Operation "Valiant Shield" - 3 aircraft carriers doing operations together in the Pacific, off Guam, first time in 30 years.
USS Enterprise is in the Persian gulf and as far as I can tell three other aircraft carriers are at sea, two in the Atlantic and one off California.
That is a lot of firepower in an interesting place in the world.
China Post has an interesting wrap up article
New moon tomorrow - if anyone wants to use this beautiful group of ships, they have a 3-5 day window, then they'll disperse and conditions are non-optimal until July, and probably politically impossible, barring further developments.
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There is a whole lot of Air Force firepower, too, a B-2, some F16s and some F15s. All of that means joint land/sea exercises with strategic strike capability. I am guessing that they are not practicing going after insurgents in Iraq or the Taliban in Afghanistan. A more developed and protected target comes to mind
The HMAS Stuart recently visited us here in Samoa on its way to Hawaii for the biannual RIMPAC war games exercises. Apparently it's the largest naval wargames exercise in the world. This year some 30 ships and 200 odd aircraft are expected to take part, with assets from the US, Canada, Australia, Britain, Chile, Peru, Korea and Japan. My guess is that some of the "Valiant Shield" assets will peel off towards the end of this month and make their way to Hawaii to join the exercises.
Guam strikes me as an interesting part of the world in that it's a long way from anywhere and in the middle of the Pacific Ocean - thus an excellent location to play with aircraft carriers without anyone getting scared.
Further to that, Lincoln is the current 7th Fleet carrier (off SE Asia/WestPac), Ronnie is on her way home from the 5th Fleet (Arabian Sea/Persian Gulf/Indian Ocean), and Kitty is the carrier that lives in Japan, and is just starting her annual summer underway period.
So; it's a nice photo opportunity.
Guam is interesting because it is in the middle of a lot of places, but not nowhere.
The Hawaii exercises are more "middle of nowhere", and if you really want peace and quiet you go south pacific or atlantic.
The carriers should be rotating home, what is interesting is that they are concentrated right now, innocuously, and there is an unusually high fraction at sea and an unusual number in the pacific/indian ocean area.
If you want to do something surprising with a multiple carrier force, a good time is when they are innocuously gathered together anyway by chance - as opposed to having to pull them out of harbour out of schedule.
That makes it unusually interesting.
Probably nothing, but one of these things it is fun to follow.
Guam is the launch point for strikes on North Korea. That, I assume, is the reason for this bit of PR.
Not for CARRIER aircraft it's not!
Out of those three, only the Ronnie is due to rotate home - she took part on her way from the Gulf back to the West Coast,.
The Lincoln has been at sea for almost six months, should be due to go home and be replaced by another carrier - Stennis?
Stars and Stripes says the Reagan is headed back to San Diego,
and the Stennis will continue quals until deploying to the gulf in '07, presumably to relieve the Enterprise.
So either its back to 2 carriers in the Pac/Gulf, or the Lincoln gets to stay out a bit longer.
This is why now is really the peak chance if the US plans an actual airstrike on Iran or N. Korea, if they wait it'll be hard to get naval assets in place for a while.
Iran's nominal deadline to respond to the EU/US offer is June 29 btw