Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced today the four Arleigh Burke class guided-missile destroyers which will be forward deployed to Rota, Spain. The four include three from Norfolk, Va; the USS Ross, the USS Donald Cook, and the USS Porter, and one from Mayport, Fla., the USS Carney. The ships are in support of President Obama’s European Phased Adaptive Approach to enhance the security of the European region.
“We welcome Spain’s partnership in stationing four U.S. Navy Aegis ships at Naval Station Rota,” said Mabus. “We have a long history of cooperation between our two countries and we have developed significant interoperability between our naval forces.”
These multi-mission ships will perform a myriad of tasks, including the full spectrum of maritime security operations, bi-lateral and multi-lateral training exercises, NATO operations and deployments, and NATO missile defense.
Ross and Donald Cook will arrive in fiscal 2014 and Carney and Porter in fiscal 2015.
Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta initially announced the stationing of four Aegis ships to Rota Oct. 5, 2011, in Brussels, Belgium.
“By hosting these ships, Spain will continue its vital role in enhancing the security of the European region, the Mediterranean Basin, and the Atlantic Ocean,” said Panetta in an Oct. 5, 2011, statement. “The agreement also enables the United States to provide rapid and responsive support to the U.S. Africa and U.S. Central Commands, as needed.”
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By: Brant
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This is so annoying.
After Vietnam, the Nixon administration wanted to forward deploy a squadron of destroyers into the Med. The plan was to have them based out of Naples or Gaeta Italy.
This was turned down flat by the Italians, so they looked into Rota, Spain. No dice.
The final attempt was Athens, Greece. At that time a military junta of army colonels was running the country and they gladly accepted the concept and sold everyone down the river.
It wasn't a disaster, but the Greek people hated the colonels and saw this as our government trying to bolster the junta.
The port facilities were primitive. The families were told the ships would be ported in Phaleron Bay on the Athens harbor.
This was never accepted by the Greeks, they remembered when Saratoga nearly sank in the bay about four years before. All the tourists who came to Greece had a wonderful seaview of an american carrier on the rocks, ruining the whole summer season.
In Fuly, 1972 Destroyer Squadron 12 ended up in Elefsis, which is inside Salamis, next to the Athenai shipyards and downwind of Hellenik concrete.
The shipyard couldn't handle engineering systems in american destroyers, and the concrete factory dust got into everything. Maintenance was a nightmare.
I could go on and on.
Rota would have been great.
Just zoomed in on Rota.
They're going to put Arleigh Burke's inside a breakwater like that?
They better have some really good tugboat captains in there, or this is going to be very messy.
Inside a breakwater like that, the ships will have to "medmoor".
This means tying up to the dock by the stern. Getting the ship into position to accomplish this is just about impossible without tugs.
Once saw the DLG Wainwright at Naples spend almost an hour trying to pivot around the mud anchor and twisting with her engines. The landbreeze foiled every attempt. Would have been hilarious if it hadn't ruined the liberty of all the sailors there.
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