The U.S. Navy commissioned its latest guided-missile destroyer Saturday at Naval Station Norfolk, the most recent American warship named for a service member who earned the Medal of Honor in Vietnam.
USS Harvey C. Barnum Jr., hull quantity DDG 124, entered energetic service in a ceremony attended by roughly 1,800 company, in line with a launch from Commander, Naval Floor Pressure Atlantic. Retired Col. Harvey C. “Barney” Barnum Jr., 85, sat within the crowd. His spouse, Martha Hill, serves because the ship’s sponsor and delivered the standard order to convey the ship to life.
Secretary of the Navy John C. Phelan gave the principal tackle. Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. James W. Kilby and Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Eric M. Smith additionally spoke.
Cmdr. Ben Cantu is the ship’s first commanding officer. Barnum’s niece, Chief Petty Officer Courtney Dion, even reported aboard as a hospital corpsman.
The Final of a Line
The Barnum is the 74th Arleigh Burke-class destroyer delivered to the Navy because the class entered service with the commissioning of USS Arleigh Burke at Norfolk on July 4, 1991.
DDG 124 is among the many final Flight IIA Expertise Insertion variants the Navy will tackle earlier than manufacturing shifts to the newer Flight III. Flight III ships carry the AN/SPY-6 radar. The Barnum carries the older AN/SPY-1D(V) phased array paired with the Aegis Baseline 9 fight system.
The destroyer measures about 509 toes in size, has a 66-foot beam and displaces roughly 9,200 tons, in line with Normal Dynamics Tub Iron Works, which constructed the ship at its yard on the Kennebec River in Maine. 4 GE LM2500 gasoline generators drive the hull previous 30 knots. A crew of about 300 sailors operates the vessel. Two MH-60R Seahawk helicopters are saved in a double hangar aft.
Major armament is a 96-cell Mk 41 Vertical Launch System that fires Tomahawk cruise missiles, Customary Missile variants, Developed Sea Sparrow and VL-ASROC anti-submarine rockets. A 5-inch Mk 45 gun is mounted on the bow. A Phalanx close-in weapon system, two Mk 38 25 mm gun mounts and Mk 32 torpedo tubes spherical out the armament.
The Navy funded DDG 124 beneath a $644 million contract modification awarded to the shipyard in March 2016 as a part of a multi-year destroyer buy. Development started in Might 2018. The keel was laid April 6, 2021 and the ship was christened July 29, 2023.
The Navy accepted supply on Nov. 17, 2025, after dockside and underway trials. DDG 124 left Tub on March 4, 2026, and docked at Norfolk 16 days later.
The crew has taken the nickname Grizzlies. The ship’s battle flag carries a grizzly bear, drawn from a line Barnum is commonly quoted saying, “If you are going to be a bear, be a grizzly.”
Ky Phu, December 1965
Barnum was 25 years outdated and on short-term obligation in South Vietnam when his Medal of Honor motion passed off.
On Dec. 18, 1965, he was serving as a ahead observer for artillery with Firm H, 2nd Battalion, ninth Marines, third Marine Division, outdoors the village of Ky Phu in Quang Tin Province. The motion occurred throughout Operation Harvest Moon.
His firm was caught in a crossfire, separated from the remainder of the battalion by greater than 500 meters of uncovered floor and taking casualties quick, in line with his Medal of Honor quotation on the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.
The rifle firm commander was mortally wounded within the opening minutes. The radio operator was killed. Barnum, a primary lieutenant, gave help to the dying commander, took the radio off the lifeless operator, strapped it on himself and assumed command of the corporate.
He reorganized the surviving Marines beneath hearth and led an assault towards the enemy positions. With two armed helicopters on station, he directed air strikes towards the dug-in North Vietnamese whereas steering one platoon by a counterattack that cleared key terrain. He then known as in transport helicopters, coordinated the evacuation of the lifeless and wounded, and pushed his firm by to the battalion’s goal.
The motion made Barnum the fourth Marine to obtain the Medal of Honor for service in Vietnam, in line with the Marine Corps Historical past Division at Marine Corps College.
He returned to Vietnam in 1968 as commander of Battery E, 2nd Battalion, twelfth Marines, and constructed greater than a dozen hearth bases throughout Operation Dewey Canyon. He retired as a colonel in 1989 after greater than 27 years in uniform and later served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Reserve Affairs.
Solely a small variety of U.S. warships have been named for a residing individual.
“Our energy will not be constructed on know-how alone, however on belief, belief that we’ll stand by each other and that nobody will ever be left behind,” Barnum advised the crew on the ceremony.
One Hull, a Greater Downside
The Barnum enters service because the Navy’s shipbuilding program continues to fall wanting its personal plans.
A February 2025 Authorities Accountability Workplace report discovered that 37 of 45 Navy ships beneath development, about 85 %, have been working between 5 months and greater than three years not on time. The Navy had deliberate a 313-ship battle pressure for 2025 beneath earlier projections however anticipated to finish the yr with 287.
Between fiscal 2019 and 2023, the Navy deliberate to simply accept supply of 15 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers and 11 Virginia-class assault submarines, the GAO stated. It obtained seven destroyers and 4 submarines throughout that point.
A day earlier than the Barnum was commissioned, the Navy League’s Middle for Maritime Technique printed “Pier Evaluation,” a report warning of an “atrophy” of the American maritime industrial base and arguing that the US can’t rebuild alone.
The nonpartisan suppose tank’s report recommends seven aims, with the heaviest emphasis on pulling in allies, particularly the Republic of Korea, Italy, Canada, Sweden and the UK, to open allied yards, share technical frameworks and assist provide expert labor.
The report requires a “collective revitalization of the allied maritime industrial base,” with Kenneth Braithwaite, the 77th secretary of the Navy, writing within the foreword that the US should lean on its naval allies to fulfill the challenges forward.
The Trump administration’s reply has been its personal initiative, introduced by the president on Dec. 22, 2025, and branded the Golden Fleet. The plan requires a mixture of manned and unmanned combatants, a brand new Trump-class battleship program, a frigate primarily based on the Coast Guard’s Legend-class Nationwide Safety Cutter and continued Arleigh Burke manufacturing.
The Pentagon’s fiscal 2027 funds request seeks $65.8 billion for shipbuilding, the most important such request in actual {dollars} since 1962, in line with Congressional Funds Workplace information
Phelan has stated the yards might want to rent roughly 250,000 staff over the subsequent decade to fulfill demand, with a couple of quarter of the present shipyard workforce eligible to retire inside 5 years.
Tub Iron Works has seven extra destroyers beneath development behind the Barnum, together with the long run USS Louis H. Wilson Jr. (DDG 126), USS Patrick Gallagher (DDG 127), USS William Charette (DDG 130), USS Quentin Walsh (DDG 132), USS John E. Kilmer (DDG 134), USS Richard G. Lugar (DDG 136) and USS J. William Middendorf (DDG 138).
“This ship will not be symbolic, it’s fight energy,” Phelan stated on the ceremony.
