Mrs. Mills validated the keel laying by welding her initials into the ship’s structure. The steel plate with her initials will be permanently affixed to the ship’s keel, remaining with the vessel throughout its time in service.

Delivery of the first MLP ship is scheduled for May 2013. The 765-foot long ship will be used as staging areas for the Navy and Marines. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus recently announced that this first MLP ship will be named Montford Point, for the North Carolina facility where 20,000 African American Marines were trained over seven years, starting in 1942.

“In today’s challenging fiscal environment shipbuilder’s must continue to provide our Navy customer with competitive pricing and fair value,” said Fred Harris, president of General Dynamics NASSCO. “With the Mobile Landing Platform, NASSCO is meeting that challenge once again. The Navy and Marines will be getting a ship with significant capability at approximately one-third the cost of the Navy’s original plan.”

One initiative that NASSCO employed with this ship was to incorporate a “design-build” approach into all phases of design and planning development. The “design-build” approach included the assignment of the company’s most experienced shipbuilders within functional engineering and detail design teams. These teams played an important role in developing build strategy initiatives that are improving the ship’s readiness for construction, making MLP among the most producible designs in NASSCO’s history.

Once delivered to the fleet, MLP ships will join the three Maritime Prepositioning Force squadrons that are strategically located around the world to enable rapid response in a crisis. MLP vessels will change the way the Maritime Prepositioning Force operates, providing a “pier at sea,” that will become the core of the Navy/Marine Corps sea basing concept. This capability will allow prepositioning ships to offload equipment and supplies to the MLP for transshipment to shore by other vessels.

Click here to view the MLP-1 Photo Gallery.

Additional information on General Dynamics NASSCO can be found at www.nassco.com.

Additional information about General Dynamics can be found at www.generaldynamics.com.

General Dynamics NASSCO was recently honored by the Air Pollution Control District for its proactive efforts in protecting and preserving air quality.

SAN DIEGO, November 23, 2011 – General Dynamics NASSCO was recently honored by the Air Pollution Control District for its proactive efforts in protecting and preserving air quality.

During the Industrial Environmental Association’s 2011 Statewide Environmental Summit, the San Diego Air Pollution Control District presented General Dynamics NASSCO and BAE Systems with its Blue Sky Leadership Award. The award recognizes companies that have made significant contributions to improve air quality. NASSCO and BAE received the award for their combined efforts in developing an environmental compliance training program and streamlined reporting system for marine painting contractors operating at San Diego shipyards and naval installations.

The environmental compliance training program continues to help contractors better understand and follow applicable air pollution control regulations related to marine painting. Initially developed by NASSCO, the program utilizes data validation features to improve the quality of required paint usage reports and reduce data entry errors and is now standardized across local shipyards so that contractors do not have to use different reporting formats for different facilities. These efforts have resulted in improved contractor compliance with air pollution control regulations, which is important to preventing air pollution. In addition, the new reporting system continues to improve the quality of paint usage reports, reducing processing and review time and the potential for violations and penalties.

NASSCO’s efforts in streamlining the reporting system for marine painting contractors is just one of the recent initiatives the shipyard has voluntarily undertaken to further reduce the air emissions typically associated with shipbuilding and repair operations.

At NASSCO, two fully enclosed automated prime lines and five fully enclosed paint cells have thermal oxidizer control equipment installed that is 97 percent effective in destroying paint solvent emissions. When this blast and paint facility is operating at maximum capacity, up to 200 tons of solvent emissions are eliminated per year. In addition, all plasma cutters and weld stiffner lines at the shipyard have air filtration systems installed that reduce particulate emissions by 99.99 percent.

NASSCO’s air quality preservation efforts also continue to reduce nitrogen oxide and diesel exhaust emissions. Catalytic reduction systems and diesel particulate filters are installed on all of NASSCO’s cranes. The shipyard has also reduced its reliance on diesel generators by upgrading its power requirements to depend on an electric grid system. These efforts have reduced nitrogen oxide emissions by 32.5 tons per year and the amount of diesel particulate expended by 2.5 tons per year. An engine replacement program to reduce emissions from forklifts, tugboats and other equipment has also been implemented. Since 2004, these programs have reduced total diesel emissions by more than 72 percent.

General Dynamics NASSCO is the only major ship construction yard on the West Coast of the United States. More information about NASSCO can be found at www.nassco.com.

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