The military’s largest shipbuilder is bracing for a potential “headwind” should the Navy push the next block buy of Virginia-class fast-attack submarines to next year, as lawmakers look to protect naval shipyard jobs from the Trump administration’s workforce cuts.

Negotiated agreements for the Navy’s Virginia-class Block VI attack boats and Build II of the Columbia-class ballistic nuclear missile submarines are expected to wrap up later this year, HII’s CEO Chris Kastner said last week during the company’s second quarterly earnings call.

“The good news is that we had a construct that was put together under Block V that we can follow as we move into Block VI. Now it's going to take some time…But it could slip into Q4 and we'll do them incrementally,” he said.

That slip could become mor

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