Navy Petty Officer 1st Class David L. Brown, son of Deloris Brown, of Hopewell, and David Brown, of Suffolk, along with fellow sailors aboard the guided missile destroyer USS Farragut and guided-missile cruiser USS Hue City, conducted a series of maneuvers and interoperability drills in a passing exercise with an Italian frigate and submarine.

The U.S. ships joined ITS Scire and ITS Luigi Durand de la Penne for two days of coalition training events to promote interoperability and partnership for the shared goal of maintaining safety and security of the region’s sea lanes.

Many of the events stationed the Italian and American warships in close proximity to each other and required precision execution.

By keeping strong ship-to-ship communications and leveraging expert seamanship, the ships completed all training events safely and successfully.

On both days, all of the ships participating executed a number of navigational maneuvers, complemented by maritime warfare-specific events such as an anti-submarine warfare exercise and a maritime interdiction operations exercise.

On day two, Farragut’s visit, board, search and seizure team boarded Luigi Durand de la Penne in an exercise where the latter presented itself as a merchant vessel potentially smuggling illicit cargo.

Farragut is deployed as part of the Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group, supporting maritime security operations and theater security cooperation efforts in the U.S. 6th Fleet area of responsibility. The Eisenhower CSG includes aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, guided-missile cruiser USS Hue City, guided-missile destroyers USS Farragut, USS Winston S. Churchill and USS Jason Dunham, as well as the seven squadrons of Carrier Air Wing 7 and Destroyer Squadron 28.

Brown is a 1998 graduate of Hopewell High School and joined the Navy in October 1998.