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USS Arlington (LPD 24)

USS ARLINGTON is the eighth SAN ANTONIO - class amphibious transport dock and the third ship in the Navy named after Arlington, Va. The ship is named in commemoration of the terrorist attack on the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and therefore, steel taken from the Pentagon will be displayed on board the USS ARLINGTON.

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Crew List:

This section contains the names of sailors who served aboard USS ARLINGTON. It is no official listing but contains the names of sailors who submitted their information.

• Click here to view the list.

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• Click here to see which USS ARLINGTON memorabilia are currently for sale on ebay.

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USS ARLINGTON Cruise Books:

• Mediterranean and Arabian Sea Cruise Book 2015-16

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USS ARLINGTON History:

USS ARLINGTON took shape at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula as the SAN ANTONIO-class advanced amphibious transport dock assigned to embark, transport, and land Marines and their equipment by LCAC, conventional landing craft, and rotary-wing and tilt-rotor aircraft. Her keel was laid on May 26, 2008; she launched on November 23, 2010; she was christened on March 26, 2011; and, after builder's and acceptance trials in the late summer and autumn of 2012, she arrived in her home port of Norfolk on March 22, 2013, for ceremonial commissioning on April 6, 2013. The ship's namesake and memorial character - honoring Arlington County, Virginia, the Pentagon, and those lost on September 11, 2001 - was reflected in a permanent exhibit crafted from recovered Pentagon steel.

Barely four months after entering service, ARLINGTON contributed to NASA's methodical build-up toward Orion's first flight by hosting a stationary recovery test pier-side at Naval Station Norfolk. On August 15, 2013, Navy divers in small craft secured a boilerplate Orion capsule and towed it into ARLINGTON's flooded well deck, where recovery crews rehearsed cradling and draining procedures under controlled conditions to validate lines, hardware, and personnel choreography before open-ocean trials off San Diego. The exercise revived well-deck recovery techniques not practiced since Apollo and created the baseline for subsequent underway recovery tests at sea.

Following workups with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit and Amphibious Squadron 4, ARLINGTON sailed on her maiden deployment on October 9, 2015, as part of the KEARSARGE (LHD 3) Amphibious Ready Group alongside KEARSARGE and OAK HILL (LSD 51). The ship's first European evolution was NATO's high-visibility TRIDENT JUNCTURE 2015, for which ARLINGTON entered Lisbon, Portugal on October 17 to support certification events and engagement ashore. After that Mediterranean phase - framed by allied reassurance measures - ARLINGTON crossed into the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden to begin Fifth Fleet operations. On November 19, the ship hosted regional dignitaries in Aqaba, Jordan, highlighting maritime cooperation amid ongoing counter-ISIL operations and regional instability. In the Gulf of Aden on December 23, while conducting routine transit, ARLINGTON's crew sighted a small craft in distress and rendered assistance in accordance with maritime obligations, an event that punctuated a season of high-tempo patrols, flight operations, and logistics movements supporting the ARG/MEU.

Through early 2016, the ship shuttled between amphibious training, logistics, and partner engagements around the northern Arabian Sea and northern Red Sea, calling at Shuaiba, Kuwait, in February during a period when elements of the 26th MEU were supporting coalition operations ashore. In mid-April, she moored at Marseille, France, for a scheduled liberty visit that also underscored U.S.-French naval ties in the Mediterranean amid migrant flows and counterterrorism concerns. ARLINGTON then crossed the Atlantic and returned to Norfolk on May 3, 2016, concluding a seven-month first deployment in which she logged 36,740 nautical miles and called at Lisbon, Souda Bay, Eilat, Aqaba, Bahrain, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, and Marseille.

After a brief role in Independence Day events in Bristol, Rhode Island, ARLINGTON entered a multi-month maintenance period in late 2016 in Norfolk to reset hull, mechanical, and electrical systems for the next operating cycle. She emerged in the spring of 2017 and shifted to the Baltic for BALTOPS 2017, her first deployment into Northern European waters. There, she joined allied and partner navies in amphibious and maritime training focused on sea control and collective defense, made a first-ever call at Swinoujscie, Poland on June 3-4, and concluded the exercise with a public open-ship weekend in Kiel, Germany, on June 16-19. The Baltic employment dovetailed with NATO's heightened attention to deterrence in the region following events in Ukraine in 2014 and subsequent allied posture adjustments.

