President Donald Trump is expected to announce a new multi-billion-dollar investment to build a manufacturing facility for components for submarines in Baltimore on Tuesday.
The announcement comes as the president has sought to tout manufacturing and investments, in his broader economic message, in a campaign push ahead of the midterm election.
RELATED STORY | Hegseth announces a new drone command and cuts to 20% of generals in 'State of the Force' speech
The U.S. Navy and Anduril Industries will announce a $6.6 billion investment to build a new facility in Baltimore County to manufacture critical components for the Virginia-class submarine. Anduril is a defense contractor leaning on autonomy and AI.
“This delivers on President Trump’s promise to bolster America’s defense industrial base while revitalizing our manufacturing industry, creating over 13,000 direct and indirect jobs and driving $2 billion in annual economic output,” Anna Kelly, White House principal deputy press secretary, said.
Anduril is expected to invest around $3.7 billion for the 2 million square foot facility to stand it up, build the workforce and equip it with technology, according to the company's chief strategic officer, Chris Brose. It’s expected to create 3,100 direct jobs and 11,000 indirect jobs.
“This is not about, you know, taking food off the plate of anybody. This is about putting more food on the table and being able to meet the requirements that our country has to produce more submarines,” Brose said.
The administration has sought to boost the nation’s defense industrial capacity, particularly maritime capacity. There are currently 26 Virginia-class submarines with two more expected to be added in the spring, according to a senior administration official. The plans would add 9 million hours of labor a year, according to an official.
“That would be the equivalent of about a 15 percent increase, and so that would be directly translatable to the Virginia-class submarine production. So you know, just in terms of the pure capacity that it brings, it would absolutely translate to increased Virginia submarine production,” the senior administration official said.
RELATED STORY | Trump says his planned arch would become a 'military complex' able to host drones and snipers
While Brose says it will “play out over the coming years,” the company expects to move straightforward components like torpedo tubes in its California facility being stood up.
“Our goal is to help produce more of those types of systems and then, over time as the yard comes online in Baltimore, scale up to larger modules, larger ship sections and for us this is being done in partnership with our traditional shipbuilders who are phenomenal partners and phenomenal builders of these systems; they just need help in terms of capacity,” Brose said.
The torpedo tubes will help speed up production of current Virginia-class submarines, according to a senior administration official.
“They’re going to start with these critical components, prove that they meet the quality standards, prove that they’re safe to submerge with human lives on board and hold the pressure boundary, and then they’ll move on to increasingly complex assemblies,” said the official.
The facility will be dubbed Arsenal-2 but won’t come online for a couple of years, according to an industry official, who noted the shipyard will be focused on the Virginia-class submarine program, though there are other things it would be capable of building. “Those are bridges we can cross in the future,” the official said.
