DAVIS JOINS DRUG WAR

Everett Ship Heads To South America To Intercept Narcotics

An Everett-based warship will join the war on drugs Thursday, heading to
South and Central America to try and stem the smuggling of illegal substances.

The USS Rodney M. Davis, a Perry-class frigate, and a ship's crew of 200
are scheduled to leave Naval Station Everett for five months to team up
with the Coast Guard and other U.S. agencies as part of the ongoing attempt
to put a crimp in the drug supply.

Everett's New Addition

The Defense Department has announced the name of a new destroyer that will
be assigned to Everett. The USS Shoup, the newest Arleigh Burke-class
guided missile destroyer, is scheduled to be commissioned in 2002 and move
to Everett. The 509-foot destroyer was christened Saturday where it's being
built in Pascagoula, Miss. It will be the 36th of 58 Arleigh Burke-class
destroyers authorized by Congress.

While most Everett ships deploy to the Persian Gulf to enforce United
Nations restrictions on Iraq, the Davis joins a succession of other local
destroyers that have headed south instead of west.

"It's a great opportunity for us," said the Davis' commanding officer,
Cmdr. Tuck Hord. "We're going to learn, we're going to train, and we're
going to have fun."

For years the U.S. has committed warships to the drug battles as part of an
overall attempt to keep illegal drugs out of this country.

In September 1997, Everett-based USS Callaghan engaged in a high-seas,
high-speed chase of a fast boat off the coast of Colombia. The smugglers
helped increase their speed by lightening the load -- 121 bales of cocaine
worth about $80 million that was netted by the Callaghan.

There are no guarantees the Davis will be as successful, but Hord said the
opportunity to conduct exercises and train will set a structure that will
carry the ship through its next deployment to the Middle East in 2003, even
with personnel changes in the meantime.

"We like to think we'll come back a better ship, better trained," he said.

During the last two months of the deployment, the Davis will conduct
exercises with the navies of Peru and Chile. Last fall, it left Everett for
two months for anti-drug activities off Mexico.

Tight security measures were in force Monday as the ship's crew went
through heightened alerts to threats from land and sea. Armed guards
patrolled the decks, and additional security checkpoints at the naval
station were added to practice stiff security measures.

Last fall's terrorist attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 heightened
preparations for the trip. Even though the Davis is going to a place
generally thought to be safer than the Persian Gulf, "we're going to places
that certainly have the possibility of being dangerous," Hord said.

The ship will travel as far south as Valparaiso, Chile, a city roughly as
far south of the Equator as San Diego is north, Hord said.

The Davis also will take along a helicopter and the crew necessary to
maintain and fly it, and a half-dozen Coast Guard personnel for boarding
boats and ships that may be acting suspiciously. Those personnel will raise
the number of crew members to 220, Hord said.

The crew frequently will have to lower and raise small boats from the
frigate and deposit a Coast Guard boarding party on suspicious vessels.

"Mostly we will be patrolling areas where if you see a boat they're doing
something nefarious," Hord said.