GenDyn contracted for maintenance, upgrades on USS George H.W. Bush

Jan. 8 (UPI) -- General Dynamics has been awarded a $91.4 million contract for the planning and execution of maintenance and upgrades to the USS George H.W. Bush, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier of the U.S. Navy.

The contract, announced Monday by the Department of Defense, funds the 2019 dry-docking planned incremental availability of the vessel, which includes "depot-level maintenance, alterations and modifications that will update and improve the ship's military and technical capabilities."

The George H.W. Bush, which is part of Carrier Strike Group 2, spent 119 days at sea in 2018 over the course of 13 underway periods, according to a Facebook post from Capt. Sean Bailey.

"We qualified pilots, completed critical material readiness inspections, conducted interoperability exercises with our French allies, operated with the MV-22 to support future carrier airwing integration and hosted several distinguished visitors," Bailey wrote in a year-end message on Dec. 27.

The vessel, the tenth and final of the Nimitz-class carriers, is coming up on the tenth anniversary of it's commissioning on Jan. 10.

Work for the dry-docking will be performed in Portsmouth, Va., and is expected to be finished by February 2021. The Navy has obligated $45.7 million for the work from fiscal 2019 operations and maintenance funds, all of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year.