Brian Carter built much of his career in shipyards. In the Lowcountry, he is trying to build a Navy supplier out of a Goose Creek steel fabricator, a family shipyard on Yonges Island that dates to 1962 and a Michigan manufacturer.

Carter is chief executive of Keel, a Ladson-based defense manufacturer that makes submarine modules and components, aircraft carrier components and other complex structures for the Navy, according to Gov. Henry McMaster’s office. On Oct. 29, Keel opened a prep and paint facility at its Yonges Island shipyard in Meggett, the first of three buildings in a $67 million expansion the company has said will create 170 jobs, WCSC Live 5 reported.

At the ceremony, Carter said the paint shop moves Keel toward its goal of delivering fully outfitted submarine modules and that the next building should break ground in about three months, Live 5 reported.

A shipbuilder’s resume

Carter spent almost 10 years at General Dynamics NASSCO in San Diego, where he developed more than $1 billion of new construction business, Marine Log reported in 2011. He then founded Brizo Maritime, a consulting firm that advised Seaspan on its bid for Canadian federal shipbuilding contracts. Seaspan named him president of Seaspan Shipyards, its group of three British Columbia shipyards, starting in January 2012, the trade publication reported.

He has an MBA from the University of California San Diego and a mechanical engineering degree from Seattle University, and he studied naval architecture and marine engineering at the University of Washington, according to the 2011 announcement.

In September 2023, Pegasus Steel, a Goose Creek maker of steel structures for submarines and aircraft carriers, named Carter its incoming CEO. Arlington Capital Partners, a Washington-area private equity firm, had bought Pegasus three months earlier in partnership with founder Tony Deering, the company said in a news release. The release credited Carter with growing Seaspan’s shipyards into an industry leader and adding thousands of jobs, and said he had most recently been the first operational executive at Nexii Building Solutions, a Canadian startup.

“I am excited to continue Tony’s legacy at Pegasus and lead a well-positioned team into its next phase of growth,” Carter said in the release.

Building Keel

Deering had grown Pegasus from a handful of employees cutting steel plates for military vehicles to more than 250 workers at three Lowcountry factories, The Post and Courier reported. In January 2024, Arlington announced Keel’s formation, combining Pegasus with two companies it had just bought: Metal Trades, the Yonges Island shipyard founded in 1962 by the late J.E. “Ted” Corbin Jr., and Michigan’s Merrill Technologies Group, according to the firm and the newspaper. A timeline on Keel’s website dates the merger of Pegasus and Metal Trades to 2023.

“Keel will play a pivotal role in delivering significant capability growth to the U.S. defense industrial base,” Carter said in a written statement at the time, The Post and Courier reported.

Keel now lists more than 1,150 employees and nine facilities on its website. Its Navy work has centered on superstructures for the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, which it delivers by truck or barge to General Dynamics Electric Boat and HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding, Breaking Defense reported in March 2025. It also makes components for future Ford-class aircraft carriers.

Carter has argued that Charleston sits in the right spot for that work.

“It’s critical that it’s an easy voyage, if you will, for both truckable and bargeable components to both Newport News and Electric Boat,” he told Breaking Defense. “But it’s far enough away where it’s a different labor market, and we can tap into some really great infrastructure here for training and developing our trades workforce.”

The Yonges Island waterfront, with access to the Intracoastal Waterway, “affords us a unique competitive advantage for building large steel modules and structures,” Carter said in a 2024 statement, The Post and Courier reported.

What comes next

The expansion’s three buildings are the paint facility, a fabrication building for Columbia-class superstructures and a building for employees, Carter told Breaking Defense.

“The expansion will enable Keel to add much-needed capacity and better help our U.S. Navy meet its stringent shipbuilding requirements,” Carter said when the state announced the project in October 2025.

Keel has publicized its ties to the Navy and its biggest shipbuilders this year. In March, Keel said it was among the nuclear Navy suppliers chosen for the first rollout of ShipOS, a Navy effort with Palantir Technologies that uses artificial intelligence to speed shipbuilding. In April, an announcement posted on Keel’s website listed it among the outside partners building submarine modules and aircraft carrier units for Newport News Shipbuilding.