The U.S. Navy will commission its latest destroyer this Saturday in Whittier. The USS Ted Stevens is named for Alaska’s longtime U.S. Senator and it brings state-of-the-art technology for missile and air defense to the world’s waters, Navy officials said.
Ted Stevens was a titan of Alaska politics, serving in the U.S. Senate from 1968 to 2009. He was a driving force behind landmark legislation for the state, including the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act.
Naming the vessel after Stevens honors his lifetime of public service, said Capt. Mary Katey Hays, the commanding officer of the late senator’s namesake destroyer.
“Whether it was serving in the Army Air Corps during World War II, advocating for statehood, or later on in the Senate, everything he did revolved around serving his community,” Hays said during a tour of the U.S.S. Ted Stevens on Thursday. “And I think that’s a really important lesson-not just for our sailors, but for everyone. We can all make our communities better.”
Stevens died in a plane crash in 2010 at the age of 86.
Navy officials announced in 2019 that a new destroyer would be named in Stevens’ honor. Construction began in Mississippi in 2020 and the vessel was officially launched three years later. Hays said she’s been around for much of the process.
“I’ve been here the longest,” Hays said. “I’ve been here four years, and some crew members are pretty new. Some of them even reported just last week.”
The ship measures 510.5 feet long and 66 feet wide, carrying a crew of roughly 340. It’s a newer, Flight 3 destroyer with an updated radar system that sets it apart from past destroyers, Hays said.
“We have the SPY-6 air missile defense radar, which is a technological leap above the earlier destroyers,” she said. “So it’s an all-digital radar and it can see pretty much anything, anything in the air. It’s all digital. It’s very, very powerful. It’s much more powerful than our previous radar.”
The USS Ted Stevens will be homeported in Norfolk, Va., and can be deployed anywhere in the world, Hays said. Its primary duty is providing missile and air defense for carrier strike groups.
“We’re globally deployable,” Hays said. “So wherever the mission takes us, we’ll be there. Whether it’s here in the snowy part of Alaska or way down south, we can go anywhere and get the job done.”
The Ted Stevens arrived in Anchorage on Sunday after traveling up from Florida. Part of the trip involved going through the Panama Canal, where Hays said there was only a few feet of wiggle room on each side of the vessel as it went through the canal’s locks.
“It’s like parallel parking if like other people are honking at you, and you’re like, you know, everyone’s watching, and all the things nobody wants,” Hays said.
Navy officials say they chose to commission the ship in Whittier since it’s a port in Stevens’ home state with easy access to resources in Anchorage. The Ted Stevens even includes a painted Alaska flag on top of its large artillery gun on the front — or fo’c’sle — of the vessel.
Crew members were ecstatic to visit Alaska, Hays said.
“When it hit everybody is when we pulled into Whittier here, and we were like, ‘Wow!'” Hays said. “And all of a sudden, it was like the light bulb went off, and it was like this amazing, like ‘this is going to be the most special week of our lives,’ and it was. I mean, there were like otters out here and whales, and we were like, ‘Okay, we got to focus on docking the ship.'”
The USS Ted Stevens will officially be commissioned on Saturday, Oct. 3.
