BATH – A senior official with the U.S. Navy said demand for new vessels built at Bath Iron Works remains high, despite a cutback in orders by the government earlier this year.
Neil Hogg, deputy under secretary of the Navy for management made the remarks after attending a keel-laying ceremony for a new Arleigh Burke-class destroyer at Bath Iron Works Thursday morning.
“This class of vessel is indispensable with our ability to carry out the missions of the nation,” Hogg told Spectrum News.
The ceremony hearkens back to the laying of the very bottom of a wooden sailing ship, upon which workers built the rest of the vessel. Today’s shipbuilding follows different procedures, but the ceremony still comes early in the ship’s construction, and is a common tradition at Bath Iron Works, according to the shipyard’s president, Chuck Krugh.
“It is a time for celebration because it represents the work for the shipbuilders and an opportunity for those shipbuilders to highlight their craft,” he said.
Earlier this year, the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer made headlines when the Trump Administration cut back orders for at least one new destroyer from the shipyard.
Despite this, Hogg said Thursday that demand for new naval vessels from Bath Iron Works remains strong, and the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer in particular remains “indispensable” to efforts to defend American interests.
“Defending our homeland is critical, but the ability to have the right tools and our shipbuilding industrial base to support the construction of these ships is vital across the spectrum, both here in Maine and across the country,” Hogg said.
Krugh said crews will take “a little over a year” to finish principal construction of the new destroyer. It will be named after John E. Kilmer, a hospital corpsman who died shielding a wounded U.S. Marine with his own body during the Korean War. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for his bravery posthumously.
