- The US Navy is deploying a guided-missile destroyer to police the southern border.
- The USS Gravely previously finished a nine-month deployment fighting the Houthis in the Red Sea.
- The warship is armed with the long-range Tomahawk, a powerful missile used for striking land targets.
The Navy said on Saturday that the USS Gravely, a guided-missile destroyer that saw combat in the Red Sea last year, is being sent to the US southern border.
The Arleigh Burke-class warship’s presence would help “restore territorial integrity at the US southern border,” officials said in a statement.
“Gravely’s sea-going capacity improves our ability to protect the United States’ territorial integrity, sovereignty, and security,” said Gen. Gregory Guillot, who leads US Northern Command.
The statement provided few details of the Gravely’s mission but said its deployment was made under President Donald Trump’s executive orders to protect the southern border.
In January, Trump declared a national emergency at the US-Mexico border, which he said needed troops to deal with a flood of illegal migration. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said that he views the border situation as a matter of national security.
As part of its deployment, the Gravely carries a US Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment, a squad of elite operators specializing in maritime missions like intercepting drug-trafficking ships and fighting pirates.
Policing the US’ southern waters is an unusual task for a destroyer with the Gravely’s firepower. Such missions are usually carried out by US border authorities and the Coast Guard.
A warship that saw combat for nine months
Before this new deployment, the Gravely was one of several warships accompanying the Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier for its extended nine-month deployment in the Red Sea.
There, the Gravely spent months shooting down drones and missiles launched by Yemen’s Houthi rebels. It also carried out long-range strikes on Houthi land targets with its vertically launched Tomahawk missiles — part of a coordinated US-UK effort to preemptively destroy Houthi weapons before they could fire.
Additionally, the destroyer was documented using a “non-kinetic” weapon system to fend off drones.
This Middle East deployment was notable for the US Navy because of how intense and frequent the fighting grew, which allowed the Ike group to gain valuable active combat experience.
By the end of its twice-extended deployment in June, the carrier group had fired nearly 800 munitions and logged over 12,000 aircraft sorties.
Now, the US is sending some of that military might to its south. The Gravely is over 500 feet in length, meaning it’s far bigger than any of the typical cutters used by the US Coast Guard.
Washington has two key areas of concern in its southern waters: The Gulf of Mexico, which Trump has renamed the Gulf of America, and the Caribbean Sea on Panama’s coast.
Trump has said that he wants to retake control of the Panama Canal, complaining about fees charged to US commercial ships and Chinese influence over the waterway.
Meanwhile, thousands of people attempt to cross the Gulf of Mexico to illegally enter the US every year. The US Coast Guard warns that the journey is often dangerous and can be deadly because smugglers tend to use old, unsafe boats to carry migrants.
The gulf is also a major route for drug smuggling by cartels, which Trump designated as foreign terrorist organizations immediately after he took office.
The Pentagon and US Northern Command’s press teams did not respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.
