Carrier triplets in action

Tomorrow is going to be a special day in the Western Pacific. Three, yes three, US Navy aircraft carrier battle groups will begin a naval exercise, showing off the incredible potency of these vast warships, each with up to 90 aircraft on board and an arsenal of Tomhawk land-attack cruise missiles on the escort guided-missile destroyers, cruisers and nuclear submarines. That's a whole war machine right in front of the eyes of Kim Jong-un, President Xi Zinping and anyone else in the region who has reason to fear, hate or depend on the United States. The three carriers are the USS Ronald Reagan which is the US Navy's forward-deployed carrier on station in Japan, USS Nimitz and USS Theodore Roosevelt. Three mighty platforms all together, strutting their stuff in international waters. The US Navy says having three carriers together like that hasn't happened in the Western Pacific since exercises in 2006 and 2007. Apart from providing a golden opportunity to coordinate warfare tactics and fill the skies with fast jets, the military showcase will remind the North Korean leader that a false move by him could bring the wrath of Trump's Pentagon down on his head. Symbolism can be effective or it can be dangerous, depending on who it is aimed at. For President Xi it will reconfirm for him the need to push ahead as fast as his shipyards can go to get more carriers on the high seas. He is undoubtedly green with envy that the US has ten carriers and will probably spend the day trying to ignore the pictures on CNN and dreaming of the time when China will be abe to match the US, carrier for carrier. As for Kim Jong-un, he doesn't have any carriers and never will. But he will be smiling with some satisfaction that the reason for the presence of three American aircraft carriers on his horizon is because of the success he has had in developing nuclear warheads and long-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying them. Three aircraft carriers together don't have as much killing power as a single nuclear ICBM landing on a US city. That is probably his way of thinking. Hopefully the carrier exercises which will last from November 11-14 will go ahead without any stupid gesture of defiance from Kim.