Newport News Shipbuilding is in the midst of several pilot programs aimed at creating a Smart Shipyard that could accommodate “drawingless” plans for the Enterprise CVN-80 aircraft carrier, company officials told USNI News.
Huntington Ingalls Industries President and CEO Mike Petters told USNI News in February that he hoped CVN-80 would have no paper, two-dimensional drawings but instead would be all digital and all 3D. HII’s Newport News yard has taken the lead on this initiative and estimates that creating an integrated digital shipbuilding environment could generate more than 15-percent cost savings on the third Ford-class aircraft carrier, NNS president Matt Mulherin said May 17 at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space Exposition 2016.
