Originally appeared at ZeroHedge
In a stunning surprise, the United States Navy announced Friday that it would reactivate its Second Fleet to counter the increasing threat from Russia.
Admiral John Richardson, chief of naval operations, said the fleet, deactivated in 2011, could oversee roughly 6,700,000 square miles of the Atlantic Ocean from the North Pole to the Caribbean Sea and from the East Coast of the United States to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
“Our National Defense Strategy makes clear that we’re back in an era of great power competition as the security environment continues to grow more challenging and complex,” said Admiral Richardson.
The re-establishment of the US Second Fleet is part “of re-orientating the US armed forces towards a world of renewed big power competition and away from the counter-insurgency campaigns they have been fighting over recent decades,” said BBC.
The strategy makes countering Russia a top priority. Admiral Richardson added, “that’s why today, we’re standing up Second Fleet to address these changes, particularly in the north Atlantic.”
The Fleet was established following World War II for the sole purpose of supporting the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Before the 2011 deactivation, the Second Fleet had approximately 126 ships, 4500 aircraft, and 90,000 personnel situated at major naval installations along the East Coast.
Adm Richardson also said that the Second Fleet would “exercise operational and administrative authority over assigned ships, aircraft and landing forces.”
BBC said the revived fleet would be headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia, where the United States Department of Defense (DoD) will build a staff of about 15 personnel for the intermediate timeframe, then increase to more than 200.
At the moment, it is a mystery who will command the Second Fleet, nevertheless, what military assets it will include.
According to Military.com, the reactivation of the Second Fleet could bring some relief to other fleets stretched around the globe.
“Bringing the Second Fleet back to life will free up Fleet Forces to focus on such bigger-picture issues as manning, training and equipping the entire fleet, which took on increased scrutiny in the wake of two deadly collisions involving U.S. warships in Asia. Davidson led the Navy’s comprehensive review of those incidents, which called for restructuring how the Navy operates.”
NATO has recently suggested that Russia expanded its naval patrols in the Baltic Sea, the North Atlantic and the Arctic regions, along with its submarine activity at levels not seen since the Cold War.
Back in 2011, the prospect of U.S.-Russia relations seemed healthy, after the Obama administration declared a reset in 2009. Now, it appears as the Trump administration has performed an about-face with a dramatic reversal to reactivate the Second Fleet amid Moscow’s continued support for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. War is coming…
This count’s as a job too ?
Yes, to f*ck more Billions from the US-Tax-Payer’s pockets
Well done america! This will accelerate your bankruptcy.
Recommending your post because it is a good observation, not because I am happy about it. Few people in my country appreciate the irony of how the U.S. and USSR have traded places. I love how we cook the books to claim that we only spend 3.5% of our GDP on Defense.
Cold War 1 – Soviet Union had an over sized military, subsidized satellite countries, and out of date military equipment that cost a fortune to replace.
Cold War 2 – Well you see where I am going with this …
LOL!
So they group their boats together and give the group a different name? Big deal. More boats in the North Atlantic just means fewer boats elsewhere. And since they have nothing to shoot at in the North Atlantic it’s nice for the rest of the world. And China will be extra pleased with the news.
And Russia will be pleased, too, the US-Navy comes in the reach of the Russian cruise missiles, even when they are shot from.. THE CASPIAN “LAKE”
And 1 Russian sub can “stuff the hole” by Gibraltar and not let them run out. The SUEZ is a weak point anyway, no normal Navy-Admiral would drag his war-ships thru the SUEZ IN WAR-TIME. Just ONE sunk there and the whole thing is blocked for a few years.
Subs are yesterday. All it takes is to drop a bunch of torpedos down there that can be remotely activated. Drones in the air first. Next is drones in the sea. Gibraltar can be ‘mined’ these days by any country that feels like it. Ships are too easy to hit with modern tools. Build some more carriers.
Contrary all marine borne power projection should all be moved into submarine or something that can hide it’s silhouette below the waterline. Torpedoes are much more slower than a sea skimming missiles even if said torpedoes delivered by missiles right above their target. There’s only so much speed you can achieved through the water drags.
Russia has a new torpedo with a nose cone that creates cavitation. This cavitation is air bubbles that are created as the torpedo travels through the water so the torpedo is traveling in an air cavity. Speeds of 57 knots.
At the consequence of reduced payload charges and range. Further note the only wide area search and track that can be used to effectively locates a submarine is still sonars. If the submarine have a seabed relief to hide on or have some sort of camouflage to mask their sillhoutte it’s practically impossible to finds.
500 km/hr to cross 2000-3000 meters gives a response time of 10-15 seconds. That’s not enough to drop anything under the surface from the deck of the boat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VA-111_Shkval
Anyway, I’m sure both China and Russia have developed their own kamikaze Carrier-killer sub-drones that can take counter measures against the counter measures. If you rely on a weapon system for 60 years without a major war you can be sure your potential enemies have devised something to counter it. Which they, of course, will only use when they really need it.
Pretty pointless mobilizing multi-billion dollar assets when modern missiles can completely negate them. Show of force is so last century
The Atlantic fleet is supposed to reinforce the sea linkage between US and Europe, providing the foundation of more robust presence against Russia, as was the case during the Cold War, except today the US navy has significantly fewer ships and capabilities against the Russian new generation weapons.
Russia is perfecting the AIP submarine, along with the construction of the Yassen class subs, and also in the process of finalizing design concepts for the fifth generation Husky platform. Submarine construction is the best performing segment of the Russian naval procurement, therefore in view of this announcement, Russia will reconfigure their submarine procurement plans.
Looks like “Stormy” waters ahead (or behind…)
;)… And Giuliani advises Teflon-Don :))
No, we should not be surprised by this development, it goes right along Mattis’ last announcement of the shift in US strategy. Yes war is coming, but not between the US and Russia. Because MAD. The fleet will serve the same purpose it did in the Cold War and since that conflict was several orders of magnitude worse than this…
This will provoke that the “Money-Printing-Machine” at the FED will be running very hot in the future. The Gold-bullions will soar to new high levels! Under an egoistic point of view i am happy with this.
Just build a weapon that kills wealthy psychopaths with out damaging normal people. Suddenly the whole world will turn Korean.
We already have such a weapon. Its called a ‘ Pogrom ‘ :)
Its worked very well in the past.
now how long do you think it will take them to upgrade these rust buckets that have been laying “dormant” since 2011? …ohhhh what a leg wetter for the MIC.
Printing more papers for more projects, Pancho Villa economy.
Again the US military shows how backwards it is by thinking large surface fleets actually scare other superpowers. The last great clash between naval superpowers was the pacific-theater in WWII (back when they didn’t have super/hypersonic missiles).
Any major power with a well equipped military could keep a US carrier fleet away from their shores. Even one missile or torpedo hitting the carrier would effectively take it out of action, meaning the entire fleet would lose it’s air-power (or at least a large part of it if there is more than one carrier).
Nice! More Murican rustbuckets for Russia to target with their new hypersonic AShMs….
Just watch next time around they’re going to ask for a bigger budget as if a collective trillion a year for national defense isn’t enough already with us nearing 25 trillion in debt and a 1.4 trillion budget deficit. All the Russians and Chinese have to do is wait for the chickens to come home to roost.