US 2nd Fleet Reactivated, Preparing For Arctic Warfare With “Bad Actors”
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Sun, 08/26/2018
Following a sharp increase in Russian naval activity in the arctic and North Atlantic, the Trump administration has reactivated Navy’s 2nd Fleet to deal with “bad actors on the world’s stage,” according to Vice Adm. Andrew “Woody” Lewis, who took command of the reestablished forces.
In a Friday ceremony aboard the aircraft carrier George H.W. Bush, Lewis warned of foreign adversaries who intend to undermine American dominance, referring to (but not naming) Russia – which has vast military assets in the Arctic Circle, a region estimated to contain 15% of the world’s remaining oil and up to 30% of natural gas deposits.
“There are some bad actors on the world’s stage,” Lewis told the crowd. “We call them competitors in our strategic documents. They intend to undermine and rewrite the order that America established at the end of world war II and threaten the very birthright freedoms that we hold sacred.” -Navy Times
“Second Fleet has a storied history and we’ll honor that legacy,” Lewis told those in attendance. “However, we will not simply pick up where we left off. We are going to aggressively and quickly rebuild this command into an operational warfighting organization. We will challenge assumptions, recognize, our own vices and learn and adapt from our own failures in order to innovate and build a fleet that’s ready to fight.”
The 2nd Fleet’s boundaries will extend “well past the old submarine stomping grounds of the Cold War into waters north of Scandinavia and the Arctic Circle,” near the submarine headquarters of Russia’s Northern Fleet, according to John Richardson, Chief of Naval Operations.
“A new 2nd Fleet increases our strategic flexibility to respond — from the Eastern Seaboard to the Barents Sea,” said Richardson. “Second Fleet will approach the North Atlantic as one continuous operational space, and conduct expeditionary fleet operations where and when needed.”
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