International security

What 3 US Supercarriers in the Asia-Pacific Means for North Korea

With three U.S. Nimitz-class supercarriers in the U.S. 7th Fleet’s area of operations (AOO), the United States Navy is underlining its presence in the Indo-Asia-Pacific unambiguously. The USS Nimitz, USS Ronald Reagan, and USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike groups are in the 7th fleet’s AOO, which ranges from the international date line to the western Indian Ocean—a large swathe of the earth’s oceans. This kind of convergence of three supercarriers in rare, but not entirely unprecedented.

When USS Nimitz crossed into the 7th Fleet’s AOO from the 5th Fleet’s AOO earlier this month, observers suggested that the rare convergence of three carrier strike groups in the region would send a strong message to North Korea, which has launched twenty ballistic missiles to date in 2017 and tested one presumably thermonuclear device. The convergence also comes just days before U.S. President Donald J. Trump will depart to East and Southeast Asia on his first trip to the region.