A $30 million U.S. Navy contract recently awarded to Fincantieri Marinette Marine will lay the groundwork for building four or more new landing vessels at its shipyards in the state. 

The company last week announced the contract for materials procurement and engineering activities for these first four ships out of a planned 35 vessels under the Medium Landing Ship or LSM program. Construction work on those four ships will take place in Wisconsin, according to Tom Levac, the company’s vice president of program management. 

“This is an important commitment from the Navy to our shipyards in Wisconsin,” Levac said in a recent interview, adding “we’ll be cutting steel, welding it together and then building it up … all here in Wisconsin.” 

The 300-foot ships — designed to carry U.S. Marines and their equipment from the sea to the shore — are estimated to cost $340 million to $430 million per ship to build, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office. Its design includes gates on the front and back for vehicles, as well as a helicopter deck. 

The initial $30 million contract will fund pre-construction studies and work to prepare for ultimately building the first four of these vessels, Levac said. Fincantieri will evaluate the Navy’s design and finalize its own building strategy, with the start of construction on the first vessel slated for the fourth quarter of this year. 

“We have of course the three sites in Wisconsin, so we’ll actually evaluate a build that can utilize hopefully at least Marinette and Sturgeon Bay, maybe also using some support from the Green Bay shipyard as well,” Levac told WisBusiness.com. 

The LSM program represents a new class of ship for the Navy, according to Levac, who noted Fincantieri hasn’t submitted its official estimates for the cost of the project and pointed to the CBO estimates as an indication of its potential cost. The office’s model estimates the cost at more than double the Navy’s own estimates of about $150 million per ship. 

For the entire planned 35-ship program, the CBO estimates the total cost at between $11.9 billion and $15 billion in 2024 dollars, depending on the final size of the ship’s design. 

When asked about the possibility of Fincantieri Marinette Marine building more of the 35 planned ships, Levac said “absolutely.” But he noted the future of the program will hinge on the Navy’s priorities. Which company ends up building the remainder will depend on how long the timeframe is for the project, he explained. 

“If they want to build all 35, I would like to believe we’re going to get a good portion of that,” he said. “But … we have to figure out how fast they want them, and how many they want, which would allow us to assess them.” 

With the initial funded work, he said the shipyards aim to get a headstart on the learning curve as quickly as possible. 

“Once you start building a ship, usually you get good at building that type of ship, and then it’s efficient for you to keep building that ship,” he said. 

The company’s supply chain links more than 600 U.S. suppliers, including 250 suppliers in Wisconsin alone and 100 in Michigan, according to details provided by a spokesperson. 

Fincantieri Marinette Marine employs about 2,000 people at its shipyards in the state, including both white-collar and blue-collar workers. Levac said the LSM program will help sustain the workforce for the business in Wisconsin, which is a subsidiary of the Italian firm Fincantieri. 

“When you spend years investing in people, and investing in their skills, and they’re from these communities, you want to retain them as much as possible,” he said. “We’re laser-focused on keeping these 2,000 people as employed as possible, so that when more of these ships come to us, we’re actually in a good position to keep going.”