Newport News Shipbuilding has informed the Justice Department that there may be intentionally defective welds on non-critical components in operating submarines and aircraft carriers, according to a report from USNI News on Thursday.

According to a statement to USNI News, the flawed work was discovered by internal quality assurance systems and early indications indicate that some of the welding errors were intentional.

“We recently discovered through internal reports that the quality of some welds did not meet our high quality standards. Following this discovery, we took immediate action to communicate with our customers and regulators, investigate, determine the cause, resolve these issues and take immediate action.” “Take corrective action to prevent these issues from reoccurring.” , the statement says.

It continues: “Newport News Shipbuilding is committed to building the highest quality aircraft carriers and submarines for the U.S. Navy. We will not tolerate behavior that compromises our company’s values ​​and our mission to deliver ships that protect our nation and its sailors.”

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The Navy is now investigating the allegations and trying to estimate how badly the defective work is affected.

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“The Navy is aware of the issue and a thorough assessment is underway to determine the scope. The safety of our sailors and our ships is of utmost importance. We are working closely with industry partners to address this situation and will provide additional information as it becomes available,” the statement said.

Newport News Shipbuilding, a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII), is one of two nuclear shipyards in the United States and is currently working on the construction of the Ford-class aircraft carrier and parts of the Virginia-class attack submarine.

Original source of the article: Newport News Shipbuilding suspects intentionally defective welds on multimillion-dollar Navy vessels