Braxton Taylor
More than two dozen Navy ships — including three that are currently in service — received faulty welds at the Huntington Ingalls Industries shipyard in Newport News, Virginia, the service’s top civilian leader told lawmakers last week.
In a letter to Congress dated Oct. 3, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said that poor welds were found on the aircraft carrier USS George Washington as well as the attack submarines USS Hyman G. Rickover and USS New Jersey. In addition, the welding issues were identified on 23 more ships — a mix of new construction, ships in maintenance and aircraft carriers undergoing refueling.
The existence of faulty welds became public nearly two weeks ago when USNI News, citing a Navy memo, reported that the sea service was told by Huntington Ingalls, or HII, that workers did not follow proper techniques on some joints in noncritical areas and that early indications suggested that some of the issues were intentional.
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Del Toro said that he became aware of the issue on Sept. 24, just days before the details became public.
A week later, the House Armed Services Committee formally demanded answers from the Navy in a letter to Del Toro where they asked for a briefing from the Navy leader by this Friday.
“We want to understand the scope of the problem,” the lawmakers wrote. “The safety of our sailors is our top concern, and we must immediately understand any risks associated with the faulty work.”
Despite the back and forth of letters and even a public statement from HII’s leadership, specific details such as how many welds are in question on any one ship or their location on the vessels remains unknown.
In his letter to Congress, Del Toro broadly stressed that the Navy “has assessed that the welds were not components or systems that affect ship safety or operations” and they “determined the ships are safe to operate.”
Meanwhile, the shipyard’s president, Jennifer Boykin, said in a social media post that HII learned of the issue after some of its workers “did the right thing and came forward by either self-reporting or calling the HII OpenLine.” Boykin did not go into when the self-reporting occurred or how long it took HII to tell the Navy.
Todd Corillo, a spokesman for the company’s shipbuilding division, said that once those reports were made, “we followed our protocol, took action to communicate with our customers and regulators in a timely manner and began working the issue with the Navy.”
The Newport News shipyard is owned by one of only two companies that build nuclear-powered warships for the U.S. Navy and it is the only yard that builds the new Ford-class aircraft carrier.
As all of the involved parties investigate the issues, the prospect of operational effects appeared to be minimal.
Both the USS Rickover and USS New Jersey are newly commissioned submarines — the New Jersey entered Navy service just last month — and so any deployment is still months, if not years, away.
Meanwhile, the USS George Washington is in the middle of shifting its homeport to Japan and is similarly not slated for an operational deployment in the near future.
Both Del Toro and HII said that they’ve passed the matter on to the Justice Department for investigation, and Del Toro told Congress that “the Navy is evaluating all legal options and reserving our rights accordingly.”
Related: Lawmakers Launch Investigation of Reported Faulty Welds on Navy Subs and Aircraft Carriers
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