PORTLAND – The Navy announced Tuesday the award of three contracts for Aegis guided missile destroyers, two of them to Bath Iron Works and one to a rival yard in Mississippi.

The $953.4 million in funding for the ships to be built at Bath was included in the Defense authorization and appropriations bills for fiscal 2004.

The two ships are scheduled for delivery in 2009.

The third destroyer will be built at Northrop Grumman’s Ingalls yard in Pascagoula, Miss., under a $420 million contract. That ship is to be delivered in 2008.

BIW’s two destroyers are included in a four-year contract in which the yard will build a total of seven of the ships, U.S. Sen. Susan Collins said.