[newzer1]

I may not have worded my question right. I have no problem with armed vessels. My only question was why send the Command Ship? The Whitney is said to be the Flagship of the 6th Fleet. Doesn’t “flagship” mean there’s an Admiral on board? I was in the Army so I don’t know much about Navy ways. Using the Whitney, to me, would be comparable to an Army General moving his HQ to Georgia.

[Candor7]

A command ship is usually the lead ship in a task force. That means there are up to anothr 14 to 20 vessels under command of an officer of flag rank. It may not be an admiral, generally the Flag officer and the ships captain are not the same person.

We do not know what other ships are under the command ships order of sail, but the intimation is that there may be a nuclear sub or two in the mix. If so, then the Russians need to be very, very careful as to what they actually do. They can posture and harp all the wish, but they surely do not want to send any Russian war ships inside of a 100 mile envelope of the Whitney.

A sub can take out every ship the Russians have and leave no trace of its existance, using cruise missiles or torpedoes, both GPS guided.

[El Gato]

Using the Whitney, to me, would be comparable to an Army General moving his HQ to Georgia.

The General is already in Georgia.

General John Craddock, (4 stars) the top US military commander in Europe who is also NATO's supreme allied commander in Europe. 6th Fleet is under his operational command, and thus so is it's flagship. I suspect he intendes to go aboard her as soon as she arrives. Oh, he'll probably soon leave the mission to lower level Flag officers who will remain when he goes back to his HQ.

But you have to admit, it's pretty cool when the General arrives *before* his forces.