Sailors along the rails as the Arleigh Burke-class, guided-missile destroyer USS Gravely transits the York River on March 15, 2025. U.S. Northern Command is working together with the Department of Homeland Security to augment U.S. Customs and Border Protection along the southern border with additional military forces, including the Gravely. (Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Ryan Williams/U.S. Navy photo)
WASHINGTON — A Navy destroyer has deployed to the Gulf of America on a mission usually reserved for the U.S. Coast Guard to help deter illegal crossings and drug trafficking as part the military’s efforts to bolster security along the southern border.
The USS Gravely, a guided-missile destroyer, left from Naval Weapons Station Yorktown in Virginia on Saturday as part of the Defense Department’s response to President Donald Trump’s executive order calling for a secure southern border. The deployment will support an operation being developed by U.S. Northern Command, a Navy official said Monday.
“We are currently building that [consolidated plan] now in coordination with NORTHCOM,” Adm. Daryl Caudle, commander of U.S. Fleet Forces, told reporters. “The Navy is contributing substantially to that — greatly — really this being our first dedicated deployment for that.”
The Gravely’s deployment marks the latest example of the Trump administration using the U.S. military to fend off what Trump has described as an “invasion” at the border.
The Gravely will cruise the gulf predominantly under NORTHCOM’s control, though the destroyer could venture into the U.S. Southern Command region, Caudle said. NORTHCOM’s area of responsibility includes the continental U.S., Canada, Mexico, and surrounding waters out to approximately 500 nautical miles. SOUTHCOM’s region encompasses Latin America south of Mexico, adjacent waters and the Caribbean Sea.
The Gravely’s exact tasking, Caudle said, might be intelligence gathering initially but could expand. The ship will have a Coast Guard law enforcement team onboard.
“Those missions could blend a bit as we are focused on stopping transnational criminal trafficking activities and working with the Coast Guard to support them fully for homeland defense,” Caudle said.
Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot, who oversees U.S. Northern Command, said in a statement that the Gravely will improve U.S. abilities “to protect the United States’ territorial integrity, sovereignty and security.” Defense officials added in the same statement that the deployment will contribute to “a coordinated and robust response to combating maritime related terrorism, weapons proliferation, transnational crime, piracy, environmental destruction and illegal seaborne immigration.”
Navy ships — most often littoral combat ships — have deployed with a Coast Guard law enforcement crew. Typically, the ship is sent to the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility. Coast Guard detachments assigned to Navy ships often lead in interdiction operations to board suspected vessels, seize illegal drugs and apprehend suspects, a defense official for SOUTHCOM said.
Destroyers — or submarines — are usually deployed in the NORTHCOM area of responsibility to monitor the operations of enemies such as Russia and China, not for border security, Caudle said.
The Gravely, which is more than 509 feet long, is larger than vessels in the Coast Guard fleet and carries dozens of Tomahawk cruise missiles, which are long-range missiles designed to strike land-based targets.
In July, the destroyer completed a nine-month deployment that the Navy called “unprecedented.” The assignment was extended twice, as the Gravely escorted the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and shot down missiles and drones launched by Houthi militants in Yemen aimed at commercial and military ships in the Red Sea.
“It is a bit unique to deploy a capability of this level for this mission set, but I think it goes to the commitment the Navy has to the president and the secretary of defense to support the southern border operations,” Caudle said.
The Gravely’s deployment will enable the Navy to learn what other ways that it could support the southern border operations. The sea service’s involvement could grow to include deploying Navy Seabees and explosive ordnance teams to help with the construction of the border wall, as well as intelligence analysts to help Customs and Border Protection track drug cartel movements, Caudle said.
Navy crews have already supported the operations by flying reconnaissance planes to monitor the southern border. Those efforts have shifted to supporting Coast Guard operations in the gulf, Caudle said. The two P-8A Poseidon reconnaissance squadrons tasked with border surveillance are multimission, maritime aircraft that conduct anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and humanitarian response.
“This is putting our toe in the water a bit to understand it, to make sure that we know how to employ this force. Is a return on investment from this level of capability going to return good, fruitful utilization of it?” Caudle said. “This first round will educate us on that to see if further and continued global utilization of these forces is required.”
The Washington Post contributed to this report.
