The Navy destroyer Laboon wrapped up a historic deployment and returned to Naval Station Norfolk on Sunday — concluding 279 days at sea.
Laboon was one of several destroyers, including the Carney and the Mason, that has operated in the Middle East and helped take down a barrage of Iran-backed Houthi drones and missiles in the region for months.
For example, the destroyer and F/A-18 Super Hornets from the aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower took out 12 one-way attack drones, three anti-ship ballistic missiles, and two land attack cruise missiles in December.
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“It has been a challenging nine month deployment to hostile waters, but this team demonstrated time and again just how capable our warships are and that we have the best trained most professional warfighters in the world ready to bring the fight to any enemy,” Cmdr. Eric Blomberg, commanding officer of the Laboon, said in a Navy news release.
The Laboon also participated in Operation Prosperity Guardian, a U.S. and international operation to safeguard international shipping vessels in the Red Sea, the Bab al-Mandeb, and Gulf of Aden during this deployment.
Additionally, the destroyer rescued three mariners from a distressed vessel in March.
The Navy beefed up its presence in the Middle East starting in October after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent retaliatory strikes in Gaza.
Naval assets sent to the region in October included the Eisenhower, marking the first time a U.S. aircraft carrier sailed in Middle Eastern waters since the end of the Afghanistan war in 2021. The aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln are now both operating there.