In 2018, ARLINGTON continued the crawl-walk-run of pre-deployment readiness, including the large-scale fleet amphibious exercise BOLD ALLIGATOR and, in March, her first formal Board of Inspection and Survey, the rigorous assessment of material condition required for sustained deployment. Late that year she deployed again, this time with the KEARSARGE ARG and 22nd MEU for the 6th and 5th Fleet theaters. Between December 2018 and mid-2019, ARLINGTON supported Operation Odyssey Resolve tasking and other theater operations that emphasized maritime security, crisis response, and theater cooperation. In March 2019, she became the first U.S. Navy surface combatant in over seventeen years to conduct a pier-side theater security cooperation visit to Tunis, Tunisia, a call linked with at-sea training alongside a Tunisian Air Force helicopter squadron, reflecting deepened U.S.-North Africa engagement. During the same deployment the ARG operated in the Persian Gulf amid elevated tensions with Iran, and ARLINGTON and KEARSARGE made an operational logistics stop in Rota, Spain on their way out of European waters. The group completed its cruise in July 2019, with FORT McHENRY (LSD 43) having represented the ARG in BALTOPS 2019 while ARLINGTON and KEARSARGE executed other tasking.

Stateside operations through 2020 were shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic, with ARLINGTON sustaining proficiency off the Virginia Capes while completing planned maintenance and targeted ship-alt work to preserve readiness. On March 19-20, 2021, the ship served as a refueling and staging platform for U.S. Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk helicopters during a long-range medical evacuation from the tanker ANTONIS roughly 150 nautical miles from Bermuda, an intricate multi-agency rescue that required coordination across long distances and multiple aircraft. The event demonstrated the utility of a large-deck amphib as an aviation lily pad for maritime rescue far from shore.

Only months later, ARLINGTON sailed from Norfolk on August 17, 2021, to support U.S. Agency for International Development-led disaster relief after the 7.2-magnitude earthquake in Haiti. Operating under U.S. 4th Fleet as part of Joint Task Force-Haiti, she used her flight deck, well deck, and embarked connectors to deliver more than 100,000 pounds of food and relief supplies to hard-hit coastal communities such as Jeremie, coordinating closely with USAID, interagency partners, and international organizations at a moment when roads and airfields were stressed and maritime access was decisive for aid distribution. She returned to Norfolk in September having completed the humanitarian tasking.

With the 22nd MEU embarked in December 2021, ARLINGTON entered a short but intense workup window, then got underway from Norfolk on March 16, 2022 with the KEARSARGE ARG - KEARSARGE, ARLINGTON, and GUNSTON HALL (LSD 44) - for a deployment centered on Europe's High North, the Mediterranean, and, later, the Baltic Sea. In April, she participated in NORTHERN VIKING 2022 around Iceland, reinforcing North Atlantic and Arctic-gateway readiness alongside U.S. and NATO forces. In early May, she arrived at Volos, Greece, to support bilateral exercise ALEXANDER THE GREAT 22, conducting amphibious and aviation training with Hellenic forces. Late May and early June brought Turkish-led EFES live-fire evolutions off Izmir followed by AFRICAN LION events in the North African theater, reflecting the ARG/MEU’s flexible role across multiple combatant commands.

By late June the ARG paused for maintenance: KEARSARGE completed work in Brest, France, while ARLINGTON entered a mid-deployment availability in Rijeka, Croatia, on July 4 that combined voyage repairs with engagement in a NATO ally's industrial base. After re-aggregating, ARLINGTON transited the Danish Straits on August 2 and entered the Baltic Sea for operations and port engagements with Nordic partners at a time of historic security shifts as Finland and Sweden moved toward NATO membership. She moored in Stockholm on August 8 and later, on September 6, entered Visby, Gotland, for a port visit aligned with broader Baltic exercises and key-leader engagement. Across the Baltic phase the ARG/MEU trained with Finland, Sweden, and Standing NATO Maritime Group One, building amphibious interoperability in constrained littoral waters marked by complex archipelagos and shallow bathymetry. The deployment concluded in October 2022 with phased homecomings for II MEF and the ships, after a cumulative series of European port calls and exercises that spanned the High North to North Africa.

