Cmdr. Kelly, a native of Annapolis, Maryland, assumed command of Daniel Inouye in December 2024 following the ship\u2019s return from her maiden deployment in the Seventh and Fifth Fleet area of operation. Under Cmdr. Kelly\u2019s leadership, the crew completed an early transition through a Selected Restricted Availability and executed the first Navy Region Hawaii damage control full-scale exercise in more than two years\u2014significantly enhancing the ship’s ability to deliver maximum lethality.<\/p>\n
Cmdr. Kelly addressed the crew, \u201cIt was a true honor to serve as commanding officer of USS Daniel Inouye, carrying forward the name and legacy of Senator Inouye. Every day, we are challenged to live up to his example of humility, courage, sacrifice, and unwavering commitment to serving others – the standard by which all leaders should strive to live their lives. I will always be grateful for the crew\u2019s \u2018Go For Broke\u2019 mentality, giving everything they had to every mission, every challenge, and one another.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cmdr. Gardner, a native of Birmingham, Alabama, now assumes command as Daniel Inouye\u2019s fifth commanding officer. Having previously served as the ship\u2019s executive officer, he thanked Cmdr. Kelly during the ceremony, saying, \u201cYou leave behind an exceptional ship and crew, and it is now my responsibility to continue building the culture you established here.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his closing remarks, Cmdr. Gardner highlighted his promise to the crew, \u201cOur standard of success will be combat readiness, personal readiness, material readiness, and tactical readiness. We will train hard, learn to fight as one team, and raise the standard for what a combat-ready warship looks like.\u201d<\/p>\n
USS Daniel Inouye (DDG 118) is an Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyer homeported at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii. The ship is named in honor of the late U.S. Senator and Medal of Honor recipient Daniel K. Inouye, originally from Hawaii, who served in the legendary 442nd Regimental Combat Team during World War II, the ship operates under his unit\u2019s famous motto: \u201cGo for Broke.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cmdr. Kelly, a native of Annapolis, Maryland, assumed command of Daniel Inouye in December 2024 following the ship\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-660103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}