US Navy names DDG 146 Arleigh Burke destroyer after former US Senator
The Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Bulkeley, an earlier entrant to the class. (Photo: US Navy/Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Joseph Macklin)
The latest of the Flight III Arleigh Burke vessels has been named for a former US Senator and Vietnam veteran.
The US Navy (USN) has named its latest Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, the DDG 146. It will be known as the USS Robert Kerrey.
The vessel was named after former US Senator and naval officer Joseph Robert Kerrey, at a ceremony at the Intrepid Museum. US Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro said it was an honour to name vessel after Kerrey, who served with distinction in the Vietnam war.
The DDG 146 was part of a 10-vessel procurement of Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyers made in August 2023, with delivery expected to run through FY2027, at a cost of US$26.1 billion.
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Arleigh Burke-class destroyers are built around the Aegis Combat System and have long been considered the backbone of the USN’s surface fleet.
While Flight III continues to move through the production process, adding to the overall number of destroyers in the US fleet, the navy is also extending the lifespan of some of its older Arleigh Burke-class vessels beyond their initially forecast working life.
As recently as November 2024, more than half of the original Flight I cohort of Arleigh Burke vessels were assigned an extension beyond their nominal 35-year lifespan.
At the time, Admiral Lisa Franchetti, chief of naval operations, said the life extension was in line with her NAVPLAN, which directed the navy to “get more ready players on the field”.
“Today’s budget-constrained environment requires the navy to make prioritised investments to keep more ready players on the field,” Franchetti explained.
The significantly reduced Zumwalt class vessels, which at one time were going to follow on from the Flight III Arleigh Burkes, have begun being fitted with hypersonic weaponry, but their flight has been cut from an initial expectation of 32 vessels to just three.
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