant General Dynamics (NYSE: GD), which had revenue of $47.7 billion in the most recent year.
It laid the keel of the future USNS Harriet Tubman one year ago this month and delivered the USNS Lucy Stone in December. In November, the company announced it received $1.7 billion for two more John Lewis-class oiler ships. A contract in 2024 calls for up to 17 of the ships, which are 742 feet long.
NASSCO also stays in business by repairing Navy ships. Late last year it replaced its 40-year-old floating dry dock — used to bring a ship’s hull entirely out of the water — with a new dry dock of similar dimensions and capacity. Brought across the ocean after being fabricated in Turkey by Gemak, the dock is a capital investment for the next 40 years, said John Robertson, NASSCO’s vice president of repair.
“The Navy is in San Diego to stay; NASSCO’s in San Diego to stay,” Robertson said.
The cost of the new dry dock was not reported, but NASSCO has a new hull with new internal infrastructure and a new heavy-lift crane (built in South Korea) to support maintenance. Its emergency diesel generator meets updated emissions requirements.
The dock has yet to be commissioned and its name is still open to debate. It is tentatively named The Rebuilder, a reference to its predecessor, named The Builder. Next month, NASSCO plans to work on its first project in the dock by taking the big-deck amphibious ship USS America out of the water for maintenance.
STR Nabs Further Funding for JAWS
DARPA awarded Systems & Technology Research LLC (STR), a small business based in Woburn, Massachusetts, a $9.6 million modification to a cost-plus-fixed-fee contract to exercise the Phase 4 option of the Joint All-Domain Warfighting Software (JAWS) program.
The modification brings the total cumulative face value of the contract to $53.7 million, up from $44.0 million.
Some 15% of the latest contract, worth an estimated $1.4 million, will be performed in Carlsbad. Work will also be performed in Woburn, Massachusetts (30%); Arlington, Virginia (20%); Denver, Colorado (10%); Honolulu, Hawaii (10%); and Portland, Oregon (15%), with an estimated completion date of January 2027. Fiscal 2026 research and development funds in the amount of $9.6 million were obligated at the time of award. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of Arlington, Virginia awarded the deal on Jan. 8. The Pentagon announced the contract on Jan. 12.
STR’s website features a handful of local jobs, including an opening for a senior software reverse-engineer position that requires an active top secret security clearance. The prospective employee would be responsible for “reverse engineering complex software or firmware targets, ranging from typical Windows/Linux binaries to embedded firmware running nontraditional computer architectures and operating systems.” The company advertises a salary of $134,000-$184,000 per year.
According to the job post, STR is a growing tech company that specializes in “advanced research and development for defense, intelligence and national security in: cyber; next generation sensors, radar, sonar, communications and electronic warfare; and artificial intelligence algorithms and analytics to make sense of the complexity that is exploding around us.”
GA-ASI Tends Italy Drones in $14M Deal
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. has yet another support deal. The U.S. Air Force, acting on behalf of the government of Italy, awarded GA-ASI a cost-plus fixed-fee modification to a previously awarded contract. The deal, with a face value of $14.3 million, exercises an option for continued sustainment for the Italian Air Force MQ-9 Unmanned Aerial System Program fleet currently being serviced under the second option year of the contract that provides logistics support activities and software maintenance services. Work will be performed in Poway as well as in Italy and Kuwait, and is expected to be complete by Jan. 31, 2027. Foreign Military Sales funds in the amount of $14.3 million were obligated at the time of the award. The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio awarded the contract, announced on Jan. 15.
