The Navy has awarded Bath Iron Works a $126 million contract to continue providing planning yard services for Arleigh Burke-class destroyers.

The contract includes four option years that if exercised and fully funded by the Navy could bring the cumulative value of the contract – over five years – to more than $719 million, U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King said in a joint statement Monday.

Planning yard services include design, material kitting, planning, logistics and modernization efforts. The contract provides work for BIW engineers, designers and planners. The majority of the work will be done in Maine.

“BIW employs the finest shipbuilders, engineers and designers in the world, who prove every day that Bath built is best built,” Collins and King said. “This contract reflects the Navy’s ongoing confidence in BIW to support and deliver high quality ships that are essential to our national security.”

Collins is a member of the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee and King is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

On Friday, Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer joined Collins and King, as well as U.S. Reps. Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden, in the keel-laying ceremony for the future USS Carl M. Levin (DDG-120) at BIW. The Arleigh Burke-class Flight IIA guided missile destroyer will be named after the former U.S. senator from Michigan, who was a longtime chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and also attended Friday’s ceremony, along with family members.

The Navy on its website describes the Arleigh Burke line of destroyers as “The Greyhounds of the Sea.”

In his remarks Friday, Spencer said “the Arleigh-Burke class destroyer that will rise from this keel will deliver a strong return on investment for the American people, with the nimble capabilities to confront the many demands of a changing world, from peacetime presence and crisis response to sea control and the ability to deliver the fight tonight around the world.”

It was Spencer’s second trip to Maine in less than two years. He visited BIW in September 2017 to see firsthand the work performed by Bath’s shipbuilders.

In December, Collins, King and Pingree announced that the Navy had exercised its option to have BIW build a fifth DDG-51 destroyer. That destroyer was part of a multi-year construction award to BIW – announced in September 2018 – that included four other destroyers.

That means there are currently five DDG-51 destroyers in production at BIW. Bath is also building the third Zumwalt-class destroyer, the Lyndon B. Johnson (DDG-1002).

BIW is a subsidiary of General Dynamics.