In the last two years, our Navy has said a lot about readiness, and untold numbers of articles have been written about maintenance difficulties, shortages of dry dock time, needed repairs, etc.

In most business areas, high demand for a good (maintenance) that is in short supply (dry dock and yard time), would mean that there is money to be made.

With each passing year, the mention of unmanned systems takes up a larger bit of the maritime space.

How is industry reacting to these two sectors?

Huntington Ingalls Shipbuilding has $46.5 billion worth of work to complete within 10 years or so, an amount Mike Petters, the company’s president and CEO, called an “unprecedented backlog of shipbuilding work” that would serve as a strong foundation for the future. It’s a future that also involves Huntington Ingalls selling its San Diego Shipyard to Titan Acquisition Holdings and focusing more on unmanned underwater technology.

Who is Titan? A bit difficult to find out, but it appears are a relatively new shipbuilding conglomerate formed by the merger of Oregon-based Vigor Industrial and Virginia-based MHI Holdings.

Huntington sees the money in two areas, existing deferred maintenance and the largess that comes from design, testing, and prototyping new concepts such as unmanned systems. Leverage one to move in to the second.

Looks like good bet. We’ll see what Congress does from here.