The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson was in the news this month : part of a miscommunication between the White House and the United States Armed Forces. A few days after President Trump stated that it was part of an armada steaming* to the Korean peninsula, the US navy published pictures picked up by the New York Times, that showed it was in fact going in the opposite direction. South Korea was not impressed. Said a Yonhap news agency headline: Trump’s armada gaffe stains his commitment to the alliance.
(Update: On Wednesday April 26, Navy Adm. Harry Harris, the four-star commander of U.S. Pacific Command, testified at a hearing of the House Committee on Armed Services that he was to blame for the miscommunication).
*I love the word ‘steaming’, quaint word and old-fashioned as it is. Nimitz-class carriers are in fact nuclear-powered. There are ten of these supercarriers in service in the United States Navy.
