A new guided missile Navy destroyer ship will be named in honor of former Mississippi governor and U.S. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus. Current Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro made the announcement this week at the Surface Navy Association’s 37th National Symposium in Arlington, Virginia. The USS Ray Mabus will be built at Pascagoula’s Ingalls Shipbuilding, and Mabus’ daughter Liz Mabus will sponsor the ship. “I am honored to announce four new ships which represent the future of our fleet,” Del Toro said in a news release. Mabus served as Mississippi’s governor from 1988 until 1992 and was 39 years old when first elected. Before then, he was the state auditor. He later became the nation’s secretary of the Navy from 2009 until 2017, making him the longest serving Navy secretary since World War I. Mabus was a surface warfare officer on the USS Little Rock in the early 1970s. He was later the ambassador to Saudi Arabia under President Bill Clinton. “Serving my country in uniform as a young LTJG aboard a guided missile cruiser and then, decades later, leading our naval services are the greatest privileges and most consequential times of my life,” Mabus, an Ackerman native, said in a news release. “The highest honor of my life is to know that sailors will defend our country and represent our values around the world for years aboard a ship bearing my name. That LTJG would never have imagined and this former SECNAV could not be more thankful, more honored, or more moved.” According to the news release, during Mabus’s tenure as secretary, “the Navy went from building fewer than five ships per year to having more than 70 under contract. He championed the ‘21st Century Sailor and Marine’ initiative to build and maintain the most resilient and ready force possible. He directed the Navy and Marine Corps to change the way they use, produce, and acquire energy, setting an aggressive goal of relying on alternative sources for at least 50% of their energy by 2020.” Mabus also, at the direction President Barack Obama, developed the plan, the bulk of which was passed by Congress, to restore the Gulf of Mexico after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and massive oil spill. The post Navy destroyer named after former Mississippi Gov. Ray Mabus appeared first on Mississippi Today.