USS Delbert D. Black

USS Jason Dunham, another Flight IIA Arleigh Burke-class destroyer.
History
United States
Name:	USS Delbert D. Black
Namesake:	First Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Delbert Black [1]
Builder:	Ingalls Shipbuilding
Laid down:	1 June 2016[2]
Launched:	TBA
Sponsored by:	Ima Black
Commissioned:	Expected 2018
Status:	Authorized
General characteristics
Class and type:	Arleigh Burke-class destroyer
Displacement:	9,200 long tons (9,300 t)
Length:	510 ft (160 m)
Draft:	33 ft (10 m)
Propulsion:	4 × General Electric LM2500-30 gas turbines, 2 shafts, 100,000 shp (75 MW)
Complement:	380 officers and enlisted
Armament:	1 × 32 cell, 1 × 64 cell Mk 41 vertical launch systems, 96 × RIM-66 SM-2, BGM-109 Tomahawk or RUM-139 VL-Asroc, missiles 1 × 5 in (130 mm)/62, 2 × 25 mm Mk 38, 4 × .50 cal (12.7 mm) guns 2 × Mk 46 triple torpedo tubes 1 × 20 mm Phalanx CIWS
Aircraft carried:	2 × SH-60 Sea Hawk helicopters
Aviation facilities:	Flight deck, Hangar bay

USS Delbert D. Black (DDG-119) will be an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer of the United States Navy. She is named in honor of Master Chief Petty Officer Delbert Black, the first Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy (MCPON), who died in 2000. He is remembered for establishing the role of the Navy's senior enlisted leader, and the ship naming is the culmination of a decade of advocacy by MCPONs to honor him with a combatant ship, believed to be the first time in many decades that a ship has been named for an enlisted person's superior performance and impact, rather than valor or personal sacrifice. Delbert D. Black will be the fourth of eight planned Flight IIA "technology insertion" ships, which will contain elements of the Flight III ships projected to begin with DDG-124.

As of January 2017, she is under construction at Ingalls Shipbuilding and is scheduled to be launched sometime in 2017.^[3]

References