 The business of a seafaring man is ships. For the Navy man, it is more than business. It is a personal attachment to his particular ship. And even more, it is an abiding pride in belonging to the fleet. There's always an excitement on getting underway. Even though he's done it a thousand times, there's a crisp smartness in the way the strong gray ships move. There is, in his world of motion, a symmetry of man-made power that is strangely one with a constant sea. There is the sure sense that when his fleet moves, his country moves. And so it does. For his country, America, sends fleets to sea for age-old reasons. Times have changed, the dangers have changed, the ships have changed, and the men have changed. Which to conduct national affairs far from our own shores has not changed since Jefferson's day. Indeed, it is more important to us now than ever before. With the end of our century in sight, today's world is a complex one with ever-increasing interrelationships among its peoples. Some of the world's peoples are with us, and some are against us. Those who are with us help form what we call the free world, which we see to be an alliance of nations believing in principles of freedom and justice. And when we come down to the geographical facts of life, we see that this free world alliance must be stitched together with ships. Therefore, take the greatest of care that these lifelines sees remain free for our use. The coming and going of ships laden with cargo and essentials of defense is easy to understand. But to understand the meaning of our ocean traffic is something else. America knows America is the world's foremost industrial nation. For most of our history, we manufactured goods from our own raw materials and sold them abroad, as well as to ourselves. Different today is that we have run out of many of our own raw materials. We have run out because of enormous increases in modern manufacturing and because of depletion of basic domestic resources. And yet, we could not imagine life in our country with a nation not prosperous and strong, making the things of everyday life in great quantity and providing millions of jobs for our people. So we have to import the materials that in truth make the whole system work. Almost 100% of them come from over the ocean road. This teacher works in a Midwestern school. She does not know our man in the fleets, and he does not know her. They will never meet. But she depends upon him every day. Her coffee she had with breakfast came by ship. The rubber in tires that carried her to work came by ship. Cobalt for the steel in her scissors. Tungsten for the light bulb she uses. Tin for the canned food she buys, and on and on. A thing we sometimes forget is that the ships came in because the sea lanes of the world are free. And those sea lane lifelines are free because the fighting fleets are but there to keep them so. Just as we have to trade with others in the world to ensure economic strength and industrial well-being, we also have to engage with others in the arena of world politics. This too affects every American, for the stakes are high, national security, even national survival. We are well familiar with the red rash of political turbulences, which has flushed the face of the earth since World War II. Their doubtless would have been more had not the United States, by global presence and strength, stabilized explosive situations. Often as not, the overt expression of United States intent was those steel gray ships that took station on the horizon, ready to fight, just stay in view, or quietly disappear in the vast ocean space. This is an ambassador. He heads the United States mission to ex-country. And perhaps more than anyone, he is responsible for our dealings with that country. In a real sense, he also represents the free world, its aims and purposes, because his government, the United States, is leader of the free world. He is in an island country where civil strife has just disposed of its president. Our citizens have heavy investments there, and many Americans are on the island. The serious situation is further agitated by the fact that external revolutionary forces are at work to capture ex-country and others like it in the region. As shooting breaks out in the streets, Mr. Ambassador suddenly finds he can influence events from a position of power, where the fleet appears as if by magic. And the presence of this restraining, yet immediately available, sea power dampens out the enthusiasm of those forces bent on anarchy and eventual takeover. What helped the ambassador was having in hand the option of military force, of course. And here is one of the modern day meetings of the fleet. It is military force, yes. But it is self-sustaining, self-defending power that can move from place to place on the high seas. It has potent inland reach, used or not used overtly. And its presence is unobtrusive, without the fanfare and suspicion generated by the landing of troops. It can just show the flag, or it can fight, as the occasion demands. Sometimes it is fight. That is what happened in Korea, and that is what happened in the Tonkin Gulf and Vietnam. And when the United States and Soviet Russia were eyeball to eyeball over missiles in Cuba, even as President Kennedy addressed the nation in the world, steel ships were slipping dozens of anchors quietly and moving with silent speed to enforce a nation's destiny. With startling suddenness, some 180 ships and 83,000 sailors could have wringed the island of Cuba. And 30,000 Marines were seaborn and ready to go in. The meaning is that the Navy, the fleet, has become a much-used instrument of America's foreign policy and action because of the unique mobile power of ships in a time-compressed world. And seers into the future can only predict more of the same. For it is becoming increasingly apparent that even in a world shrunk by nuclear and space age technologies, ancient truths about national use of the seas loom larger than ever. The fleet can take an authoritative measure of America to almost any part of the globe. It has a special talent for being on the scene, ready to take