Hundreds of families packed the pier at Naval Station Mayport on Sunday, waving signs and craning for a first glimpse of the USS Thomas Hudner as the guided-missile destroyer eased back into port after a deployment that stretched nearly nine months. Roughly 300 local sailors disembarked to hugs, tears, and reunions that some families had been counting down for since December.
The Arleigh Burke-class destroyer left Naval Station Mayport on December 1, 2025, and its return concludes an operational stretch that covered the U.S. 4th, 5th, and 6th Fleet areas, according to a report from DVIDS. As reported by Action News Jax, the deployment took the ship across the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, and returning sailors spent nine months eating shipboard rations before finally coming home.
Among those waiting on the pier was Allison Molligan, who traveled all the way from Trinidad and Tobago to welcome her daughter and the rest of the ship's family back to the United States. Dawn Hadden, another family member on hand for the homecoming, said she was super excited because it had been a long time. Nancy Bosack made the trip down from New York and said she had already planned a full week of activities for her returning son, even bringing his delayed Christmas presents to an Airbnb so the family could finally celebrate the holiday together. Her son, Jack Bosack, had simpler post-deployment plans in mind, telling his mother he just wanted Wingstop or Dunkin after nine months away.
A Deployment That Included Combat Operations
Behind the reunions on the pier was a deployment that involved far more than routine patrols. During the 2025-2026 rotation, USS Thomas Hudner launched Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles in support of U.S. Central Command's Operation Epic Fury in March, per DVIDS. The strikes came while the ship operated under U.S. 5th Fleet command in the Middle East, a stretch of the deployment that Commander David Cook said left sailors eager to reunite with their families after the long mission. Cook praised the crew for meeting every challenge throughout the deployment, per the same account from Action News Jax.
In the final weeks before heading home, the destroyer also hosted a U.S. Congressional Delegation led by Rep. Gus Bilirakis during a port call at the NATO Marathi Pier Complex in Souda Bay, Greece, according to DVIDS. NSA Souda Bay functions as a key Mediterranean operational base for U.S. and NATO forces, meaning the Hudner's crew moved from high-level diplomatic engagements almost directly into a homecoming with their families in Jacksonville.
Why Nine-Month Deployments Are Becoming the Norm
The Hudner's extended time at sea fits a pattern that has become increasingly common across the surface fleet. While Navy deployments were historically planned for around six months, operational demands and global contingencies have routinely pushed rotations to seven or nine months in recent years, as reported by 13News Now. This is not the first time the Hudner and its crew have faced that kind of stretch: the ship previously returned to Mayport in January 2024 after an eight-month deployment with the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group in the Eastern Mediterranean, which included air defense operations off the coast of Israel, according to Action News Jax.
Commissioned in December 2018, USS Thomas Hudner is named for Captain Thomas J. Hudner, Jr., a naval aviator who received the Medal of Honor for attempting to save his wingman during the Battle of Chosin Reservoir in the Korean War, according to the ship's Wikipedia entry.
Mayport's Role as a Fleet Hub
Naval Station Mayport, commissioned in 1942, is the third-largest fleet concentration area in the country, hosting more than 30 ships and over 15,000 active-duty personnel across more than 3,400 acres at the mouth of the St. Johns River, according to Naval Station Mayport. That scale translates into a substantial economic footprint for the region: a defense economic impact summary from the City of Jacksonville found that military presence and defense spending in Duval County generate $9.1 billion in gross regional product and support more than 68,000 local jobs, accounting for roughly 17% of the county's economy.
Before the Hudner's crew headed out on their long mission, Mayport ran a multi-ship Force Protection Exercise in June to evaluate pierside anti-terrorism readiness and physical security protocols, testing crew responses to simultaneous covert threats, per DVIDS. It's a reminder that even homecomings like Sunday's require the kind of security planning that runs quietly in the background of Jacksonville's military community.
For families like the Molligans and Bosacks, though, the day was less about fleet statistics and more about finally having their sailors back on dry land. After nine months of shipboard rations, high-stakes missions, and diplomatic port calls half a world away, the reunions on the Mayport pier were, in the words of one family member, simply a long time coming.
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