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Excerpts from "Sea Power"
April 1999
Reason's
area of responsibility spans the Atlantic Ocean from the North Pole to the South
Pole, and includes the Caribbean and the waters off South America extending to
92 degrees west longitude in the Pacific (the Galapagos Islands). The Atlantic Fleet has 195 ships and submarines and more than 1,300
aircraft. From this pool Reason
deploys a carrier battle group and an amphibious ready group every 153 days or
so to support the requirements of U.S. warfighting CINCs in the Atlantic,
Europe, or Southwest Asia. That
means regular deployments to the Mediterranean, Adriatic, Persian Gulf, and
Indian Ocean or anywhere else where U.S. naval forces can maintain peace and/or
protect U.S. and allied interests.
Reason
assumed command in December 1996. A
nuclear-trained surface warfare officer, he describes himself as an advocate for
Sailors, committed to improving both their working conditions and their quality
of life. "As a four-star
general admiral I get to drive some of those things" he said.
Years
ago, when he commanded the guided-missile destroyer USS Coontz, Reason recalled,
the ship visited the port city of Lome, the capital of Togo, a tiny nation on
the west coast of Africa. Coontz
was the first war ship to dock there since a German cruiser during World War II,
he remembers. "I had thousands
of people lined up, sunrise to sunset, just walking around the decks of that
ship, showing their children what a warship is and its guns and letting them
touch this monstrous steel. We
should have been there many times before. There's
an appreciation of the United States by what we can build and what we can do.
Only the most prosperous nations can build ships and send them all over
the world.
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