USS Cole (DDG-67) is an Arleigh Burke-class Aegis-equipped guided missile destroyer home-ported in Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia.

On 12 October 2000, Cole was bombed in a suicide attack carried out by the terrorist organization al-Qaeda in the Yemeni port of Aden, killing 17 sailors, injuring 39 others, and damaging the ship.

[5] On 29 November 2003, Cole engaged in her first overseas deployment after the bombing and subsequently returned to her home port of Norfolk, Virginia, on 27 May 2004 without incident.

On 12 October 2000, while at anchor in Aden for refueling, Cole was attacked by Al-Qaeda suicide bombers, who sailed a small boat near the destroyer and detonated explosive charges.

Cole was returned to the United States aboard the Norwegian heavy-lift ship MV Blue Marlin, then owned by Offshore Heavy Transport of Norway.

On 14 January 2001, Cole was moved from the floating dry dock at Litton Ingalls Shipbuilding to the land facility to begin her restoration process fully.

As part of the increased security surrounding the undocking, sister ship USS Bulkeley provided weapons and a physical presence to deter the possibility of any militant activity during the move.

On 4 November 2002, Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, a suspected al-Qaeda operative who is believed to have planned the Cole attack, was killed in Yemen by the Central Intelligence Agency using an AGM-114 Hellfire missile launched from a General Atomics MQ-1 Predator drone.

The predeployment COMPTUEX tested Cole's crew and all of the Enterprise Strike Group from 10 September 2003 until the beginning of October, starting with a series of structured events.

On 1 December, all three ships conducted an underway replenishment with the supply vessel Arctic, the Surface Strike Group's last fuel stop until reaching Europe.

[citation needed] On 3 February 2017, a U.S. defense official told Fox News, "The Navy sent USS Cole to the Gulf of Aden following an attack earlier this week [30 January] on a Saudi warship off Yemen by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels".

[15][16] In May 2022, Cole was homeported out of Naval Station Norfolk and a part of Destroyer Squadron 28, along with Carrier Strike Group 8 led by the USS Harry S.

In response to escalating tensions in the Middle East following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, Cole, along with USS Laboon and several strike force vessels have been cruising areas from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea.