Navy destroyer returns home after Caribbean, Iran war deployments

After a little over eight months, the USS Thomas Hudner pulled into its home port this weekend. The Arleigh Burke-class destroyer returned to Naval Station Mayport, Florida, after more than half a year taking part in major U.S. combat operations and blockading oil tankers.

The ship left Mayport on Dec. 1, with its crew of 300 sailors heading south. The ship sailed to the Caribbean, as part of an armada of U.S. ships already there. Those ships would take part in the blockade of Venezuela, chasing and seizing oil tankers ahead of the January 2026 attack on Caracas that saw the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. In February, it was one of several Navy ships moved from the Caribbean to the Middle East, along with the aircraft carrier the USS Gerald R. Ford.

Once in the 5th Fleet area of responsibility, the destroyer took part in the opening strikes of Operation Epic Fury, the Pentagon’s name for the war with Iran. The guided-missile destroyer fired several of its Tomahawk land attack missiles at Iranian targets in the first month of the war. By the start of summer, the destroyer was sailing in the Red Sea, before returning to the eastern Mediterranean and then going home.

“I just can’t say enough about how amazing this crew is, all 300 of them — true American Patriots. We’ve been gone for nine months, a long time, and pulling in this morning here to Mayport to see our friends and family is just surreal and the best feeling in the world,” the ship’s leader, Cmdr. David Cook said, per local news.

Arleigh Burke-class destroyers have been the backbone of U.S. naval force projection in recent conflicts. The Thomas Hudner is among a handful of those destroyers that has repeatedly been deployed to join American military buildups. Several destroyers remain around the Red and Arabian seas as fighting with Iran continues. This year’s deployment to the Middle East was the second time in recent years that the Thomas Hudner was involved in fighting with Iran. 

Last summer the ship was sent to the Middle East, as U.S. forces worked to take out Iranian missiles aimed at Israel during the 12-Day War. There it worked in concert with ground-based U.S. air defense systems. Before that, the destroyer had been one of the ships sent to the U.S. Central Command area of operations in late 2023, where it was one of the first Navy vessels to engage in combat with Houthi militants in the Red Sea, intercepting drones and missiles fired at commercial vessels at the start of a year and a half of fighting around Yemen.

As the war with Iran has continued on, with starts and stops over two ceasefires and a renewed American blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, some of the ships on longer deployments have headed home. The USS Gerald R. Ford, which also spent time in the Caribbean, returned home to Norfolk, Virginia in May. The Ford and its carrier strike group were awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for their actions during a lengthy deployment. The United States maintains a large naval presence around the Middle East, anchored by the carriers USS Abraham Lincoln and USS George H.W. Bush.