Fincantieri Marine, Gibbs & Cox in joint R&D effort

The LCS 9, a Freedom Class variant of the Littoral Combat Ship

AUGUST 7, 2015—Shipbuilder Fincantieri Marine Group LLC, Washington, DC, and naval architectural firm Gibbs & Cox, Inc., Arlington, VA, have announced a joint strategic R&D initiative to develop future ship and vessel concepts for the U.S. and international marketplace. The initiative will focus on developing innovative ship concepts with improved affordability and production efficiency features.

This is not the first time that Fincantieri Marine Group, a subsidiary of Italy’s FINCANTIERI S.p.A., and Gibbs & Cox have collaborated on vessel design. The companies teamed with Lockheed Martin on the development of the U.S. Navy’s Freedom Class variant of the Littoral Combat Ship. Those ships are being produced by Fincantieri Marinette Marine in Marinette, WI, one of three shipyards owned by Fincantieri in the Great Lakes region. The others are Bay Shipbuilding, Sturgeon Bay, WI, and ACE Marine, Green Bay, WI.

 “Bringing together FINCANTIERI and Gibbs & Cox’s complementary skills and expertise will offer innovative capabilities to the U.S. market,” says Dr. Giuseppe Bono, CEO of FINCANTIERI. “Our aim is to develop concepts that completely fulfill the evolving needs of the customer while accounting for producibility considerations early in the design stage.”

Rick Biben, CEO of Gibbs & Cox, says, “This initiative will benefit from a unique end-to-end vision as the naval architects of Gibbs & Cox, operating in concert with the engineers and expert builders of FINCANTIERI, will be able to develop concepts that account for the needs of programs throughout the lifecycle of the vessels.”