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November 15, 2024

National partnership aims to entice Connecticut companies into submarine supply chain

PHOTO | GENERAL DYNAMICS ELECTRIC BOAT A Virginia-class attack submarine.
By Harriet Jones

East Hartford’s Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology hopes to draw additional Connecticut manufacturers into the region’s submarine supply chain through a new training partnership.

CCAT is pairing with Texas-based nonprofit, BlueForge Alliance, to provide technical training in additive manufacturing for the state’s supply chain companies.

BlueForge, which was founded in 2022, is an offshoot of Texas A&M University’s Engineering Experiment Station. In September of this year, the organization won a $951 million Navy contract to help grow the submarine industrial base in the U.S.

“It’s about identifying those technologies that can improve the productivity of the existing industrial base while giving a bit of a leg up to companies that are considering going into the maritime industrial base,” said CCAT president and CEO Ron Angelo.

“Maybe you've got a company that is a very good aerospace supplier now saying I've got capacity and I can actually be a valuable contributor to the submarine industrial base or supply chain,” he said.

Angelo says the collaboration positions CCAT to be the regional lead in the federal government’s multibillion-dollar push to grow the submarine industrial base.

The partnership will give the center access to new resources to build out its additive manufacturing training center.

“Advanced equipment used to come online in about a six-to-eight year cycle,” Angelo said. “We're seeing cycles that are more along the lines of two to four years. So. as we're training people and as we're exploring additive, the technology is getting better and better.”

He says the BlueForge partnership is also likely to encompass digital thread and industrial automation technologies in the future.

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