SEATTLE, November 9, 2026 — The U.S. Navy has awarded Vigor Marine a $222.5 million contract to modernize the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Gridley (DDG 101) at the company’s Seattle shipyard, a project scheduled to run through December 2028. The award pulls the 10,300-ton warship from the fleet for nearly two years following a punishing operational tempo that spanned three theaters in roughly 18 months.
The technical reality: what the contract actually specifies
The contract covers a Chief of Naval Operations availability for “critical modernization, maintenance, and repair programs,” according to the Navy’s announcement. Under the hood, however, the documentation is notably silent on the specific combat systems, radar suites, or defensive capabilities slated for upgrade. The Pentagon has not disclosed the equipment list for this availability, designated as the Fiscal 2027 Depot Modernization Period.
The money tells its own story. Of the initial $222.5 million, $207.1 million — 93 percent — comes from Fiscal 2027 Other Procurement, Navy funds, the account used to purchase and install new systems on hulls already in service. Another $2 million arrives from Fiscal 2026 procurement funds. Only $13.4 million, roughly 6 percent, draws from operations and maintenance accounts for routine repairs, and that portion expires at the end of the current fiscal year. As ever, the procurement-heavy split signals that the yard period is built around hardware installation, not just hull preservation.
What a Flight IIA looks like at the midpoint
Commissioned February 10, 2007, Gridley is a Flight IIA Arleigh Burke built at Bath Iron Works. The Flight IIA variant added a hangar for two MH-60R helicopters and 96 Mk 41 vertical launch cells for Standard Missile, Tomahawk, and Evolved Sea Sparrow missiles — capabilities the earlier Flight I and II ships lacked. At nearly 20 years old, the destroyer is reaching the midpoint of its planned 40-year service life, the traditional window for the Navy’s most invasive modernization periods.
Recent depot work on sister ships offers the only open-source guide to what “critical modernization” typically entails for this hull. USS Pinckney (DDG 91) is currently undergoing depot work through 2028 as the first ship to receive the full DDG MOD 2.0 upgrade, centered on the AN/SPY-6(V)4 radar. Whether Gridley’s availability mirrors that scope remains unconfirmed; the Navy has not identified Gridley as a MOD 2.0 hull in public budget documents.
The industrial detail that matters
The Navy restricted competition for the contract under 10 U.S.C. 3204(a)(3), a statutory authority that allows agencies to limit bidding to preserve industrial capacity for national emergencies. The provision keeps private repair yards viable near fleet concentrations. Vigor’s Seattle facility is one of the few private yards in the Pacific Northwest with the dry dock capacity and crane reach to handle a 10,300-ton destroyer.
The award is nearly six times the value of Vigor’s previous Gridley contract, a $37.4 million maintenance and modernization job at the ship’s homeport of Everett, Washington, completed in October 2023. The step-up reflects the difference between a homeport availability and a full depot period.
Operational context: the hull that earned the yard period
Gridley returned to Naval Station Everett on December 12, 2025, after a nine-month deployment with the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group across the U.S. 5th and 7th Fleet areas. The ship was back at sea by February 2026, deploying to U.S. Southern Command to escort USS Nimitz (CVN 68) around South America under Operation Southern Seas. The strike group visited Valparaíso, Chile, in April before Gridley shifted in June to Operation Southern Spear, supporting counter-narcotics operations in the Western Hemisphere with a Coast Guard law enforcement detachment and helicopters from Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron 73 embarked.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth visited the ship in Panama City on August 13 during the Panamax 2026 exercise, as Gridley prepared to transit the Panama Canal for Eastern Pacific operations with Joint Task Force-Western Hemisphere. “The defense of the Homeland lives on the USS Gridley,” Hegseth said during the visit.
Maintenance backlog: the fleet-wide frame
A December 2025 Congressional Budget Office report found that Arleigh Burke-class destroyers are spending more than nine years — 27 percent of their planned service life — in maintenance, more than twice the Navy’s 2012 class estimates. Only 4 percent of destroyer overhauls finished within the time estimated in those plans, and maintenance events routinely ran 20 to 100 percent longer than final schedules. Gridley’s two-year contract window sits inside that trend.
Contract options could lift the total value to $232.5 million. Work is managed by the Program Acquisition Executive Maritime in Washington, D.C., under contract N0002427C4414.
Sources
- USS Gridley: 10,300-ton US destroyer set for two-year modernization
- USS Gridley (DDG-101)
- FORCM Williams Visits USS Gridley
- USS Gridley heads for 2-year overhaul after back-to-back deployments
- Heckler & Koch Secures $45.4M Marine Corps Contract Increase for M27 Rifles
Photo: Official U.S. Navy Page from United States of America
MC2 Cameron Stoner/U.S. N (Public domain)
