Word: fleets
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...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...
Such scrambles ashore have been interpreted as possible rehearsals for a U.S. invasion of Middle East oilfields in the event of petroleum "strangulation." Sixth Fleet commanders deny that the exercises are anything more than routine. They point out that the amphibious force, after all, is only large enough to "go ashore to protect an embassy" in case of trouble...
...involved in what our State Department does," says Rear Admiral Forrest Petersen, Task Force 60's commander, when asked about the fleet's potential role in any possible U.S. action against the Middle East oilfields. "We simply stand ready to follow orders." Petersen has no doubt that with the amount of weaponry now assembled in the Mediterranean, a pitched battle between U.S. and Soviet fleets, which no one expects, would be awesome in cost. "A conflict would be pretty bloody, no question about that. An awful lot of people would get hurt," he says. "But I am convinced...