PASCAGOULA, MI — Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) announced Wednesday morning that it would be voiding a recent contract with the New York City Police Department to build a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser, citing ethical concerns with the response to the George Floyd protests. The pre-commissioned NYSS Cuomo (named after the elder governor) was intended exclusively for crowd control purposes, according to a spokesman for the NYPD, and “only non-lethal rubber bomblets were to be used in the warheads of all 122 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles on board.”
The legal repercussions of reneging on the estimated $250 million dollar contract have yet to be seen, but Huntington Ingalls CEO C. Michael Peters stands by his company’s decision, “We have been proud to build warships the United States Navy uses against foreign enemies, but we must draw the line when it comes to shelling Americans from the Hudson, and by the looks of it,” he said, “most of the NYPD is too fat to fit through a scuttle, anyway.”
Ingalls follows other industry leaders in refusing to arm civilian police departments, but New York officials are making the best of the situation. “We’re saddened that our former partner has decided not to join us on our journey of violent civilian control,” read Gov. Andrew Cuomo in a prepared statement, “but the steel’s already paid for, so we’ll probably build another bridge to Long Island.”
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