The US Navy has found faulty pipe welds on Northrop Grumman-built destroyers, LPD assault ships and one LHD big-deck amphibious assault ship.
According to the Associated Press, the faults were discovered in late 2008 when emergency repairs were made on lube-oil piping on board a warship during its first deployment to Bahrain.
The US Navy's programme manager for the 17 LPD amphibious assault ships, Jay Stefany said that the navy would inspect nearly every pipe weld done in the past two years at Northrop Grumman's Pascagoula and Avondale shipyards.
"We're talking about thousands and thousands of welds to inspect and we're probably talking about hundreds of welds that need to be fixed on each ship," the Associated Press quoted Mr Stefany as saying. "We're not saying that it's going to fail tomorrow. It might fail in 30 years instead of 40. So it's fatigue service life issue that we are looking at now and not a near-term problem."
Mr Stefany said that inspectors would try to determine why the mistakes were not caught. He added that the navy and Northrop Grumman were in talks on how to pay for the repairs.