US defense contractor Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) and South Korea’s HD Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) have deepened their collaboration through a new agreement focused on enhancing US naval shipbuilding capacity.
The accord, signed at APEC 2025 in Gyeongju, highlights distributed production strategies, technology exchange, and potential co-investments.
The partnership will pursue upcoming US Navy auxiliary ship programs, integrating HII’s shipbuilding legacy with HHI’s commercial vessel expertise.
It also includes cooperation in automation, robotics, and AI/ML applications for modernizing shipyard operations, as well as lifecycle support for naval vessels in the Indo-Pacific.
This latest milestone extends a growing partnership between the two firms — following their April agreement to share production methods, a proposal from HHI to build Aegis destroyers for the US, and joint efforts on the Next-Generation Logistics Ship (NGLS) initiative.
