U.S. airstrikes carried out in Venezuela<\/a> early Saturday.<\/p>\n“I\u2019ve been on ships and I can tell you this is the best ship that I\u2019ve ever been on because of the resilience and the dedication of the crew to make sure that the ship is ready to go,” said Cmdr. Ezra Hatch.<\/p>\n
The guided-missile destroyer carries about 300 sailors and is designed to operate in the air, on the surface, and below the sea. Hatch said the crew trains for a variety of missions to ensure readiness.<\/p>\n
\u201cGone to the fact that it\u2019s a multiple mission warship, we train for every warfare area that could be anything from service, war subservice, warfare service, fire support even into the cyber room, so just being prepared for every different type of mission,\u201d said Hatch.<\/p>\n
Chandler Stiles, born and raised in Jacksonville, is heading out on his first-ever deployment.<\/p>\n
“We\u2019re really hard-working,” Stiles told First Coast News. “We want to go out there and do our jobs. We want to do it well. It\u2019s a great crew and I\u2019m very happy to be a part of this crew.”<\/p>\n
Stiles said his father, Gylenn, who served 24 years in the Navy, was a major inspiration.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is extremely proud you know, cause again, I look at the age of the crew, they\u2019re young and they\u2019re the best trained in the world and I think they\u2019re gonna do great,\u201d said Gylenn Stiles.<\/p>\n
Chandler Stiles\u2019 wife, Hannah, who married him in July 2025, shared her thoughts on the deployment and her husband\u2019s character.<\/p>\n
“I know I always had so much honor and integrity ever since the first night I met him,” she said. “I say this a lot, but he truly is the best man I\u2019ve ever met. I\u2019m pretty sad, definitely. I\u2019m really proud of him, proud of the crew and all the hard work they put in.”<\/p>\n
Navy officials confirmed the ship is ready for a range of missions, but cannot discuss specific destinations due to operational security measures. Family members, like Hannah, said they are proud of the crew.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The USS Delbert D. Black’s deployment from Naval Station Mayport marks as the first deployment of the new…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":490402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5136],"tags":[5229,3188,723,7310,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-490401","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-fl","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-jacksonville","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115833565950379504","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}