General Dynamics Wins Navy Contract

General Dynamics Corp. beat out rival Northrop Grumman Corp. for contracts to build the U.S. Navy’s next generation of supply ships--a 12-vessel program worth as much as $3.7 billion, the Navy said.

General Dynamics’ National Steel and Shipbuilding Co. in San Diego bested L.A.-based Northrop Grumman’s Avondale Industries, based outside New Orleans.

This Navy shipbuilding program is one of the few slated over the next decade, the other being the DD-21 destroyer, said Ronald O’Rourke, the naval analyst for the non-partisan Congressional Research Service.