Northrop Grumman Delivers U.S. Navy’s Newest DDG 51 Class Destroyer, Gravely

PASCAGOULA, Miss. (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The U.S. Navy accept­ed the Northrop Grum­man Cor­po­ra­tion (NYSE:NOC) built Aegis guid­ed mis­sile destroy­er Grave­ly (DDG 107) today on the fan­tail of the ship here at the company’s Pascagoula facil­i­ty. Grave­ly is the 27th DDG 51 class ship deliv­ered to the Navy.

Bob Merchent, Northrop Grum­man vice pres­i­dent of sur­face com­bat­ants and U.S. Coast Guard pro­grams, signs doc­u­ments com­plet­ing the sale and deliv­ery to the U.S. Navy of the Aegis guid­ed mis­sile destroy­er Grave­ly (DDG 107), as U.S. Navy Capt. Bill Gali­n­is (right), Super­vi­sor of Ship­build­ing, Gulf Coast, awaits his turn to sign. Source: Northrop Grum­man Cor­po­ra­tion Click to enlarge

“Our ship­builders con­tin­ue to per­form well on this pro­gram, as they have done for more than 20 years in build­ing qual­i­ty DDGs,” said Bob Merchent, Northrop Grum­man Shipbuilding’s vice pres­i­dent of sur­face com­bat­ants and U.S. Coast Guard pro­grams. “It was a chal­lenge with sea tri­als in the wake of the oil spill, but togeth­er with our Navy cus­tomer, we have worked to exe­cute a seam­less plan to get to this point. Our ship­builders under­stand who will be oper­at­ing this ship, and those sailors deserve our best effort as they take con­trol of Grave­ly and begin the ship’s mis­sion of defend­ing our nation.” 

Grave­ly (DDG 107) will be com­mis­sioned on Nov. 20, 2010 in Wilm­ing­ton, N.C.

“This mile­stone does­n’t come easy. It takes team­work with Northrop Grum­man, Sup­Ship and now the Grave­ly crew,” said U.S. Navy Capt. Bill Gali­n­is, super­vi­sor of ship­build­ing, Gulf Coast. “The ship­yard has con­tin­ued to restore itself from Kat­ri­na and this is the third ship in this class to be deliv­ered since the storm and each DDG con­tin­ues to improve. The team has done a great job.” 

U.S. Navy Com­man­der Doug Kun­z­man is the ship’s first com­mand­ing offi­cer and will lead a crew of over 300 offi­cers and sailors. The 510-foot, 9,500-ton Grave­ly has an over­all beam of 59 feet and a nav­i­ga­tion­al draft of 31 feet. Four gas-tur­bine propul­sion plants will pow­er the ship to speeds above 30 knots. 

“To the Northrop Grumman/SupShip Gulf Coast team, I want to say thank you,” said Cmdr. Kun­z­man. “You are deliv­er­ing to us 510 feet of sov­er­eign U.S. ter­ri­to­ry that will go around this world. So thank you for build­ing this ship, test­ing this ship and train­ing this crew. I guar­an­tee you this crew will sail this ship with the same pride and pro­fes­sion­al­ism you put into con­struct­ing this ship. I’d be hon­ored to take each one of you to sea with me.” 

This high­ly capa­ble mul­ti-mis­sion ship can con­duct a vari­ety of oper­a­tions, from peace­time pres­ence and cri­sis man­age­ment to sea con­trol and pow­er pro­jec­tion, all in sup­port of the Unit­ed States’ mil­i­tary strat­e­gy. Grave­ly will be capa­ble of simul­ta­ne­ous­ly fight­ing air, sur­face and sub­sur­face bat­tles. The ship con­tains a myr­i­ad of offen­sive and defen­sive weapons designed to sup­port mar­itime defense needs well into the 21st century. 

Northrop Grum­man Cor­po­ra­tion is a lead­ing glob­al secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny whose 120,000 employ­ees pro­vide inno­v­a­tive sys­tems, prod­ucts, and solu­tions in aero­space, elec­tron­ics, infor­ma­tion sys­tems, ship­build­ing and tech­ni­cal ser­vices to gov­ern­ment and com­mer­cial cus­tomers world­wide. Please vis­it www.northropgrumman.com for more information. 

CONTACT: Bill Glenn
Northrop Grum­man Ship­build­ing
(228) 935‑3972
william.glenn@ngc.com

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