Far East Cynic

The end of Second Fleet?

Could be.

More strangely, the lobbyist and his boss both declined to comment on the supposition just days after being widely quoted on the topic. The Navy said, essentially, “No comment.”

But naval analysts and a retired admiral who commanded Atlantic Fleet surface forces say they’re hearing exactly what the lobbyist claimed: 2nd Fleet, in charge of fleet operations for defense of the East Coast and afloat training in the North Atlantic for more than 60 years, could soon be a thing of the past.

“I’m hearing that it’s going away,” said Norman Polmar, a nationally respected naval analyst who stays closely connected with the active and retired Navy. “U.S. national interests are no longer centered in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. … You don’t need a three-star admiral there for the one or two exercises a year.”

Quite a far cry from the great days when USS Mt. Whitney ( also known as witless) led port visits into British ports at the end of large NATO exercises. Of course now Second Fleet has no flagship and those days are long gone.

But this only makes sense if you also get rid of 4th fleet-an organization whose stand up made no sense to begin with.

The one positive side of this is that it would mean that there would be only one fleet for all the ships in CONUS-and given the desire to “load” ships on the Pacific side of the country, this might be a doable thing.

Now if they could just get to one Type commander staff-now you would be talking.

  1. What will you bet that if 2nd Fleet goes away, they’ll still keep the 3 star billet. I haven’t seen the USN get rid of a flag billet ever.

  3. no no. SURFLANT was downgraded when it went away and is now only a 2 star billet nominally working for the 3 star SURFOR which was once called SURFPAC. Admittedly, nothing else changed there at the nonexistant SURFLANT, nobody was fired, nobody lost their job. Just a name change. ditto AIRPAC and SUBPAC.