By Dave Anderson:
As everyone knows, North Korea shelled a South Korean island last night, killing several South Korean marines and injuring most of a platoon. South Korean artillery fired counter-battery missions. The South Korean military is on alert, and the South Korean president is promising large scale retaliation if there is any additional cross-border artillery strikes.
Information Dissemination lists where American carriers are currently located. Naval tactical aviation is the quickest sustainable reinforcement the US has for South Korea:
as of yesterday the USS George Washington (CVN 73) was in port, but that ship can get to sea very quickly and may already have sailed....
Should hostilities break out on a larger scale, the US Navy could surge both the USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) and the USS Nimitz (68) very quickly. Both ships have conducted training off the west coast this month. At 25 knots it would take less than 10 days before the ships arrived ready for battle.
Already at sea is USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) and USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75), where both carriers are currently supporting war operations in Afghanistan....
Afghanistan is currently using up the entire inventory of actively deployed carriers. Three carriers are on routine training missions and could surge to within tactical strike range of the Korean penisula, with the first arriving within thirty six hours of receiving orders. However, there is a significant gap in coverage as the normal Western Pacific carrier deployment was shifted to reinforce the surge in Afghanistan.
South Korea is a much more important and valuable strategic interest and partner than Afghanistan is to the United States.
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