immediate action. And it has as many envoys of goodwill as it has sailors. It is well that this is so. For there are those in the world today who oppose the views of the United States and other free nations. Their strength and their resources are considerable. During and right after World War II, by Hooker Crook, they were able to bring into control approximately half the people on this planet. Their methods include any and every means to make gains on the free world, both in the matter of territory and influence. Thus, we live in a state of warfare in so-called times of peace. Around the globe, the enemies of freedom wage war in the field of international politics. Wherever there is fertile ground, they try to infiltrate and subvert free governments. And they do not shy from armed aggression where the odds are going with them. They nibble away at us on every turn. They have embarked on a huge shipbuilding program in order to challenge us at sea. And disturbing noises come out of China in the form of nuclear blasts. What all this amounts to is a real and constant threat to us and to the free world. Fortunately, communist successes over the past 25 years have been few. And the free world has more than held its own. We, the United States, and our allies are not only dedicated to meeting the threat. We know that very survival depends upon it. One unique and priceless advantage we have is the know how to use the seas. Two things combine to make the oceans of great importance to us in this global struggle. One, the alliance of ourselves and our friends is abandoning together essentially maritime or seagoing peoples. And the other is that so much of the Earth's surface is covered with water. So it is a natural thing for us to place substantial portions of our national strength at the fleets on the high seas in places they will do the most good. And so we do. We start with the premise that the United States Navy has given one whale of a job in sheer size alone. The Navy assignment amounts to responsibility for much of the ocean area. And that's a lot of homework. If one were to hitchhike with the astronauts, wherever he looked down, there would be stars and stripes on the sea. For the United States keeps four fleets deployed to meet its global commitments. The second and sixth fleets on the Atlantic side and the first fleets and the seventh fleet on the Pacific side. Of these, two are what we call forward area fleets. That is, they are the best position to represent us in places where trouble is likely to rear its ugly head. These are the seventh fleet in the Western Pacific and the sixth fleet in the Mediterranean. The others, the second fleet off our own east coast and the first fleet off our west coast, also have important jobs. For one thing, the potential enemy has hundreds of submarines, some of them nuclear powered and armed with ballistic missiles. So the second and first fleets have the most critical duty of guarding well the sea approaches to our own two coasts. In addition to that, these two home fleets function as training and backup forces for the two forward area fleets. So that in the Atlantic, we have a constant recycling of ships from the second fleet to the sixth fleet in the Mediterranean and back again. And the same thing happens between the first fleet and the seventh fleet in the Pacific. Thus, our numbered fleets man the free world ocean perimeter with general purpose naval force. They do so under what we call the nuclear umbrella or nuclear stalemate between the two great nuclear weapons powers. A part of that umbrella and separate from the four fleets, Navy's nuclear powered nuclear armed Polaris submarines carry a fair portion of America's big punch, sailing in the quiet dimensions of the sea. They are our strategic insurance policy. Their job is to help prevent thermonuclear war. The job of the four fleets is anything short of that. The business of the fleets is apt to be along the lines of more conventional warfare when necessary, is a ship. But ships in the fleet perform many jobs. A fleet is a fleet, but many forces and combinations of forces make it up. Whether the first, second, the sixth, or the seventh, each of our fleets will have elements and capabilities common to all. If a fleet is called upon to attack the enemy or to control airspace over a contested spot, floating mobile air bases, the attack carriers, go into action in the perfection of the world's best naval aviation, as witnessed by the truly high performance airplanes that operate from ships at sea. Once the power of ships was limited to the shoreline, their guns could reach. Now carriers reach far inland with strong jet hot fingers that do the bidding of the president and the American people. The cutting edge of present day Cold War fleets, they are proved expertly capable of many different tasks, from shooting to expressing United States intent with mere presence, to acting as good gray diplomats in foreign waters. If we were to keep fleets on global seas with the capability to control vast ocean areas if required, they must be made as nearly submarine proof as we can make them. For one of the facts of life in this fast moving age is that on rushing technology can work against us, as well as for us. A submarine is a good example. It's wonderful for our navy to have nuclear-powered truce submersibles capable of fantastic underwater speeds, able to stay down almost indefinitely and carry frightening armaments. But when they are in the hands of navies other than our own or our allies, then the wicket gets a trifle sticky. In addition to being a threat to our operating navy at sea, such a weapon, even with intermediate-ranged missiles, puts places as far inland as Kansas City on the terminal of an unpleasant trajectory. Bull-fashioned, air-breathing subs of World Wars I and II had an unholy advantage in stealth and concealment. The modern nuclear jobs are many, many times more dangerous. Anti-submarine warfare, therefore, claims a great amount of navy time, effort, and money. Unlike former times, the problem is not precisely the protection of ships and convoys. It is now