U.S. Navy mission and organization

Sea Power, Jan 2003

U.S. Sixth Fleet participation in NATO operations and exercises is a key element of U.S. support to the alliance. Following the breakup of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact during the early 1990s, the fleet developed a systematic approach to forward-presence operations that matched Europe's changing security environment. Today, this "Theater Naval Strategy of Forward Presence, Peacetime Engagement, and Power Projection" includes exercises and operations promoting interoperability and mutual cooperation among the littoral nations along the Mediterranean and Black Seas.

Unchanged in this post-Cold War period is the fleet's commitment to NATO, combat readiness, and the capability to respond to crisis situations, including the war on international terrorism. In recent years, the Sixth Fleet participated in combat operations against the Former Republic of Yugoslavia during NATO's Operation Allied Force; conducted humanitarian and security missions in conjunction with NATO peacekeeping operations in Kosovo since 1999; and evacuated U.S. and other civilians caught in Liberia's civil war (Operation Assured Response) and in strife-torn Albania (Operation Silver Wake) in 1999.

In September 1995, U.S. naval forces operating in the Adriatic conducted sustained air operations and the first-ever launch of cruise missiles from the Mediterranean. These missions (in Operation Deliberate Force) helped bring warring parties from BosniaHerzegovina to the peace table. An extensive series of bilateral and multilateral exercises, ranging in location from the Black Sea to the western Mediterranean, will typically round out Sixth Fleet operations.

U.S. Pacific Fleet Adm. Walter F. Doran, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, commands naval forces in a geographic AOR covering more than 50 percent of the earth's surface-just over 100 million square miles. Each day, Pacific Fleet ships are at sea in the Pacific, Indian, and Arctic Oceans, from the West Coast of the United States to the Arabian Gulf. The Pacific Fleet is the world's largest naval command, extending from the West Coast of the United States to the eastern shoreline of Africa, and from the North Pole to the South Pole-- an area home to more than half the population of the world.

The Pacific Fleet, with its U.S. Third and U.S. Seventh Fleets, numbers 192 ships, (including Military Sealift Command auxiliaries), 1,434 aircraft, 140,366 Sailors, and 29,638 civilian employees. Collectively, these forces keep the sea lanes open, deter aggression, ensure regional stability, and support humanitarian-relief activities--providing a stabilizing influence in a vast ocean area during periods of tension and conflict.

The Pacific Fleet's contribution to the Navy's heritage dates back to 1821 and the establishment that year of the Pacific Squadron, the first permanent U.S. naval presence in the region. This small force initially confined its activities to the waters off South America, but expanded its scope to include the Western Pacific in 1835, when the East India Squadron joined the force.