Dear HII Teammates,

I want you to learn first from me today that HII is announcing a significant investment in our capacity to build and deliver ships to the U.S. Navy. In short, the team and our footprint are getting bigger.

This week we signed our intent to acquire the assets of an advanced metal fabricator in South Carolina, W International. The acquisition includes not just the facility itself and its state-of-the-art manufacturing tools and equipment; critically, it also includes several hundred highly trained workers who are excited to join us in our mission. I see this as the most efficient way to accelerate our throughput in the urgent job of building ships for the American warfighter.

The facility will operate under Newport News Shipbuilding and will focus on construction of submarine and aircraft carrier modules. We’ll refer to it as NNS Charleston Operations.

Some things to know:

• The acquisition includes about 500 workers trained in fabrication of complex metal modules and structures.
• The facility includes more than 480,000 square feet of manufacturing space.
• The U.S. Navy is partnering on the retrofit and upgrade of the facility to accelerate time-to-impact.
• The site has barge and rail access.
• Our new teammates join 80 other South Carolina-based HII employees, who work in our Mission Technologies division.

You’ll no doubt see more of this news in the media, starting today.

In the meantime, I am counting on you to keep our foot on the gas in meeting our customer’s urgent need for ships. Your commitment to our mission is so important, and I appreciate each of you for demonstrating it every day.

Respectfully,

Chris