The U.S. Navy has awarded BAE Systems a $138 million contract to keep building propulsors for Virginia-class submarines, with ordering running through September 2032.
The work is the quiet hardware at the back of the boat, not the hull itself. BAE Systems says it is already hitting the Navy's goal of two Virginia-class propulsor sets a year, even as the boats those sets belong to are still coming off the line more slowly.
What The New Order Covers
The contract covers manufacture of propulsor assemblies, engineering services, replacement parts and associated support services, Investing.com reported. Ordering can continue through September 2032. The award does not spell out how the $138 million splits among those categories, or guarantee that every dollar will be spent.
BAE says it has delivered major propulsor assemblies for every Virginia-class submarine to date, and that it has been making fleet propulsors for more than three decades. Jason Casciotti, vice president of BAE Systems Weapon Systems, said the company's complex components support U.S. undersea dominance.
That is a supplier's claim about a component line, not a statement that the Navy is finishing two attack submarines a year. The two rates sit next to each other in the public record, and they are not the same measurement.
Louisville, Jacksonville And Minneapolis
BAE ties the work to plants and engineering offices in Louisville, Kentucky; Jacksonville, Florida; and Minneapolis. The company says investment in advanced manufacturing and engineering at those sites supports the Navy's 1+2 submarine manufacturing cadence — the long-stated aim of two Virginia-class boats and one Columbia-class ballistic-missile submarine.
Louisville is the piece BAE has called its submarine center of excellence. As of the company's October 3, 2024 announcement, that site was building a heavy propulsor structure for the Columbia class and manufacturing Virginia Payload Module launch tubes. Those tubes are what let a Virginia-class boat fire Tomahawk missiles and carry future payloads. Minneapolis, at that same point, was providing engineering and business support.
The 2024 description is a snapshot, not a current construction report. What the new award does confirm is that the same three-city footprint is still the one BAE is pointing to for Virginia-class propulsor work.
A $92 Million Predecessor
This is not the first check written for the same family of parts. On October 3, 2024, the Navy awarded BAE a $92 million contract to continue building Virginia-class propulsors, the company said at the time.
That earlier deal covered Propulsor Forward Assemblies, design engineering support services, and support and sustainment hardware. By the announcement date, BAE said it had delivered 33 forward assemblies to the Navy.
The new contract is larger on its face — $138 million against $92 million — and broader in the way the company describes it, folding in full propulsor assemblies, replacement parts and support services rather than only the forward assemblies named in 2024. The two awards are sequential continuations of the same industrial relationship, not a single combined pot.
Sets On Schedule, Boats Behind
BAE's two-sets-a-year claim lands against a slower boat count. A Congressional Research Service report says Virginia-class production has been limited to about 1.1 to 1.2 boats a year since 2022, short of the 2.0-boats-a-year goal. The Navy had procured 41 Virginia-class submarines through fiscal 2025. The gap between buying boats and building them has produced a growing backlog of submarines procured but not yet built.
A separate measure, from USNI News in May 2026, put the Virginia-class delivery rate at about 1.3 submarines a year. That figure is a delivery rate at that moment, not the CRS production range, and it should not be averaged with it. Neither number is a count of propulsor sets.
Congress has put billions of dollars into submarine industrial-base funding since fiscal 2018 specifically to raise Virginia-class output. A propulsor supplier saying it can already make two sets a year is one piece of that base. It does not close the backlog by itself.
The 2031 Target
The Navy's long-range shipbuilding plan, as reported by USNI News, set a goal of two Virginia-class submarines and one Columbia-class ballistic-missile submarine a year by fiscal 2031. Chief of Naval Operations Caudle has said the Virginia build rate is expected to reach two a year in the 2030s.
BAE's ordering window runs past that fiscal year, through September 2032. If the yards do reach the planned cadence, the propulsor line is already contracted to keep feeding it. If they do not, the Navy will still have a supplier producing sets faster than boats have recently been finished — useful inventory for a backlog, and a reminder that a component contract is not a delivery schedule.
