{"id":133244,"date":"2026-03-24T04:37:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T07:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shipping.einnews.com\/article\/901397673"},"modified":"2026-03-24T04:37:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T07:37:09","slug":"advanced-shipbuilding-factory-of-the-future-opens-in-alabama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/2026\/03\/24\/advanced-shipbuilding-factory-of-the-future-opens-in-alabama\/","title":{"rendered":"Advanced Shipbuilding Factory of the Future Opens in Alabama”>"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Funded in part by Navy investments under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), the advanced manufacturing company Hadrian officially opened a new facility in Cherokee, Alabama, on March 20th<\/sup>, which will boost production of US Navy nuclear submarines.<\/p>\n

The 2.2 million square foot site will host a highly-automated \u201cfactory of the future,\u201d known as F4, which will mass produce components for Virginia-class attack submarines and Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines. The Navy\u2019s $900 million investment of OBBBA funds, combined with $1.5 billion in private capital, for a total investment of more than $2.4 billion. According to Hadrian, up to 1,000 high-paying manufacturing jobs are being created in the venture.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth chambers of Congress delivered the generational investment required to rebuild our shipbuilding capacity, bring those jobs back to Alabama and put American skilled laborers back at the center of American strength,\u201d said Secretary of the Navy John C. Phelan. \u201cI look forward to building on this progress together in the months ahead, because we are just getting started. This factory is the first of three facilities designed to address the most critical bottlenecks in the maritime industrial base.\u201d<\/p>\n

Using advanced manufacturing techniques, workers at the new factory will be able to mass-produce components that are needed to build Virginia-class and Columbia-class submarines. A dedicated production plant focused on these components frees up submarine shipyards in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Virginia to focus more resources on submarine module production, increasing capacity in the submarine industrial base.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe call this distributed shipbuilding, and it\u2019s a key tenet of our plan to achieve required shipbuilding production rates,\u201d said Mr. Jason Potter, performing the Duties of Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development & Acquisition (ASN RDA). \u201cThese factories of the future might be several states away from the yards where the ships are ultimately built, but by taking on this work, they reduce bottlenecks, having a profound effect on the speed of delivery.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Factory 4 project is estimated to take 18\u201324 months from initiation to full-rate production, including stand-up of automated production facilities, qualification of components, compliance qualifications like submarine safety program (SUBSAFE), and low-rate initial production. By the third year, the facilities will operate sustainably through the delivery of submarine product lines.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/strong> <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

… investment required to rebuild our shipbuilding<\/span> capacity, bring those jobs back … base. \u00e2\u0080\u009cWe call this distributed shipbuilding<\/span>, and it\u00e2\u0080\u0099s a key tenet … our plan to achieve required shipbuilding<\/span> production rates,\u00e2\u0080\u009d said Mr. Jason …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}