I don't see any "throw a third carrier in for free" mentioned in that article.

The link says the savings from Newport would be $1.6B.

It also quotes the Navy acquisitions chief pointing out "about a third of the cost of a carrier comes from government-furnished equipment that the Navy would contract for separately" and that he previously said the overall savings of ordering two at once would be around $2.5B after considering similar efficiencies of "scale" from those vendors.

Considering the cost[1] of these Ford-class carriers is around $13B this represents a savings of about 10% overall, at least according to my crude, back-of-the-napkin math [ 2.5B/(2x13B) or 1.6B/(2/3x2x13B) ].

So it might be closer to "buy 10, get one free".

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_R._Ford-class_aircraf...

Please don't give them any ideas...