The U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Hopper (DDG 70) is scheduled to depart Hawaii on August 25 together with the Ticonderoga-class cruiser USS Port Royal (CG 73) for a surface action group deployment to the Arabian Gulf and Western Pacific Ocean.
While deployed, Hopper and its crew of more than 300 Sailors will conduct theater ballistic missile defense, security cooperation missions, and maritime presence operations with partner nations.
“It is Hopper’s turn to stand the watch forward and deployed to advance regional maritime security and enhance stability in the Indo-Asia-Pacific and upon the seas beyond,” said Commanding Officer CDR J.D. Gainey .
Commissioned September 6, 1997, Hopper is the second U.S. Navy ship named for a woman from the Navy’s own ranks. Rear Admiral “Amazing” Grace Hopper served the Navy for over forty years, and was one of the creators of early computer programming, in the Harvard Mark I Computer, completed in 1944. Her enduring legacies include the development of COBOL, a high-level computer programming language, and as a goodwill ambassador and example of success in the STEM field both for women and for officers in the naval profession.
Hopper is assigned to Destroyer Squadron 9 and is homeported in Hawaii within the U.S. 3rd Fleet Area of Operations.
USS Port Royal is the youngest of 27 U.S. Navy cruisers and has been sidelined in the Pearl Harbor port since 2012. This will be Port Royal’s first deployment in four years.