US Navy Commissions Flight III Destroyer USS Ted Stevens in Alaska
The U.S. Navy has commissioned USS Ted Stevens (DDG 128), its newest Flight III Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, in a ceremony held on October 3, 2026, in Whittier, Alaska. The warship, fitted with the AN/SPY-6(V)1 Air and Missile Defense Radar and the Aegis Baseline 10 combat system, is the third Flight III destroyer to enter active service and will be homeported in Norfolk, Virginia.
Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao delivered the principal address, telling the crew and guests that the ship had moved from preparing to join the fleet to being part of it. The destroyer is commanded by Capt. Mary Katey Hayes, who said the crew was ready to answer the nation’s call. The ship’s motto is “Lead with Courage.”
A Commissioning Far From the Shipyard
Holding the ceremony in Alaska rather than at a traditional Navy port underlined the link between the ship and its namesake. Ted Stevens represented Alaska in the U.S. Senate from 1968 to 2009 and was a leading advocate for the territory’s admission as a state. Before entering politics he flew transport missions as an Army Air Forces pilot in the China-Burma-India theater during the Second World War, earning two Distinguished Flying Crosses and two Air Medals.
The ship’s sponsors are his wife, Catherine Ann Stevens, and his daughters Susan Stevens Covich and Lily Stevens Becker. In keeping with Navy tradition, the sponsors gave the order to “man our ship and bring her to life,” after which the crew ran aboard to take up their stations.
Ted Stevens was built by Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Ingalls Shipbuilding division in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and was delivered to the Navy in late 2025 before beginning the transit and crew certification steps that precede commissioning.
What Flight III Adds
The Flight III configuration is the most significant change to the Arleigh Burke design since the class entered service in the early 1990s. Its centerpiece is the Raytheon AN/SPY-6(V)1, an active electronically scanned array radar built from modular “radar modular assemblies.” Compared with the legacy SPY-1D, the Navy says SPY-6 offers markedly greater sensitivity, allowing it to detect smaller targets at longer ranges and to track ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, aircraft and drones simultaneously.
Powering and cooling that radar required deeper changes to the hull. Flight III ships carry upgraded electrical generation and power distribution and expanded air-conditioning capacity. Those margins are also intended to leave room for future systems, including higher-power sensors and directed-energy weapons.
The Aegis Baseline 10 combat system integrates the new radar with the ship’s vertical launch system, which can field Standard Missile variants for area air defense and ballistic missile defense, Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles for point defense, and Tomahawk land-attack missiles. The Navy describes the combination as giving Flight III destroyers an integrated air and missile defense capability able to defend a carrier strike group or operate independently against advanced threats.
Program Context
USS Ted Stevens follows USS Jack H. Lucas (DDG 125), the lead Flight III ship commissioned in 2023, as the third ship of the configuration in active service. Further Flight III hulls are under construction at both Ingalls and General Dynamics Bath Iron Works under multi-year procurement contracts. The Navy plans to keep building the class into the 2030s while it develops the next-generation DDG(X) destroyer.
The Arleigh Burke class remains the backbone of the U.S. surface combatant force. With the Ticonderoga-class cruisers being retired, Flight III destroyers are expected to take on a growing share of the air defense commander role in strike groups, a task that depends heavily on SPY-6 performance.
Operational and Strategic Significance
The commissioning comes at a time of heavy demand on U.S. surface combatants. Destroyers have spent much of the past two years intercepting missiles and drones in the Red Sea and wider Middle East, and the Navy has acknowledged the strain that high-tempo deployments place on ships, crews and magazine inventories. Each additional Flight III hull adds a sensor-rich platform optimized for exactly that kind of mission.
The ship’s Norfolk homeport places it within the Atlantic Fleet, where it is likely to support Mediterranean, Middle East and North Atlantic deployments. Its radar is also designed to contribute to ballistic missile defense networks that link Navy ships with allied sensors, an area of increasing interest for NATO partners in Europe.
For the Navy, the ceremony also served as a reminder of the shipbuilding challenge it faces. Officials have repeatedly cited workforce and supply-chain constraints at U.S. yards as the main obstacle to growing the fleet. Bringing a third Flight III destroyer into service marks steady progress for a program that has had to absorb a major radar and power upgrade while staying in serial production.
What Comes Next
Following commissioning, USS Ted Stevens is expected to sail to Norfolk and begin the basic training phase, combat system qualification trials and crew certification that typically precede a ship’s first operational deployment.
Sources
- Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS) — “Today, Ted Stevens is the fleet”: Secretary of the Navy commissions USS Ted Stevens
- U.S. Navy press release — Navy Announces Commissioning of the Future USS Ted Stevens
- Naval News — U.S. Navy Commissions Flight III Destroyer USS Ted Stevens (DDG 128) in Alaska
