USS Donald Cook

## USS Donald Cook (DDG-75)

USS Donald Cook

**USS *Donald Cook* (DDG-75)** is an *Arleigh Burke*-class guided missile destroyer in the United States Navy named for Medal of Honor recipient Donald Cook, a colonel in the United States Marine Corps. This ship is the 25th destroyer of her class and the 14th of the class to be built at Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine. Construction began on 9 July 1996, she was launched and christened on 3 May 1997, and on 4 December 1998, she was commissioned at Penn's Landing Pier in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

On 16 February 2012, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced *Donald Cook* was to be one of four ships to be homeported at Naval Station Rota, Spain. In January 2014, the Navy announced that the ship would arrive there in mid-February 2014. In Rota she forms part of Destroyer Squadron 60.

### Upgrade

On 12 November 2009, the Missile Defense Agency announced that *Donald Cook* would be upgraded during fiscal 2012 to RIM-161 Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) capability to function as part of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System.

In 2016, four destroyers patrolling with the U.S. 6th Fleet based in Naval Station Rota, Spain, including *Donald Cook* received self-protection upgrades, replacing the aft Phalanx CIWS 20 mm Vulcan cannon with the SeaRAM 11-cell RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile launcher. The SeaRam uses the same sensor dome as the Phalanx. This was the first time the close-range ship defense system was paired with an Aegis ship. All four ships to receive the upgrade were either Flight I or II, meaning they originally had two Phalanx CIWS systems when launched.

### Service History

On 24 February 2012, *Donald Cook* was awarded the 2011 Battle Efficiency "E" award. On 9 April 2014, U.S. military officials confirmed the deployment of *Donald Cook* to the Black Sea, shortly after Russia's annexation of Crimea and amid the pro-Russian unrest in Ukraine. The U.S. Department of Defense's official statement said that the vessel's mission was "to reassure NATO allies and Black Sea partners of America’s commitment to strengthen and improve interoperability, while working towards mutual goals in the region". On 10 April 2014, the warship was reported to have entered the Black Sea. On 12 April 2014, an unarmed Russian Su-24 "Fencer" strike aircraft made 12 close-range passes of *Donald Cook* during a patrol of the western Black Sea. According to an allegation by a Pentagon spokesman, "The aircraft did not respond to multiple queries and warnings from *Donald Cook*, and the event ended without incident after approximately 90 minutes." Further, *Donald Cook* is more than capable of defending herself against a pair of Su-24s. In 2014, Russia's state-run news-media outlets ran a series of reports that falsely asserted that during that incident, the Su-24, equipped with the Khibiny electronic warfare system, had disabled the ship's Aegis combat systems. The misinformation was later picked up by British tabloid *The Sun* and by Fox News, and later reported as Russian propaganda by *The New York Times*.

On 14 April 2014, *Donald Cook* visited Constanta, Romania, where President Traian Băsescu had a tour of the ship. *Donald Cook* then conducted various exercises in concert with the Romanian Navy before departing the Black Sea on 24 April 2014. On 26 December 2014, for the second time, according to the U.S. Navy, the destroyer entered the Black Sea to reassure and demonstrate U.S. commitment to work closely with NATO allies. *Donald Cook* participated in exercises with the Turkish Navy, including an underway replenishment and other exercises with the *Yavuz*-class frigate TCG *Fatih* on 28 December 2014. The ship visited Constanta, Romania, on 30 December and Varna, Bulgaria, on 8 January 2015. She also participated in exercises with Ukrainian Navy ship *Hetman Sahaydachniy* on 11 January 2015, and then departed the Black Sea on 14 January 2015.

On 11 and 12 April 2016, two Russian Su-24s performed several low-altitude passes on *Donald Cook* while the ship was conducting exercises with a Polish helicopter in international waters in the Baltic Sea, 70 nautical miles (130 km; 81 mi) off Kaliningrad. A Russian Ka-27 "Helix" antisubmarine helicopter also circled the destroyer seven times. The U.S. Navy released photos and videos of the incident on 14 April, and the U.S. government lodged a complaint with the Russian government. In response to the U.S. Secretary of State commenting on the incident and saying that "under the rules of engagement, that could have been a shoot-down", the Russian Federation Council's official Igor Morozov said that the U.S. likewise "ought to know that *Donald Cook* approached our borders and may already be unable to depart those." On 26 February 2019, the ship hosted U.S. diplomats Gordon Sondland, Marie Yovanovitch, Kurt Volker, the EU's Jean Christophe-Belliard, and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, among others.

On 23 February 2020, the ship entered the Black Sea, marking the seventh time a U.S. ship had entered the sea in 2020. While in the Black Sea, the ship conducted routine maritime security operations. USS *Arleigh Burke* (DDG-51) departed Naval Station Norfolk on 26 March, to replace *Donald Cook* as one of the forward destroyers located in Rota, Spain. *Donald Cook*'s new homeport was to be Naval Station Mayport.

On 25 April 2022, the ship returned to Mayport after a three-month deployment.