Huntington Ingalls awarded contract for Flight III destroyers

June 28 (UPI) -- Huntington Ingalls has received a modification to an existing contract to build the under-construction DDG 125, the eventual Jack H. Lucas, to the Flight III baseline standard.

Under the contract, announced by the Department of Defense on Tuesday, the Jack H. Lucas will be the first Arleigh Burke-class destroyer to incorporate the Flight III systems.

The upgrades include the SPY-6 Air and Missile Defense Radar, improved power generation, cooling system upgrades and other modifications.

The contract falls under source selection sensitive information guidelines due to it being the first Flight III DDG and competitive bids for further construction are pending.

Work will be conducted at Pascagoula, Miss., Cincinnati, Ohio, and other locations across the United States, and is expected to be completed by 2024. Undetermined Fiscal 2017 Navy shipbuilding and conversion funds will be obligated upon award.

The DDG-51 Arleigh Burke-class is a multirole destroyer built around the Aegis Combat System, an advanced air defense and radar network. Some models are capable of shooting down incoming ballistic missiles and form a key part of U.S. ballistic missile defenses.

It can perform land attack missions using Tomahawk cruise missiles and a radar-guided 5-inch gun. It also has a towed-sonar array and torpedo launchers for anti-submarine operations, along with a variety of autocannons and machine guns for point defense.

Flight III destroyers will feature the under development AN/SPY-6 AMDR as an upgrade from the current AN/SPY-1 series of air and missile search radars. Flight IIIs will also have greater data-processing and datalink capabilities and measures to improve habitability aboard the ships like upgraded galleys.

"This will be the 35th Aegis destroyer we will build for the U.S. Navy in what has been one of our company's most successful programs," Brian Cuccias, president of Ingalls Shipbuilding, said in a press release. "These ships are in high demand, and this Flight III ship will be the most capable DDG 51-class ship ever built."