overall control of the potential submarine menace in great expanses of ocean area. Almost every ship in the fleet has some ability to fight the submarine, but the larger task of cleansing say one million square miles of ocean space calls for teams of specialized ships, airplanes, and helicopters. That is because no single ship or weapon has been able to counter the submarine single-handedly. It takes the overlapping work of many. The job is tough, often tedious, and always painstaking. It is a job of detect, track, identify, and destroy. The anti-submarine force in the fleet has aircraft carriers with specially designed airplanes. Helicopters that stop and listen at the roof of the sea, ships that are loaded with detection instruments, destruct weapons, and the trained men to use them. Long-range land-based patrol planes that with radar and magnetic sensors open windows on the ocean. And even our own submarines are trained to hunt and kill enemy subs, stalking them in the silent depths in a ticklish and deadly game. All of these ships, aircraft, and weapons intermesh their particular talents to beat the submarine in what amounts to one of the fleet's most highly specialized and closely coordinated pieces of work, anti-submarine warfare. And the proof is in the pudding. Without reservation, our fleet commanders feel that these combined forces can keep the hostile submarine where it belongs on the bottom. Our modern fleet also has hands skilled at putting troops ashore from the sea. We call it amphibious warfare. It has proved to be one of our government's most useful negotiators in time of crisis. But a sea-born force can respond quickly if an ally or friendly nation needs help. And it can respond with precisely the right amount of power. A little? Essentially, the fleet amphibious force is an ever-ready group whose business it is to set fighting men on the hostile beach and keep them there until their job, whatever it is, is done. The Navy perfected techniques for amphibious assault during World War II and has since kept sharp the art. Many unusual and ingenious ships have been designed to take in the men who storm the beaches. And those who dropped farther inland by helicopter. Among them are the amphibious assault ships that launched the man with a gun and helicopters. They are another form of aircraft carrier. And their very names summon up action over the beach. Guadalcanal, Okinawa, Iwo Jima. Another key ship is the amphibious transport dock, which floods the after part of our insides to launch loaded landing craft. In addition, these ships have a helicopter deck, making a one-two punch of boats to the beach and aircraft over the beach. Other special purpose ships used by the amphibs are the attack cargo ship, attack transports, high speed transports, dock landing ships, the familiar but greatly modernized LST, and the horde of boats and landing craft that crunch onto the beaches with armed men. Amphibious warfare is a most potent capability of our fleets. The size of the operation may demand that every force in the fleet be used. Attack aircraft carriers for air superiority and close support of troops. Anti-submarine groups to sweep clean the depths. Cruisers and destroyers for gunfire support. Mine warfare units to lay or clear minefields down to individual frogman demolition teams to scout the beaches in clear traps. One other important group of ships rounds out the multi-fisted fleet. These are the cruisers and destroyers. Some of them propel by nuclear power plants. Many of them so loaded with guided missile and other sophisticated armaments that we might call them the Black Box Navy. Their service to air missiles protect carrier task forces. Their ASW armament makes them formidable against the submarine. And their highly developed communications gear for command and control take the electronic magic of computers into the fleet. Our American Navy is in the vanguard of world navies. As a nation, we have always sent the best of our technology to sea, and we still do. There is no better illustration of this than the way nuclear powered ships are finding their way into the fleet. The chief advantage of nuclear ships, of course, is their staying power. So important in these times of crisis. Freed from former space and weight requirements for fuel oil storage, nuclear ships have more room for other shipboard essentials. And the atomic power source permits more weapons and electronic equipment. The process of acquiring nuclear powered ships may be slow. But nonetheless, many reactors are on the horizon. When the Navy man thinks of his Navy's future, he's apt to think first about the all-nuclear fleet that probably will come. For with the atomic energy, our ships are cutting the black umbilical cords that for decades have tied them to mother tankers and lifeblood oil. And like the cutting of all umbilical cords, it means greater freedom of movement, greater range, and more options for action, which is both modern and diverse, makes them self-defending. But to keep them on station thousands of miles from home for fast response to the unexpected requires something else. They must also be self-sustaining. Our Navy makes them so, with hundreds of non-combatant support ships that hand-feed the fleets, supplying to the wants of warships, food for hungry sailors, ammunition, fuel, mail from home, spare parts. There are even repair ships and tenders that can within limits make repairs and give upkeep to the fighting units. These then are the fleets with which we use the many nations sees to our advantage. And this has been some small insight into their parts and the character of their parts. But when all is said and done, the good steel hulls, the lean and the squat and the tall are parts of America. Wherever they are, whatever they are doing, each ship's bell is freedom's bell. Each ship's mission performed is acted out by an eager minion of 200 million Americans. That is the meaning of the fleets, 10,000 fleets. And as the restless tides of men's affairs roll on, it is the modern fleet and being that will have much to say about directions those tides will take.