Two guided-missile destroyers assigned to the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group (CSG), USS Spruance and USS Michael Murphy, have returned home after 357- and 346-day deployments, respectively, more than a month after the carrier they escorted returned to San Diego. Both are reportedly longer than any previous destroyer cruise since World War II. However, the record may not hold for long, as USS John Finn is on pace to surpass both.
Spruance pulled out of Naval Base San Diego on November 21, 2025, alongside Nimitz class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, on what the crews expected would be a routine deployment to the Western Pacific. Murphy linked up with the strike group 10 days later as it sailed past her homeport at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii.
Both ships, which endured conditions just as grueling as Lincoln, if not more so, returned to their homeports over the past 24 hours. Spruance departed Pearl Harbor on November 6, according to MarineTraffic, and arrived in San Diego today. Planet Labs satellite imagery reviewed by TWZ showed Murphy in Guam on November 3, her last stop before transiting northeast back to Pearl Harbor and pulling into port yesterday.
The extended deployments are a reminder of how the war with Iran and the blockade that followed have pushed the Navy’s surface fleet past the seven-month cruises it long treated as standard. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle told Sailors recently to expect the new normal for deployments to last 10 months, at a minimum, going forward.
Spruance’s deployment is the longest since World War II by a destroyer, based on a report by the San Diego Union-Tribune that cited the Navy, and broke the record previously held by USS McFaul, which returned to Norfolk on October 23 after 332 days. TWZ has not been able to independently verify the paper’s sourcing on the WWII comparison. When asked about the record, Naval History and Heritage Command told Stars and Stripes that it “does not officially track or verify superlative claims such as ‘the longest deployment’ for a destroyer.”
Before 2020, destroyer deployments rarely exceeded nine months. USS Stout’s pandemic cruise included a record-setting 215 consecutive days at sea and was among the longest in the modern era at 269 days. Since then, USS Gravely and USS Mason, while escorting carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in 2023 and 2024 during combat operations against the Houthis, were out for 275 and 263 days, respectively.
Notably, Spruance and Murphy have been deployed even longer than any aircraft carrier since the Vietnam War, surpassing the 326-day record set by USS Gerald R. Ford in May. Ford’s high mark could fall, though, as Navy leaders recently told families of USS George H.W. Bush at a town hall to plan for a yearlong deployment if the blockade continues or war with Iran restarts.
As part of the Abraham Lincoln CSG, which also included USS Frank E. Petersen Jr. serving as the Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) Commander, Spruance and Murphy were instrumental in the opening act of Operation Epic Fury, the nearly 40 days of combat operations that followed, and both rounds of the blockade.
Spruance was spotted firing a never-before-seen black Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM) on February 28, the first night of the war, and later fired rounds from her Mk 45 5-inch gun into the engine room of an Iranian-flagged container ship to prevent it from running the blockade – a first in nearly four decades. Murphy was the last U.S. warship out of the Persian Gulf before hostilities kicked off, docking in Dubai from February 25 to 27, and also launched salvos of TLAMs at land targets on Iran’s southern flank.
While Spruance’s cruise has drawn media attention, Murphy’s accomplishments have received little to no recognition.
Murphy and Petersen Jr. were the first warships to transit back through the Strait of Hormuz after major combat operations ended in April. Open-source intelligence indicated the two destroyers came under heavy enemy fire during the maneuver. Capt. Casey Mahon, the commanding officer of Petersen Jr., told reporters at the ship’s homecoming that the strait transit was “Quite a voyage… obviously there was stress we had to face when we did that… on the sea, under the sea, and in the air.”
“In recognition of extraordinary heroism and combat achievement while executing dozens of Tomahawk land-attack cruise missile strikes and defending against hostile drone and missile attacks, USS Michael Murphy and its crew were awarded the Presidential Unit Citation and the Combat Action Ribbon,” a press release from U.S. 3rd Fleet announced.
When Lincoln began the long trip home and stopped in Thailand after setting a record for the most consecutive days at sea without a liberty port call, Spruance and Murphy were left behind in the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) area of responsibility (AOR) to continue enforcing blockade measures. Petersen Jr., due to her role as IAMD Commander, accompanied the carrier during the visit, as did guided-missile cruiser USS Robert Smalls for additional air defense coverage.
Spruance’s record might not stand for long. USS John Finn, a destroyer based out of Yokosuka, Japan, part of the Forward Deployed Naval Forces (FDNF), got underway on January 9, 2026. The crew expected a routine three-month patrol in the Western Pacific, which is typical for warships assigned to FDNF, but the ship was redirected to the CENTCOM AOR, where she’s been since the start of the war. The Sailors were informed in October to expect to return in March 2027, according to a report by Defense One. If that timeline plays out, Finn would pass Spruance at year-end 2026 and log over 400 days deployed (13 to 14 months).
“You can kind of expect at least a 10-month deployment, and so that’s just the nature of what the capacity of the Navy can do,” Caudle said at the U.S. Navy Memorial Special Edition SITREP Series on October 26. “I need a bigger Navy,” he added. The total battle force today sits at just over 280 warships, with approximately 78 destroyers in various states of readiness.
Two other destroyers forward-stationed in Yokosuka, USS Rafael Peralta and USS Mustin, have been told to expect to return in April 2027, according to the report by Defense One. Peralta left port on March 9 after returning home for a brief three weeks following a seven-week patrol; Mustin departed on April 14 on a surge deployment that was supposed to end in August. If that’s the case, both will approach or surpass the one-year mark.
Caudle also warned that the destroyer fleet faces a problematic maintenance backlog when the ships return home after such a long period of time at sea. “You’re talking hundreds of availabilities and millions of dollars,” he said. “But this is a years-long recovery. There is no workaround on that.” That backlog would still be working its way through the yards if a contingency in Asia arose in the next few years.
The impact of intense combat operations was apparent when Lincoln pulled into Thailand looking worse for wear with running rust and algae along the hull.
Spruance’s next maintenance period was originally scheduled to begin in July but has now been pushed to January 2027, based on budget documents reviewed by TWZ.
Open-ended deployments also weigh on the morale of Sailors and take a toll on their families and friends back home. “We are hearing they’re supposed to come home sometime next month, but we’ve been hearing about ‘next month’ for several months,” a family member of a Sailor aboard Spruance told Navy Times in late October. Speaking anonymously, a Sailor on the ship told the outlet, “Our boat isn’t as big as an aircraft carrier, but our 300-plus families matter to us just as much as anyone else’s.”
In recent decades, as mentioned above, a typical deployment has lasted six to seven months. “That commitment is being violated now,” Katherine Kuzminski, a vice president at the Center for a New American Security, told Defense One. The issue for Sailors and families, she explained, is the “dissonance between what was said at the beginning and what is happening in actuality.” A spouse of a Sailor aboard Finn told the outlet, “I can do a long deployment. The problem with this is that there is no answer as to when this will be over.”
The Navy did not announce either homecoming date publicly in advance.
Spruance began broadcasting AIS again on November 11 but was holding roughly 50 nautical miles northwest of San Diego.U.S. Navy Patrol escorted Spruance into the port with a two-boat security element just after 9 a.m. local time today. Murphy switched her AIS on south of Hawaii yesterday, an hour and a half before arriving in Pearl Harbor.
To the crews of both ships: welcome home.
Contact the author: ian@twz.com or @ianellisjones
TWZ
