Posted on 04/07/2006 7:11:55 PM PDT by SandRat
NAPLES, Italy (NNS) -- For the second time this year, USS Porter (DDG 78) transited through the Turkish Straits in April to engage with Black Sea navies.
Planned engagements with Romania, Turkey, Georgia and Bulgaria will directly support the Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Europe (CNE) strategic priority of strengthening enduring partnerships in the region.
These are our new friends, Commodore, Task Force (CTF) 67 Capt. Bob Lally said of the countries Porter will be interacting with. The excitement is because they invited us and want to engage with the U.S. Navy. Building new partnerships and strengthening existing ones, especially in this region, is extremely important in achieving our goals of greater maritime domain awareness and fostering an environment inhospitable to criminals and extremists.
The visit follows Porters Black Sea trip in February, when the ship conducted port visits and training in Romania and Ukraine. This visit to the region will challenge the ships crew in several ways, said Lt. Cmdr. Murzban Morris, an operations staff member of CTF 67.
The first is the pace of operations. Were basically doing one thing right after another, with very little dead time in between, Morris explained. Were going to come in, and in an 18-day span, work with four different countries integrating, training and engaging with them both in the community as well as military-to-military.
Porter, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer homeported in Norfolk, Va., has been forward deployed to the U.S 6th Fleet since late November. Porter has been conducting operations in the Mediterranean and Black Seas in support of maritime and theater security cooperation.
The 507-foot-long ship weighs almost 9,000 tons and can exceed speeds of 30 knots. About 315 crew members serve aboard the ship, which was commissioned in March 1999, and can conduct air, surface and sub-surface operations simultaneously.
The Russian Black Sea Fleet has been reduced to a single Slava-class cruiser that is in desperate need of a complete overhaul, two obsolete ASW destroyers that haven't left port in ten years, three ASW frigates (one is in need of an overhaul and the other two are confined to port due to severe deterioration), and two Kilo-class submarines that haven't gone to sea since 1999.
Those two Romanian frigates might not be much when compared to the US, British, French, Chinese, or Japanese fleets, but they rule the roost in the Black Sea.
The once mighty Soviet Navy is now on par with the Russian Navy of Catherine the Great; BEFORE she got John Paul Jones to come and help her.
In addition to those ships, they managed to complete one conventional carrier and had two others almost completed when the government collapsed.
I wonder what their naval strength would be today if communism hadn't fallen apart.
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