Jane Edwards
A Huntington Ingalls Industries division has launched a new building in Newport News, Virginia, to provide work and training spaces for the crews of future Virginia-class submarines.
The Newport News Shipbuilding division’s pre-commissioning unit facility houses office spaces, bunk rooms for sailors, hospital corpsmen’s offices, galleys, classrooms and a calibration laboratory, HII said Monday.
“As we have ramped up the Virginia-class submarine program to a rate of two boats a year, we recognized that we needed a state-of-the-art building capable of supporting submarine crews at this increased pace,” said Ken Mahler, vice president of Navy programs at Newport News Shipbuilding.
The new facility currently hosts members of the PCU crew for the Indiana (SSN 789) submarine, which is under construction.
