US Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer has named a future Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer in honour of US Senator Sam Nunn, who represented the State of Georgia from 1972 to 1997.
Mr Nunn served in the US Coast Guard from 1959 to 1960 and remained in the Coast Guard Reserve until 1968. He then became a Georgia State Representative prior to being elected to the US Senate.
Among other things, Mr Nunn, as chairman of the US Senate Committee on Armed Services, helped draft the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which provided assistance to Russia and the former Soviet republics in securing and destroying their excess nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.
The future USS Sam Nunn will be constructed by Huntington Ingalls Industries in Pascagoula, Mississippi.