The US Navy issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) on 19 March to Huntington Ingalls Industries for a two-ship acquisition of CVN 80 and CVN 81 in an effort to achieve cost savings.
The US Naval Air Systems Command published a statement regarding the issue, saying that two-ship buy is a contracting strategy the Navy has effectively used in the 1980s to procure Nimitz-class aircraft carriers and achieved significant acquisition cost savings compared to contracting for the ships individually.
The Navy plans to award the CVN 80 construction contract in early FY 2019 as a two-ship buy pending Congressional approval and achieving significant savings. USS Enterprise (CVN 80) is the third ship of the Gerald R. Ford class and the numerical replacement for USS Eisenhower (CVN 69). CVN 81, not yet named, will be the fourth ship of the class and will be the numerical replacement for USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70).
