The US Navy has awarded HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding division a $5,099,973,132 contract for the refueling and complex overhaul (RCOH) of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75), the company announced on September 29, 2026. Options, if exercised, would lift the cumulative value to $5,183,380,744. Work will be performed in Newport News, Virginia, and is scheduled for completion by November 2031, according to the Pentagon’s contract announcement, with $547,826,087 in fiscal 2026 shipbuilding and conversion funds obligated at award.
The award moves Truman’s midlife overhaul from preparation to execution. Newport News received a $913 million advance planning contract in January 2024 covering engineering, design, material procurement, and pre-overhaul inspections. The Navy followed with a modification worth up to $276.1 million in August 2025 and a $97.68 million award for additional long-lead-time material in December 2025. Truman returned to Norfolk in June 2025 from an eight-month deployment that included combat operations against Houthi forces in the Red Sea, and has since been preparing to enter the yard.
Inside the Truman RCOH Contract: Reactors, Propulsion, and Combat Systems
The RCOH is the largest single maintenance event in a Nimitz-class carrier’s planned 50-year service life; HII says it represents nearly one-third of all maintenance and modernization a carrier receives over that span. At its center is the refueling of Truman’s two A4W pressurized water reactors, which have powered the ship since its commissioning on July 25, 1998. Publicly available specifications indicate the A4W plant drives four shafts at approximately 260,000 shaft horsepower, pushing the 1,092-foot, roughly 100,000-ton carrier past 30 knots. Replacing the original cores, designed for roughly 25 years of operation, resets the ship’s nuclear endurance.
Beyond refueling, the scope covers modernization work in thousands of compartments and tanks and on most ship systems, with major upgrades planned for the propulsion plant and combat systems, according to HII. Neither HII nor the Navy has publicly itemized the combat systems package or detailed which sensor, self-defense, or aviation support upgrades Truman will receive. That configuration will determine how well Truman holds up against evolving anti-ship missile threats through the end of its planned service life around 2048.
Bryan Caccavale, Newport News Shipbuilding vice president of program management, said the shipyard has been working to get ahead on the project, which will prepare the carrier “for the second half of her service life.” Truman will be the eighth Nimitz-class carrier to undergo RCOH at Newport News, the only US shipyard that builds and refuels nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.
Lessons From Stennis and George Washington Shape the CVN 75 Schedule
Schedule risk is the central programmatic concern. USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) began its RCOH at Newport News in 2021 under a $2.9 billion contract awarded that February, with redelivery originally planned for August 2025. Navy fiscal 2025 budget documents pushed that date to October 2026, a slip of about 14 months, and the service requested an additional $731.7 million to cover the extension. The shipyard attributed the delay to growth work found after arrival and to supply base challenges. USS George Washington (CVN 73) spent nearly six years in the yard for its own overhaul.
Navy officials said in 2024 that the Stennis extension would tie up labor needed for Truman and push back the start of its RCOH. The expanded advance planning effort, including two long-lead material modifications, aims to pull that risk forward by buying components and completing inspections before the carrier reaches the dry dock.
Truman will also be the first carrier under a revised crew model. Routine non-rate tasks previously assigned to sailors during RCOH, including painting, insulating, preservation, and transportation, are being shifted to contractors under an initiative from the Navy’s Quality of Service Cross-Functional Team. The Navy has awarded five contracts for that supplemental work, returning 690,000 labor hours to the crew and allowing a smaller ship’s company to focus on in-rate training. The initiative follows a 2023 Navy investigation into sailor deaths and living conditions aboard George Washington during its overhaul.
Analysis: The November 2031 completion date carries more weight than the headline dollar figure. HII has not said when Truman will arrive at Newport News, but if the ship enters the yard before the end of 2026, the contracted window implies an availability approaching five years, closer to the Stennis outcome than to its original plan. Near-term carrier availability softens the gap: USS John F. Kennedy (CVN 79) achieved preliminary acceptance on September 29, 2026, with delivery scheduled for March 2027, and Stennis is expected to complete its overhaul in October 2026. But with a statutory floor of 11 carriers and a single shipyard able to perform the work, any growth in Truman’s schedule translates directly into lost flight deck availability for combatant commanders.
The next milestones are Truman’s arrival at Newport News, which neither HII nor the Navy has dated publicly, followed by dry-docking and defueling. Key unknowns include the final combat systems configuration, the volume of growth work that condition assessments will expose once tanks and compartments are opened, and whether the shipyard can staff the overhaul alongside construction of the Ford-class carriers Enterprise (CVN 80) and Doris Miller (CVN 81). Stennis’s redelivery will be the first test of whether Newport News can clear one RCOH and absorb the next on schedule.