Navy offers new strategy for building destroyers

The next-generation Navy destroyer hasn’t even been built yet, but it already has been adrift for months on a stormy sea.

Plans for the program – which is crucial to the future of Maine’s largest manufacturing company – have taken radical turns as the Navy and Congress pushed their respective agendas.

The Navy called for major changes to the procurement process, and Congress blocked that effort. A Senate committee added millions of dollars to the DD(X) program while the House counterpart cut more than a billion.