In 2023, ARLINGTON shifted from operations to deep maintenance. On January 18, 2023, the Navy awarded General Dynamics NASSCO a firm-fixed-price package for a Selected Restricted Availability that matured into a Drydocking Selected Restricted Availability at NASSCO-Norfolk. The ship entered the yard on April 18, 2023, for hull preservation, machinery overhauls, combat-system updates, boat and well-deck gear work, and reliability improvements to cranes and handling systems - building on earlier knuckle-boom crane repairs completed in late 2021. Planned completion extended through fiscal 2024 to sequence workforce and parts flow amid a congested East Coast maintenance ecosystem.

On January 22, 2025, after undocking and pier-side testing, ARLINGTON shifted dead-stick from the NASSCO facility to Naval Station Norfolk's Pier 9 and, on February 15, put to sea for post-availability trials in the Virginia Capes Operating Area to ring out propulsion, steering, and combat systems. She returned to the waterfront on February 21 for adjustments and then executed further at-sea periods from late March into April, including anchor-to-sea evolutions at Lynnhaven Anchorage "A", in order to requalify watch teams and certify material readiness for fleet tasking. With the maintenance cycle finally closed, ARLINGTON resumed fleet integration over the summer and early autumn. In September 2025, she took part in the multinational exercise UNITAS 2025 off the U.S. East Coast, a hemispheric maritime series focused on interoperability and combined amphibious operations. Among the visible markers of that integration were Spanish SH-60 Seahawks operating from her flight deck during cross-deck events and maritime maneuver phases with partner navies.

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Homeports of USS ARLINGTON:

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USS ARLINGTON Image Gallery:

The photos below were taken by Michael Jenning and show the ARLINGTON at Naval Base Norfolk, Va., on October 28, 2013.

The photos below were taken by Michael Jenning and show the ARLINGTON at Naval Base Norfolk, Va., on October 23, 2014.

The photo below was taken by Steven Collingwood and shows the ARLINGTON over Thimble Shoals Tunnel after departure from Naval Base Norfolk, Va., on October 27, 2014. USS ARLINGTON is joining Exercise Bold Alligator off the Virginia Capes and Cherry Point, SC.

The photos below were taken by Michael Jenning and show the ARLINGTON at Naval Weapons Station Yorktown, Va., on April 30, 2015. The ARLINGTON was onloading ammunition for an 11-day underway (departed Norfolk, Va., on May 4) to participate in Amphibious Squadron (PHIBRON) 4/Marine Expeditionary Unit Integration Training (PMINT), with the 26th MEU, as part of the USS KEARSARGE (LHD 3) ARG.

The photos below were taken by Michael Jenning and show the ARLINGTON at the Marine Hydraulics Shipyard at Norfolk, Va., during a Phased Maintenance Availability (PMA) on October 12, 2016.

The photos below were taken by me and show USS ARLINGTON at Naval Base Swinoujscie, Poland, on June 3, 2017. The ARLINGTON is in Poland to participate in Exercise BALTOPS 2017. It's the ship's first visit to the Baltic Sea.

The photos below were taken by me and show USS ARLINGTON during her rainy departure from Naval Base Swinoujscie, Poland, to join Exercise BALTOPS 2017. The photos were taken on June 4, 2017.

The photos below were taken by me and show USS ARLINGTON arriving at Kiel, Germany, on June 16, 2017, after conclusion of BALTOPS 2017. It's ARLINGTON's first visit to Germany.

The photos below were taken by me during an open ship event aboard USS ARLINGTON at Naval Base Kiel, Germany, on June 17, 2017.

			Click here for more Photos.

The photos below were taken by Michael Jenning and show the ARLINGTON at Naval Base Norfolk, Va., on September 21, 2018. LCAC 34 is departing ARLINGTON's welldeck.

The photos below were taken by Michael Jenning and show the ARLINGTON at Naval Base Norfolk, Va., on December 26, 2021.

The photos below were taken by Sebastian Thoma and show the USS ARLINGTON arriving at New York City for the city's Veterans Day celebrations on November 9, 2022.

The photos below were taken by Michael Jenning and show the ARLINGTON undergoing a Drydocking Selected Restricted Availability (DSRA) at General Dynamics NASSCO Norfolk on October 9, 2023.

The photos below were taken by Michael Jenning and show the ARLINGTON undergoing a Drydocking Selected Restricted Availability (DSRA) at General Dynamics NASSCO Norfolk on October 4, 2024.

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