Word: fleetness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...typical flight operation at sea and an impressive display of a Sixth Fleet carrier's naval-air talents. The U.S.S. Forrestal with four escorting destroyers, was steering a complicated course between Sicily and Crete, exercising its special martial arts. The Phantoms and Corsairs flew off to drill in interceptor tactics or to make practice runs with dummy bombs and missiles. Electronic-surveillance planes stuffed with microtechnology ranged far and wide on reconnaissance flights. The destroyers darted off or raced back to the carrier according to their own tactical plans. Periodically, tankers showed up to refuel...
...Sixth Fleet is confident that it retains military superiority. For one thing, the Soviet fleet, powerful as it is, is still regarded as basically defensive; its main weapons are the surface-to-surface missiles targeted on the U.S. carriers. The Sixth Fleet's two carriers-at present the Forrestal and the Roosevelt-are decidedly offensive weapons, with aircraft that, from positions in the eastern Mediterranean, could penetrate the Soviet heartland...
...naval experts have high respect for the design and firepower of Soviet ships, but the Sixth Fleet has not been standing pat. It has taken on ever more sophisticated landing-guidance and weapons systems, like computerized dive-bombing that allows 20-to 30-ft. accuracy from 4,000 ft. It has also refined the all-important and largely secret missile defense for the carriers. The Sixth Fleet commanders are well aware that their carriers are potential floating targets in an age of surface-to-surface missiles; they also feel that their multiple early-warning defense systems are more than capable...
Within the year the fleet's battle-experienced pilots, many of them Viet Nam veterans, will be flying two imposing new aircraft: Lockheed's S-3 Viking, which will be the first antisubmarine jet, and the swing-wing F-14 Tomcat, Grumman's new $18 million attack plane, which is to replace the effective but aging Phantom...
Stretching the Legs. The Sixth Fleet also boasts amphibious forces, which can land 2,000 combat Marines supported by helicopters and vertical-takeoff harrier planes from small mobile carriers like the Guam. Every two months or so, the landing force "stretches its legs" with an amphibious exercise in Spain or Sardinia...