17-05-2025
WAVY Navy Ship Salute — USS Nitze
NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — It is time once again for WAVY's Navy Ship Salute.
This month, we are featuring the USS Nitze, a guided missile destroyer at Naval Station Norfolk. 10 On Your Side's Nick Broadway introduces everyone to the commanding officer, shows us the ship's new upgrades and plays the role of a hostage.
The USS Nitze is fresh out of the yard with lots of upgrades for the crew, sending them into the next generation of Navy technology.
Well over 200 crew members greeted us on board with extreme energy. Commanding Officer Joshua Tiley said the upgraded missile defense systems will do a lot for his team.
'The taxpayers report $200 million into into this magnificent warship back there,' Tiley said, 'and it's upgraded us across the board, whole mechanical, electrical systems, combat systems. And we got upgraded to the latest baseline, which will allow us to do pretty much any mission across the board.'
Much of what it can do runs out of the Combat Information Center — deep into what they call the 'brain' of the ship.
'In here we conduct tactical operations,' said Lt. Christopher Chavez of the USS Nitze. 'We're able to collect, disseminate and analyze information in support of offensive and defensive operations. It recently just received the latest baseline nine upgrade to our combat system, which allows us to conduct enhanced anti-air warfare and ballistic missile defense.'
Training is key. Constant drills keep the crew ready for whatever comes their way. This includes potential hostage situations on board. Today, they showed us an exercise in which I was the hostage.
'The exercise like this, we usually try to run a couple of week just so the crew can be ready,' said Lt. Sean Ellington, 'and we can provide a crew to the commanding officer that's able to detect, deter and ultimately eliminate any threats that we may face.'
Their training was effective, moving real quick to rescue me from a man in a Hawaiian Texas shirt, threatening me with a knife for not putting his dog on the news.
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