Tom Stevens, the director of ground assembly at Navy shipbuilder Bath Iron Works, spoke with AP News about the future of shipbuilding. He said the new class of next-generation guided-missile destroyers (DDG(X)) would replace the service's Arleigh Burke-class destroyers and the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers.

The first contracts for building DDG(X) vessels were awarded to General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works in Maine and Huntington Ingalls Industries in Mississippi earlier this summer.

The Navy recently disclosed that combat systems from the Flight III Arleigh Burke-class (most modernized Arleigh Burke-class destroyers) and the propulsion system from the failed Zumwalt-class destroyers would be embedded into the future DDG(X).