U.S. Navy's newest destroyer arrives in Alaska

The U.S. Navy’s newest destroyer, the future USS Ted Stevens (DDG 128), arrived in Whittier, Alaska, on Sept. 27, less than a week before it is due to be formally commissioned there in a ceremony the state has not hosted in more than a decade.

The Flight III Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer will be commissioned Oct. 3, 2026, in the small port town on Prince William Sound, the U.S. Navy said. Commissioning is the ceremony at which a ship officially joins the fleet and the crew takes charge of it. The last Navy ship commissioned in Alaska was the amphibious transport dock USS Anchorage (LPD 23), in Anchorage on May 4, 2013.

The ship is named for Ted Stevens, a decorated World War II Army Air Corps pilot who went on to represent Alaska in the U.S. Senate for four decades and became a leading voice on defense spending. It is the first Navy warship to carry his name. Alaska’s congressional delegation and state officials pushed to hold the ceremony in the state, and then-Secretary of the Navy John Phelan approved Whittier as the location in March.

After the ceremony, the destroyer will not stay in Alaska. Its homeport is Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, where it arrived in May after delivery trials.

Ted Stevens was built by Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Ingalls Shipbuilding division in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and delivered to the U.S. Navy in December 2025. It is one of the Flight III ships, the latest version of the Arleigh Burke design, which has been in production since the 1980s and makes up the backbone of the U.S. Navy’s surface fleet.

The main change in Flight III is the AN/SPY-6(V)1 air and missile defense radar, which can detect and track aircraft, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles at longer range than the SPY-1 radar on earlier Arleigh Burke destroyers. The ship also carries the Aegis Baseline 10 combat system and has more electrical power and cooling capacity to run its newer sensors and weapons. The destroyer displaces about 9,700 tons and can carry out air defense, ballistic missile defense, anti-submarine and surface warfare missions.

Holding the ceremony in Alaska ties the ship to the U.S. Navy’s growing presence in the far north. The Navy said it maintains a persistent operational presence in Alaska, including high-latitude maritime security operations, and the state sits along the northern Pacific and Arctic sea lanes that link North America with Asia.

Ted Stevens is part of a steady stream of new Flight III destroyers entering the fleet from Ingalls and from General Dynamics’ Bath Iron Works in Maine. The U.S. Navy has not said where the ship will make its first deployment or when it will join a carrier strike group.

The commissioning ceremony is scheduled for Oct. 3 in Whittier.

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