Navy to Name Destroyer After Retired Sen. Carl Levin

• Get Patch’s daily newsletter and real-time news alerts.

WASHINGTON, DC – Retired U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, who served about a decade as the chairman of the Armed Services Committee during his 35 years in the Senate, will have a destroyer warship named in his honor, the Navy said Tuesday.

The ship, currently known as DDG-120, will be renamed the USS Carl M. Levin at a ceremony Monday at the General Motors Renaissance Center on the Detroit riverfront, according to media reports, including The Detroit News.

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus will attend the naming ceremony.

The ship is part of the Navy’s Arleigh Burke class of vessels, which are typically about 500 feet long, weight about 9,300 tons and move at a speed of 31 knots (35 knots) an hour.

In an email statement to The Detroit News, Levin said having a ship named in his honor is “a truly wonderful honor.”

The $644.3 million ship, to be built at the Bath Iron Works in Maine, is scheduled for commissioning in 2020.

Levin, a Democrat from Detroit, was elected to the Senate in 1979, but retired in 2014 and is currently senior counselor at the Detroit law firm Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn LLP, and chairman of the Levin Center at Wayne State University’s Law School.

He was replaced by Sen. Gary Peters, D-Bloomfield Township, who took office in 2015.