The U.S. Navy has awarded Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding a $1.4 billion contract to build a new Zumwalt class destroyer and a major component of a second destroyer.

The work will be done at the company’s Gulfport shipworks.

Construction of a composite deckhouse for the first of the destroyers will begin late this year and work on the second will begin in late 2009.

The 600-foot ship carries a crew of 148 and is expected to be delivered to the Navy in 2014.