US revives Second Fleet to counter Russian Threat

[101ABN]

The U.S. Navy announced Friday that it will revive the Second Fleet, a command structure that was disbanded in 2011 as a cost-cutting measure. The revived fleet will be headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia, and will be responsible for Naval operations in the northern Atlantic and the eastern coast of the U.S. Details of its size and leadership structure have not been announced, but its primary purpose is clear – to counter a growing threat from Russia

fortune.com/2018/05/05/navy-second-fleet-revived-russia-aggression/

[Sailor]

2nd Fleet's area of responsibility is the same as it was back in my day, from just outside the Strait of Gibraltar in the east to part of the Pacific somewhere West of Mexico including all of the Atlantic and Arctic Ocean down to the coast of Antarctica.

As stated in the article part of the reasoning for bringing it back is to provide additional oversight of fleet training issues like the ones that got two 30+ knot US destroyers run over by slower and fatter merchantmen in the Pacific. I'm a member of a couple of Facebook groups made up of destroyer vets who keep discussing those collisions and what should have happened to prevent them.

In both cases the very first question asked was "why didn't the OOD (Officer of the Deck) call the Captain to the Bridge when things started to spin out of control?" Fitzgerald's skipper was asleep in his Sea Cabin just aft of the Bridge when the merchie who hit the Fitzgerald rammed her nose into that cabin, nearly killing him. Hell of a way to hold reveille on the guy. The OOD was a LT(jg)(1st LT equiv) who really shouldn't have been trusted to navigate in waters so crowded with traffic that it compares with a Los Angeles freeway at rush hour. She was out of her depth.

It was announced last week that she plea bargained at Court Martial (I didn't know you could do that) to avoid a BCD and jail. The Captain, other officers and senior enlisteds still face their courts.