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Sub contract awards expected Monday

Submariners and their shipbuilders could get an early Christmas present Monday, when the Navy is expected to announce the award of $14 billion in construction contracts.

The new submarines are the next eight ships of the SSN 774 Virginia class of nuclear attack subs.

General Dynamics Electric Boat is the prime contractor for the Virginia-class program, with construction split equally between Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding’s Newport News, Va., shipyard and GD’s facilities at Quonset Point, R.I., and Groton, Conn.

The new submarines collectively are referred to as Block III. Funding for the first of the Block III boats, the North Dakota (SSN 784), was included in the 2009 defense budget. The Navy plans to ask for one more submarine in 2010 and two subs in 2011, 2012 and 2013 to complete the new group.

The Block III submarines will be the first to feature the new Virginia Payload Tube (VPT), a large-diameter launch tube based on the reconfigured former ballistic missile launch tubes on the Ohio-class SSGN cruise missile submarines. The VPTs, which can each hold six Tomahawk cruise missiles, replace 12 separate Tomahawk launch tubes built into earlier versions of the class.

The Block III subs also will incorporate the Large Aperture Bow Array, an improved arrangement of sonar and underwater listening devices.

More than a hundred other design changes — many developed under “design for affordability” guidelines intended to reduce costs or improve construction time — are integrated into the new ships.

The new contracts cap a year that saw two U.S. submarines from the same class commissioned in the same year for the first time since 1995. The Newport News-assembled North Carolina was commissioned on May 3 and the New Hampshire, completed at Groton, was commissioned on Oct. 25. General Dynamics also held a keel ceremony for the Missouri on Sept. 27 at Quonset Point, while Newport News hosted a keel ceremony for the New Mexico on Dec. 13.

Delivery of the North Dakota is scheduled for 2015.