US Navy Awards $76.6 Billion for Nine Virginia and Five Columbia Submarines

The US Navy on July 29, 2026 awarded General Dynamics Electric Boat and HII's Newport News Shipbuilding contracts worth a combined $76.6 billion for 14 nuclear-powered submarines, settling negotiations that had run close to three years past their original target.

The package splits three ways. Some $42.1 billion covers nine Block VI Virginia-class attack submarines plus long-lead material for a tenth boat, and $29.5 billion funds five Build II Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines. A further $5 billion, previously appropriated, goes to shipyard infrastructure and workforce improvements at both builders.

Newport News Shipbuilding will serve as delivery yard for six of the nine Virginia-class boats, and will build and deliver six module sections per hull on the Columbia program as Electric Boat's major construction partner. The two yards have jointly delivered 26 Virginia-class submarines to date. Both awards are logged in GlobalMilitary.net's naval event record for the class.

"This historic investment underscores the Department's continued commitment to undersea superiority and the recapitalization of our nuclear triad," said Vice Admiral Robert Gaucher, the Pentagon's senior submarine program official, in remarks reported by USNI News. Newport News president Kari Wilkinson said the contracts "provide the American shipbuilding industrial base the opportunity to demonstrate that commitment in a meaningful way."

GlobalMilitary.net's inventory records 26 Virginia-class boats in active US service, the largest class of nuclear-powered attack submarines in the world and a core reason the United States sits at the head of the global military power ranking. The Columbia class has yet to commission its first hull; it will take over the sea-based leg of the American nuclear deterrent from the Ohio class, of which 18 boats remain in service.

Production rate, not funding, is the program's central difficulty. The Navy wants two Virginia-class deliveries a year, but the yards were completing roughly one as of mid-2025, and the first ten Block V boats are running an average of nearly three years behind their original delivery dates. A recent Government Accountability Office review found that "recovery plans are not progressing as intended," with construction metrics already trailing the program's own recovery targets.

The award matters beyond the US fleet. Under the AUKUS agreement, Australia is to receive three in-service Virginia-class submarines during the 2030s, a transfer that depends on American yards producing enough hulls to cover both navies. That makes the two-per-year target an allied commitment as much as a domestic one, and it is the reason the $5 billion set aside for wages and yard capacity drew as much attention in Washington as the submarines themselves.