DEFENSE: The Steel-Grey Stabilizer

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The gleaming weapon that makes the new Eisenhower Middle East policy more than words is the U.S. Navy's Sixth Fleet. This is the big stick that the U.S. carries in that troubled area while the President talks softly; it is the Middle East's steel-grey stabilizer, a powerful force of aircraft carriers and atom-armed planes, missile ships, cruisers, destroyers and a Marine amphibious unit that unobtrusively patrols—and controls—that ancient and vital waterway, the Mediterranean Sea.

Day and night the Sixth Fleet is kept in a state of "instant readiness" to handle its many and unpredictable assignments. It is poised to inhibit Soviet volunteers in the Arab world, to provide air cover (if sought) for the armies of a dozen friendly nations, to support and guard the southern flank of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, to land marines anywhere that they are needed, and even to reinforce the U.S. Air Force (if called upon) in a strategic bombing northward over the Black Sea to Moscow. It is uniquely fitted to move in on crises ranging from local riot to local war without setting off a big global bang. "We can exert flexible force tailored to fit any situation," says Vice Admiral Charles Randall ("Cat") Brown, 57, the weathered combat-carrier veteran who has commanded the Sixth Fleet since last August. "We can raise our voice without shouting. And without firing a shot we can create terrific repercussions."

"Very Unsettling." Admiral Brown's Sunday punch is Task Force 60, built around the 45,000-ton attack carrier Coral Sea with some 100 planes, the 40,000-ton Randolph with 80 planes, the heavy cruisers Salem and Macon, and about twelve destroyers. Task Forces 61 and 62 are amphibious groups that can put ashore a reinforced Marine battalion that will soon be equipped with atomic rocket weapons. Task Force 66, recently detached, but on constant call, is a submarine hunter-killer group led by Antietam, a 30,000-ton attack carrier with 80 planes. All together, this taut and lethal fleet consumes more than 50,000 tons of fuel per month. Although NATO supply bases are available for emergencies, the U.S. Navy expects that they will be easy enemy targets in wartime; the Sixth Fleet, therefore, brings most of its supplies all the way over from the Eastern U.S.

In the Sixth Fleet every carrier pilot is "special-weapons qualified," meaning that he is trained to handle atomic bombs. As of now, Admiral Brown's attack squadrons, paced by prop-driven Douglas AD Skyraiders, can deliver a low-level atomic attack at ranges up to 1,000 miles. Late this month the 60,000-ton Forrestal will relieve Coral Sea, bringing to the Mediterranean the Douglas A3D Skywarrior, a 600-m.p.h. twin-jet bomber with a range that can reach all the way to Moscow, if necessary, from anywhere in the Eastern Mediterranean.