Editor’s update on July 9, 2021: Huntington Ingalls plans to acquire ALION. We plan to update this blog with this significant change in a future post. The below blog was written in June 2021.
More than a decade ago, Northrop Grumman spun off its shipbuilding business to create Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII). HII provides military ship building and professional services to federal and commercial customers on a global scale. It reported an FY2020 annual revenue of $9.4 billion, approximately 88% of which was generated from the U.S. Navy. Headquartered in Newport News, Virginia, the company consists of more than 42,000 employees.
Organization and recent M&A history
HII is comprised of three divisions: Newport News Shipbuilding, Ingalls Shipbuilding and Technical Solutions. They also have an Australian business unit under Technical Solutions, Huntington Ingalls Industries Australia Pty Ltd., to support overseas work based in Canberra, Australia.
The legacy of Huntington Ingalls is shipbuilding. This is something we assume most of our readers know well. As such, we will examine the division that may be least familiar and most germane to our readers, Technical Solutions.
Created in 2016, Technical Solutions provides life-cycle sustainment services to the U.S. Navy fleet, IT and mission-based solutions, nuclear management and operations, and engineering, procurement, and construction management for the oil and gas industry. The division accounted for $1.3 billion of the company’s FY2020 annual revenue.
Technical Solutions is divided into the following groups:
- Defense and Federal Solutions Group – Led by Garry Schwartz, this group provides services in maritime fleet sustainment; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; cyber operations; secure enterprise information technology engineering and operations; advanced modeling, simulation, and training; and logistics management to DoD, intelligence community, and federal civilian agencies.
- Unmanned Systems – Led by Duane Fotheringham, this group creates advanced unmanned maritime solutions for defense, marine research and commercial applications. It provides design, autonomy, manufacturing, testing, operations and sustainment of unmanned underwater vehicles and surface vessels.
- Nuclear & Environmental – Led by Michael Lempke, this group focuses on nuclear management and operations, providing site management, nuclear and industrial facilities operations and maintenance, decontamination and decommissioning, and radiological and hazardous waste management services. HII has participated in multiple joint ventures in recent years to increase their footprint in this market – recent wins include a position on a shared $3 billion Department of Energy (DoE) decommissioning and removal IDIQ and a $1.4 billion Los Alamos National Laboratory cleanup contract.
Technical Solutions is the amalgamation of several legacy subsidiaries and acquisitions. The division’s creation was prompted by HII’s $380 million acquisition of Camber Corporation. Through this acquisition, HII gained expanded capabilities in agile software and network engineering, modeling simulation and training, unmanned systems, systems engineering, and data analytics.
Technical Solutions also includes HII’s more recent acquisitions of Fulcrum IT Services and G2, Inc., which highlight an increasing investment in cybersecurity and cybersecurity threat analytics.
More telling is their acquisitions of Spatial Integrated Systems Inc.’s autonomy business and Hydroid Inc., a provider of advanced marine robotics. These acquisitions have been confirmed as a purposeful investment in unmanned systems capabilities. This has been further supported by the company’s completion of the first phase of a 22,000-square-foot Unmanned Systems Center of Excellence and its intention to build another unmanned systems prototyping, production and testing facility.
Sample of federal contracts
Though HII is best known for building and supporting submarines, aircraft carriers, and amphibious assault ships, the company maintains a professional services business within Technical Solutions that centers on several service areas, including training, ISR, UUV development, and environmental and nuclear-focused work. Since the division’s creation in 2016, the company’s footprint has expanded in the DoE, Navy, Army, and Air Force. Select contracts that demonstrate this include:
- U.S. Department of the Air Force, U.S. Air Force-Europe (USAFE), Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) Contract – In January 2020, HII was awarded a five-year, $955 million ceiling value OASIS task order to support manned and unmanned airborne ISR functions under a contractor owned-contractor operated model in the European and African theaters of operation. This is a continuation and expansion of work currently performed by HII. The company has been obligated $140 million thus far. It’s important to note that HII also recently won a position on an IDIQ that provides ISR support to Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC) Pacific.
- U.S. Department of the Navy, Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Dahlgren Division, Training and Readiness Systems Engineering Support – In August 2018, HII was awarded a potential five-year, $56 million ceiling value Seaport-e task order to provide systems engineering services for a training and readiness (T&R) family of systems. This also included providing modeling and simulation work in support of testing and evaluating system readiness. This is continued work for HII. The company has been obligated $26 million to date.
- U.S. Department of the Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, CBRNE Consequence Management Program Support Contract – In August 2017, HII was awarded a five-year, $78 million ceiling value OASIS task order to support the U.S. Marine Corps’ efforts to manage consequences from accidental or intentional chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and high-yield explosive attacks. HII provides engineering and technical support services. The company has been obligated $33 million thus far.
The FedSavvy Strategies Takeaway
- HII’s Technical Solutions has increasingly invested in cybersecurity, environmental services and unmanned systems to expand HII’s footprint in the DoD and DoE.
- Technical Solutions acquisitions has enabled some limited array of diversification due to contract wins in environmental cleanup, nuclear and ISR work…however, HII is still mostly focused on shipbuilding and providing ship related services for the U.S. Navy.
- HII’s acquisitions in the unmanned systems market appear to be their most purposeful investment to date. In addition to acquiring Spatial Integrated Systems Inc.’s autonomy business and Hydroid Inc., the company has kickstarted the construction of an Unmanned Systems Center of Excellence and prototyping facility.
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