Tag Archives: USS John Finn (DDG-113)

Old School

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I always love to see the old M-14 clocking in with the fleet. Sure, it is just shooting lines here, but work is work, baby. The steel-and-wood M-14 was officially replaced in service by the M-16 platform in 1967, but is still kicking by all means.

“Crimson Connection.” Sailors aboard the guided-missile destroyer USS John Finn (DDG-113) shoot a line during a replenishment with the fleet replenishment oiler USNS John Lewis, May 13, 2026. The John Finn is deployed to the U.S. Central Command area of operations to support maritime security in the Middle East. U.S. Navy Photo 260513-D-D0477-9009.

The Pascagoula-built Finn, a Flight IIA Burke, entered the fleet in 2017 and is forward-deployed and assigned to Commander, Task Force (CTF) 71/Destroyer Squadron (DESRON) 15, the Navy’s largest DESRON and the U.S. 7th Fleet’s principal surface force.

The destroyer’s namesake, Chief Aviation Ordnanceman John W. Finn, would no doubt approve of the M-14. He earned his MoH the hardest of ways on 7 December 1941 when he ran to a VP-14 training stand at Kaneohe Bay and worked a water-cooled Browning during the attack on Pearl Harbor, remaining at his gun even after picking up wounds from strafing Japanese fighters, until ordered to seek medical attention.

Golden BB, DDG edition

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Lost in the sauce in the past few days resulting in the excitement and afterglow of the recent NASA/SpaceX mission to the International Space Station was an interesting bit of space news.

Well, space/naval news, anyway: the first successful smackdown of a (simulated) ICBM at extreme altitude by a destroyer-launched SM-3.

As noted in a DOD presser:

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA), and U.S. Navy sailors aboard the USS John Finn (DDG-113), an Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) System-equipped destroyer, intercepted and destroyed a threat-representative Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) target with a Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IIA missile during a flight test demonstration in the broad ocean area northeast of Hawaii, Nov. 16.

…

This event, designated Flight Test Aegis Weapon System-44 (FTM-44), was the sixth flight test of an Aegis BMD-equipped vessel using the SM-3 Block IIA guided missile. FTM-44 satisfies a Congressional mandate to evaluate the feasibility of the SM-3 Block IIA missile’s capability to defeat an ICBM threat before the end of 2020.

“This first-of-its-kind test shows that our nation has a viable option for a new layer of defense against long-range threats,” said Bryan Rosselli, vice president of Strategic Missile Defense at Raytheon Missiles & Defense.