General Dynamics Corp and Northrop Grumman Corp have agreed to a Pentagon deal that will allow all three of the Navy's stealth destroyers to be built at General Dynamics' Maine shipyard, The New York Times reported, citing Pentagon and industry officials.

Northrop Grumman, which had hoped to build one of the DDG-1000 destroyers at its Mississippi shipyard, will contribute major components for each of the vessels, the Times reported on its website on Wednesday.

Northrop will also receive contracts for two other destroyers as the Navy restarts production of an earlier model, the Times reported.

Earlier this week, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said during a press briefing that building all three DDG-1000 destroyers in one shipyard would be more cost-efficient.

But the decision to shift DDG-1000 work to General Dynamics was contingent on restarting work on the DDG-51 destroyers at the Northrop shipyard, Gates said on Monday when announcing several weapons programs cuts.

Gates had warned that failure to reach an agreement with military contractors would result in the construction of just one DDG-1000 by General Dynamics.

The U.S. Defense Department, the U.S. Navy, General Dynamics and Northrop had no immediate comment.

(Reporting by Anupreeta Das and Jim Wolf; Editing by Gary Hill)