Destroyer

Since its debut in 2007 the Innova Destroyer has remained the quintessential distance driver among power throwers. So much so that its flight numbers, 12 5 -1 3, have become the industry standard. In a historical sense, the Destroyer was the penultimate step towards the Boss, which ended the industries race toward a “fastest disc.”

During the early 2000s, there was a race amongst Innova and Discraft to make the “ultimate” distance driver. Both brands effectively had the same strategy, make the discs rims wider to increase their “speed.” If you are unfamiliar, the first flight number is the discs speed, which directly correlates with the width of the rim. It had been known for decades at this point that faster discs flew further, however until the introduction of premium plastics a disc faster than say, a 7 speed, was unreliable. But with the advent of Champion and Special Edition plastics in the late 90s and early 2000s, discs like the Destroyer started to become a more viable mold.

But even though we knew that more speed was the answer, we couldn’t just jump directly to the Destroyer. Instead, Innova slowly progressed through the 2000s until they got the design they wanted for their flagship driver. The origins of the Destroyer go back to the ORC, which was Innova’s more stable tweak of the existing Beast mold that was approved in 2004. After the Orc, came the Wraith in 2005, which was just a faster ORC. Next came the Tee-Rex in 2006, which was a more stable and faster Wraith. However, many felt that the Tee-Rex was a bit too stable, so Innova tweaked the Tee-Rex to be a little less stable and they decided to give their new mold a bit more dome, which is how we ended up with the Destroyer in 2007. Since then, Innova has made faster discs like the Boss, but none have had the same staying power as the Destroyer.

The first runs of Destroyer were released in Champion plastic, these were known as “prerelease” Destroyers. There were also Night Shift Destroyers, however those are extremely rare. Next came the proto–Star Destroyers, of the early Destroyers these were the Destroyers that gathered the most hype and are still collected to this day. After this came the plain PFN Destroyers that famously came penned in three ways, D, DS, and SDS. Legend has it that the SDS were the most stable of the bunch back then and D were the least stable. However, there does not seem to be any evidence of that being true.

After Avery Jenkins’ world title in 09, Innova released AJ Destroyers which came in two varieties. The first had Avery’s name and title in two lines, while the later version (which came around 2013) had three lines. In 2015, McBeth took over the Destroyer signature. McBeth Destroyers were slightly tweaked to be more overstable. The most famous Destroyer is the “McPro Aviar Destroyer” where Paul McBeth stamped his signature McPro Aviar stamp on himself in the Innova factory in 2015. There are only a dozen of these in existence and they are regarded as the most valuable run of discs ever made.

After that, in 2017 Innova began embossing Destroyers (and all their production molds for that matter). After Paul McBeth left Innova in 2019, Innova gave the Destroyer signature to Ricky Wysocki. When Ricky left Innova in 2022 the Destroyer once again became “signatureless” and the Destroyer is still a disc without a signature as of 2024.

However, it was also in 2019 when Halo plastic and thus Halo Star Destroyers came around. These have taken on a life of their own in disc golf and are much more over stable than a normal Star Destroyer. The extra stability of Halo Star has made the Halo Star Destroyer one of the more popular molds on the Disc Golf Pro Tour amongst Innova sponsored and open bag professionals. Halo Star Destroyers has been a tour series disc for Calvin Heimburg since 2021.

The Destroyer is the flagship driver for best selling brand in disc golf, so it is expected that more variants of the Destroyer will arise over time.