  
Building upon its long history of new construction work for the U.S. Navy, Northrop Grumman Ship Systems has extended it heritage of building and modernizing complex combatant ships into the international naval market.
 This effort began with the SA’AR 5 Corvette
program for the State of Israel. This three-ship Corvette program, completed by Ingalls in
February 1995, has been heralded as the smoothest first of class design to construction in
modern naval history. The SA’AR 5 Class was the first warship class in the world to
be totally designed in 3-D Computer-Aided Design (CAD). Ingalls employees completed the
detail design of the Israeli corvettes using the three-dimensional capabilities of the
Company's industry-leading Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and Engineering (CAE) system. With
CAD / CAE, design modifications suitable to the customer's needs -- are made more easily,
with design interferences being eliminated during in the development process.
The Israeli Corvettes are 86.4 meters (283.5 feet) long,
and displace approximately 1,200 metric tons.
 Today, the Northrop Grumman Ship Systems international family of combatant ships includes: A 62-meter Multimission Missile Boat, a 62-meter Customs Patrol Ship, an 85-meter Corvette, a 128-meter Frigate, and a 150-meter Multipurpose Amphibious Ship. Ship Systems is currently working with a number of potential international customers, in the Pacific Rim as well as in Europe and the Middle East, to supply its combatants for those countries' military and non-military requirements.
Ingalls recently completed work under a contract the government of Venezuela, to overhaul and modernize two Venezuelan Armada frigates, MARISCAL SUCRE (F-21) AND ALMIRANTE BRION (F-22). Work performed at Ingalls has included repairs to the ships' hulls, replacement of propulsion diesel engines, upgrading gas turbine engines, replacing the ships' electrical generating plants and machinery control systems, as well as upgrading shipboard command and control systems in the ships' Combat Information Centers. Additionally, all weapons systems were overhauled.
In 1996, Ingalls prepared two U.S. Navy frigates for
transfer to international fleets. The former USS GALLERY (FFG 26) is now serving in the
Egyptian Navy as ENS TABA (F 916); and the former USS JACK WILLIAMS (FFG 24) became BANS
SABHA in the Bahrain Armed Forces. In September 1997, Ingalls signed a contract with the
Bahrain Defense Force for the life-cycle support of BANS SABHA. The contract calls for
Ingalls to perform engineering, material procurement, production and logistics work as
needed.
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