Electric Boat, a leading submarine builder and subsidiary of General Dynamics, announced plans to invest $25 million in a new submarine construction workforce training center in Warwick, Rhode Island. The initiative is a partnership with the New England Institute of Technology (NEIT) at their Post Road campus. This new facility, named the Shipbuilding Advanced Institute for Learning (SAIL), will significantly expand the current training space, growing from 30,000 square feet to 100,000 square feet.
Scheduled to become Electric Boat’s primary workforce training center for submarine shipbuilding within Rhode Island, the SAIL facility is designed to train approximately 3,000 new workers annually over the next several years. These new hires will subsequently move on to Electric Boat’s Quonset Point shipyard, a critical hub for submarine construction. In addition to onboarding new employees, the training center will provide ongoing skills development including recertification and upskilling opportunities for current Electric Boat workers.
The SAIL center will feature more than 20 classrooms and hands-on training stations in trades essential to submarine manufacturing such as welding, shipfitting, pipefitting, machining, sheet metal work, painting, and electrical work. This comprehensive curriculum aligns with industry demands to maintain and grow a skilled workforce capable of meeting the needs of the U.S. Navy’s submarine fleet construction and maintenance.
Supporting the $25 million investment from Electric Boat, the project also benefits from a $20 million contribution from the U.S. Navy’s Submarine Industrial Base program, reflecting the strategic importance of the facility to national defense industrial capabilities.
This expanded training partnership underscores a focused effort to strengthen the domestic submarine industrial base and to stabilize workforce pipelines in the sector. By investing in training infrastructure and workforce development, Electric Boat and its partners support the broader goal of sustaining critical manufacturing and defense production capacity in Rhode Island and the United States.
