Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer is spearheading an effort to get a Navy ship named after Navy Senior Chief Shannon Kent, the intelligence analyst and linguist killed with four other Americans in Syria in January.
The New York Democrat said naming an American warship after the slain sailor would be an honor befitting Senior Chief Kent’s “groundbreaking achievements” during her 15-year career in the military.
“[Kent] was living proof that women can not only keep up with, but lead this nation’s most highly capable service members,” Mr. Schumer said, according to Military.com. Mr. Schumer is looking to introduce legislative language into the Senate’s version of the Defense Department’s fiscal year 2020 budget bill, calling upon Navy leaders to name a vessel after Senior Chief Kent.
Only a handful of warships in the Navy fleet have been named after women —including the USS Gabrielle Giffords, an Independence-class Littoral Combat Ship named after the former Arizona congresswoman, who was severely wounded during a 2011 shooting in Tucson.
Senior Chief Kent was one of four Americans killed during a suicide bombing in the northwestern city of Manbij, Syria, that targeted a joint patrol of American and Kurdish forces “conducting a local engagement” in the city in January.
The single-day death toll from the bombing was one of the worst suffered by U.S. and coalition forces in Syria since the beginning of the war against the Islamic State in in 2014. The terror group claimed responsibility shortly after the attack.
• Carlo Muñoz can be reached at cmunoz@washingtontimes.com.
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