Navy names new destroyer for Senator who was first SEAL awarded Medal of Honor

The Navy will name a new warship after former Senator Robert Kerrey, the first Navy SEAL to be awarded the Medal of Honor in Vietnam. After the Navy, Kerrey went on to a long political career as a governor, U.S senator and one-time candidate for President.

The USS Robert Kerrey will be an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, built around the Aegis radar system designed to defend Navy battle groups from air attack. The Kerrey will be the third Arleigh Burke-class ship named for a SEAL.

Kerrey, who has gone by Bob throughout his life, spent a long career in public service which began with three years in the Navy, leading SEAL teams on missions to capture or kill officers and other leaders of Viet Kong forces. Then-Lt. Kerrey was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1970 after being grievously wounded in a nighttime SEAL raid on an island in Nha Trang Bay, South Vietnam. Kerrey also was in command of an earlier raid that ended in over a dozen civilian deaths, a mission he has spoken publicly about as “haunting” him.

Later as a politician, he was a Democrat in the U.S. Senate who worked often with Republicans and, as governor of Nebraska once threatened to order the state’s National Guard to park a tank on a railroad line to stop a federal train carrying nuclear waste from entering the state.

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