US Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer has named the future Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer DDG 128 in honour of the late US Senator Ted Stevens, who represented Alaska from 1968 to 2009.
Stevens served as a pilot in the US Army Air Corps in World War II and later became a two-term Alaska state representative prior to becoming a five-term US Senator. He left office in 2009, just over a year before his death in an airplane crash, as the then-longest serving Republican US Senator in history.
The future USS Ted Stevens will be constructed at Huntington Ingalls Industries' Ingalls Shipbuilding division in Pascagoula, Mississippi.