‘Our sea control and our power projection, two vital elements of our national security, are being challenged by resurgent foreign powers, namely Russia and China’
This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Wesley Morgan on politico.com on August 24,2018.
The US Navy has formally reactivated the cold war-era naval command it relied on for decades to confront adversaries in the waters off North America – the latest in a series of efforts to check Moscow’s military expansion.
The move comes as Russian submarine activity surges in the Atlantic.
The 2nd Fleet in Norfolk, Virginia, which was deactivated in 2011, will once again be assigned ships, aircraft and Marine landing forces for potential operations along the East Coast and in the North Atlantic, where melting Arctic ice has also heightened the competition for natural resources.
“We as a Navy, as a nation, have not had to confront such peer competitors since the cold war ended nearly three decades ago,” one of the Navy’s top officers, Fleet Forces Command chief Admiral Chris Grady, said during a ceremony on Friday in Norfolk aboard the aircraft carrier USS George H. W. Bush.
“Our sea control and our power projection, two vital elements of our national security, are being challenged by resurgent foreign powers, namely Russia and China,” he added.
Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson, who issued the order earlier this year to re-establish the 2nd Fleet, stressed that the US Navy is not “looking for a fight”.
But he said realities demand that it maintains “a large-scale ocean manoeuvre warfare” unit in the Atlantic region.
The 2nd Fleet, according to the US Navy, “will exercise operational and administrative authorities over assigned ships, aircraft and landing forces on the East Coast and the North Atlantic”.
It will also supply ships to other commands worldwide.
The US Navy first indicated it was re-establishing the fleet last spring, asserting it was needed “to better respond to the changing security environment.
