The destroyer USS Oscar Austin sails during exercise Formidable Shield 2023 while operating in the North Atlantic Ocean, May 15, 2023. The ship is scheduled to switch its homeport to Rota, Spain, toward the end of summer 2024. (Thomas McGowan/U.S. Navy)
Naval Station Rota is sending command staff and other officials stateside to assist sailors and their families attached to one of two destroyers moving to Spain as part of a long-anticipated expansion of allied sea power in Europe.
USS Oscar Austin is scheduled to switch its homeport to Rota toward the end of summer 2024, Capt. Teague Suarez, NS Rota’s commander, said Dec. 1 at a town hall meeting on Facebook. A second destroyer, as yet unidentified, will deploy in 2026, he added.
It wasn’t clear exactly when the Rota team will go to Norfolk, Va., the ship’s current home. But the Navy hosted meetings there in November for sailors and their families, and established a newsletter to keep them informed.
In May, Spain greenlighted a plan to add the vessels, which will bring the total of U.S. destroyers based at Rota to six.
That agreement came a little more than a year after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and amid increasing concern about a growing Russian submarine presence from the North Atlantic to the Mediterranean Sea.
U.S. commanders have long championed the increase in firepower. The Arleigh Burke-class destroyers work in conjunction with land-based Aegis ballistic missile defense sites to protect Europe.
The U.S. began keeping destroyers in Spain in 2014, beginning with USS Ross and USS Cook.
The vessels are armed with vertical launch anti-submarine rockets, Tomahawk missiles and MK-46 torpedoes. They are designed for anti-air, anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare, and the most recent versions can simultaneously defend against aircraft and missiles, according to the Navy.
Oscar Austin was undergoing $41.6 million in maintenance and modernization upgrades when an electrical fire in November 2018 extensively damaged the ship, effectively taking it out of service until 2022, according to USNI News reports at the time.
In February 2022, the destroyer subsequently completed sea trials, a final step in rejoining the fleet, according to the Navy. The ship also took part in NATO’s Formidable Shield exercise in the North Atlantic in May.
