The USS Green Bay, a hulking warship that transports and lands Marines throughout the Indo-Pacific, will switch its home port to San Diego Monday, creating a big pay day for a local shipyard.
The 684-foot vessel, which has been stationed in Japan for years, will enter the BAE Systems yard in Barrio Logan in February to undergo repairs and upgrades that could cost as much as $239 million, the Pentagon says.
The contract could have a stabilizing influence on BAE, whose workforce has dropped by nearly half since 2023, falling to about 650.
The company has struggled to pull in large new contracts, although things have picked up lately. BAE was recently awarded a $178 million contract by the Pentagon to repair and modernize the USS Halsey, a guided-missile destroyer.
The agency also just gave Continental Maritime, a competing San Diego shipyard, a $64 million contract to repair and upgrade the USS Russell, another Arleigh Burke-class destroyer.
The Russell returned from a consequential eight-month deployment in October, part of which was spent helping to protect the San Diego-based aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in the Middle East. The TR had been ordered to the region to help protect Israel from possible attack by Iran.
The region has been a perilous site for local warships. The U.S. Central Command said that two San Diego-based destroyers, the USS Stockdale and USS O’Kane, knocked down missiles fired on Sunday and Monday in the Gulf of Aden by the Houthis.
“The destroyers were escorting three U.S. owned, operated, flagged merchant vessels and the reckless attacks resulted in no injuries and no damage to any vessels, civilian or U.S. Naval,” Central Command said in a statement.
