Navy awards BlueForge Alliance new $950M contract to boost sub industrial base

WASHINGTON — The Navy on Tuesday awarded BlueForge Alliance a $950 million contract to continue its efforts in bolstering the submarine industrial base (SIB) in the United States in preparation for the work necessary to carry out the AUKUS security pact.

“This contract will execute ongoing critical efforts to strengthen and expand the SIB and provides a direct contractual arrangement with a strong partner with demonstrated experience driving enhanced capability and capacity,” a Navy spokesperson told USNI News.

“The contract supports urgent ongoing efforts to diversify and strengthen the supply chains, drive national/regional workforce attraction, targeted training capacity increases and enterprise wide retention improvements,” the spokesperson continued. “Additionally, this work will scale manufacturing technology (additive manufacturing, robotics / automation) capacity and capability that is essential for defense industrial base wide production and maintenance.”

Roughly $500 million of the contract award is categorized under foreign military sales. The spokesperson said those funds are under FMS because they directly support Australia’s anticipated purchase of three or five Virginia-class submarines by adding capacity to the American industrial base.

A spokesperson for Naval Sea Systems Command did not immediately respond to questions from Breaking Defense.

BlueForge Alliance is a Texas-based nonprofit company that has rapidly made a name for itself in the defense industrial space by working with the Navy and submarine prime contractor General Dynamics to hit the service’s aspirational goal of hiring 100,000 new shipbuilders over the next 10 years.

A spokesperson for BlueForge did not immediately return a request for comment about the contract.

Prior to Tuesday’s contract announcement, Navy officials had said they previously awarded the company roughly $500 million to turbo boost the service’s campaign to hire workers from across the country — most notably its advertising has been shown at Major League Baseball games and NASCAR races. The new contract brings the total amount of money the Navy has awarded to BlueForge in contracts up to $1.3 billion.

Matt Sermon, a Navy civilian leading the service’s submarine industrial base efforts, previously told reporters BlueForge’s work has expanded to leading an additive manufacturing consortium across several universities as well as working with certain original equipment manufacturers and additive manufacturing companies to “tie up that whole entire group from industry and academia into an organization that’s focused on the material maturity that we need to drive” capacity.