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Defense tech company Anduril will build a new shipyard outside Baltimore to make parts for the Navy’s Virginia-class submarines, a project worth up to $6.6 billion that the company and the White House announced earlier this week.

Getting into it: Anduril is putting $3.7 billion of its own money into the 2-million-square-foot facility, called Arsenal-2, at Sparrows Point in Baltimore County, and the Navy awarded the company a contract worth up to $2.9 billion that only pays out based on what the shipyard actually produces. Anduril says the shipyard will create about 3,100 direct jobs and support more than 11,000 others, with initial operations expected in 2030.

The shipyard will start by building torpedo tubes and other smaller parts before moving on to full hull sections. In the meantime, Anduril will also begin making submarine parts at a new facility in Orange County, California. The Virginia-class subs are built by General Dynamics Electric Boat and HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding, which have been producing about one a year instead of the Navy’s goal of two because of late parts and a shortage of skilled workers. A senior administration official said the new shipyard could boost Virginia-class production capacity by about 15%.

“We need to grow the maritime industrial base, the submarine industrial base, so that we can produce more submarines,” said Anduril President Chris Brose. “This is not about taking food off the plate of anybody. This is about putting more food on the table and being able to meet the requirements that our country has to produce more submarines.”

President Trump spoke at the site Tuesday, saying the area “will roar with the sound of high-tech manufacturing, building ships, and submarines that will be feared by our enemies all over the world,” while Maryland Gov. Wes Moore called it the largest private investment and the biggest job creator in the state in more than a decade.

The deal marks the first time Anduril has gotten a piece of one of the military’s big, long-running weapons programs. The company is best known for drones and autonomous weapons and opened a $1 billion drone factory in Ohio this year.

This all comes shortly after the Pentagon picked Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey to co-lead Project Meridian, a study on what weapons the military will need in the future. The appointment has some asking whether it’s a conflict of interest while his company keeps landing big government deals, though Pentagon technology chief Emil Michael said, “There’s really nothing to see here.”