Litton Joins Team Seeking Massive Navy Contract

Litton Industries Inc., a Woodland Hills defense electronics and shipbuilding concern, has joined a team seeking to build the Navy’s next generation of troop and vehicle transport ships.

If funding is approved by Congress, the contract could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Litton’s Ingalls Shipbuilding division in Pascagoula, Miss., would be the prime contractor on the project and would build the forward portion of each of the LPD-17 amphibious ships. It is being joined in the bidding by Tenneco’s Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia; National Steel and Shipbuilding Co. in San Diego and Lockheed Martin’s government electronic systems division in Moorestown, N.J.

Bids are expected to be submitted by mid-1996. The contract would be awarded before Sept. 30, the end of the government’s fiscal year.

The LPD-17 class would replace retiring ship classes that have aircraft and vehicle lift, troop transport, mission support and self-defense capabilities.