A top US Navy admiral has announced the re-establishment of the US 2nd Fleet — a Cold War command disbanded in 2011 — to patrol the North Atlantic and face a resurgent threat from Russia.
The chief of US Naval Operations, Admiral John Richardson, made the announcement during a change of command ceremony on Friday in the naval port of Norfolk, Virginia.
“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,” Richardson said, according to a US Navy statement. “That’s why today, we’re standing up Second Fleet to address these changes, particularly in the north Atlantic.”
Photo: AFP
The 2nd Fleet command was disbanded as a cost-savings step in 2011, and its assets and personnel dispersed within the navy.
The new command will be responsible for US naval forces along the US east coast as well as the north Atlantic region, a statement said.
Before it was disbanded the 2nd Fleet played a key role during the Cold War years, with operations in the North Atlantic and supporting US naval forces in the Mediterranean.
Russian planes and ships have in recent months made multiple incursions in the north Atlantic close to the airspace and territorial waters of US NATO allies, including Britain.
NATO naval officials late last year also reported Russian submarines probing undersea data cables in the north Atlantic.
The 2nd Fleet command currently exists only on paper, but according to USNI News, a publication of the US Naval Institute, the command is scheduled to open for business on July 1 with 11 officers and four enlisted personnel.
The command will eventually grow to 256 personnel — 85 officers, 164 enlisted and seven civilians — USNI reported, citing a memo signed earlier in the week by US Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer.
The decision to reactivate the 2nd Fleet followed increasing threats in the Atlantic from Russia, officials familiar with the decision told USNI News.
US Secretary of Defense James Mattis in January said the US is facing “growing threats” from China and Russia, and warned that the US military’s advantages have eroded in recent years.
“We face growing threats from revisionist powers as different as China and Russia, nations that seek to create a world consistent with their authoritarian models,” Mattis said as he unveiled the Pentagon’s latest National Defense Strategy.
“Our military is still strong, yet our competitive edge has eroded in every domain of warfare,” he added.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS