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Soviet Sixth Fleet. One reason the Soviets watch the U.S. Navy so closely is that they learn so much from it. As perceptive students of naval warfare, Gorshkov and his admirals were impressed with the performance of the U.S. Navy in World War II. When they began to build their own navy, they consciously patterned much of it on the successful American model. Soviet admirals even refer to their new Mediterranean flotilla as "our Sixth Fleet."
The Soviets have a long way to go before they catch up with their American teachers. They lag far behind in perhaps the most important aspect of all: combat experience. Many Western experts refuse to rate the Soviet navy as a truly efficient seapower until its untested officers have been called upon to handle their complicated modern weaponry under combat conditions. Nor have the Russians yet mastered the sophisticated technique of refueling and replenishing their ships while under way, as U.S. ships do. Thus, they must spend great amounts of time in sheltered anchorages where they would be easy targets in time of war. Because their navy has no large attack carriers, Soviet warships lack air coverage when they venture away from their own shores, even though Gorshkov himself has conceded that no fleet can fight successfully on the high seas without air protection.
American Response. Such drawbacks are unlikely to deter the Soviet Union from placing increasing emphasis on seapower. Moscow not only relishes the new global reach that Admiral Gorsh-kov's navy has finally brought it, but it also views as an ideal opportunity the chance to capitalize on the U.S.'s preoccupation with Viet Nam and Britain's hasty withdrawal from East of Suez, seeking to impose its own presence where Western influence is diminishing.
The West, and especially the U.S., has no alternative but to accept the Soviet challenge on the seas, because the welfare of the U.S.—and of the entire free world—is so solidly tied to the sea and to the untrammeled flow of trade. It would be a historic error if a nation as powerful as the U.S. allowed a crisis elsewhere, no matter how troublesome, to distract it from its determination to retain the mastery of the sea that Admiral Gorshkov is so anxious to wrest from it.