United States Sixth Fleet

United States Sixth Fleet
The U.S. Sixth Fleet's seal
Founded	12 February 1950; 74 years ago (1950-02-12)[1]
Country	United States
Branch	United States Navy
Part of	Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Naval Forces Africa
Garrison/HQ	NSA Naples, Italy
Commanders
Current commander	VADM Thomas E. Ishee

The Sixth Fleet is a numbered fleet of the United States Navy operating as part of United States Naval Forces Europe-Africa. The Sixth Fleet is headquartered at Naval Support Activity Naples, Italy.^[2] The officially stated mission of the Sixth Fleet in 2011 is that it "conducts the full range of Maritime Operations and Theater Security Cooperation missions, in concert with coalition, joint, interagency, and other parties, in order to advance security and stability in Europe and Africa." The current commander of the Sixth Fleet is Vice Admiral Thomas E. Ishee.

The Sixth Fleet was established in February 1950 by redesignation of the former Sixth Task Fleet, which in turn was the 1948 redesignation of U S Naval Forces, Mediterranean.^[3] Since that time, it has been continually engaged in world affairs around the Mediterranean, and, on occasion, further afield. It was involved in numerous NATO maritime exercises, the U.S. Lebanese intervention of 1958, confrontation with the Soviets during the Yom Kippur War (also known as the October War) of 1973, clearance of the Suez Canal after 1973, several confrontations with Libya during the 1980s (including Operation El Dorado Canyon), and maintenance of task forces in the Adriatic during the wars in former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Most recently it launched airstrikes on Libya again during the Libyan Civil War of 2011.