USS Carl Vinson was actually headed away from North Korea

[GreenWyvern]

What was really happening with this in the Trump administration?

A US aircraft carrier-led flotilla that the White House said last week was “steaming” towards North Korea to increase pressure on Pyongyang was actually thousands of miles away heading in the opposite direction.

The USS Carl Vinson and three other ships were on Tuesday heading towards North Korea but only after a string of misleading statements about its original course put out last week from the Trump administration.

…

On 11 April, the defence secretary, Jim Mattis, said the Vinson was “on her way up” to the peninsula. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said “when you a see a carrier group steaming into an area like that [it] is clearly a huge deterrence”.

The following day, Donald Trump said: “We are sending an armada. Very powerful.”

Late on Tuesday, the Pentagon said the aircraft carrier was finally heading north, after it had sailed south to take part in a preplanned training exercise with the Australian navy. Spokeswoman Dana White told the New York Times: “The ship is now moving north the western Pacific. This should have been communicated more clearly at the time.”

White House all at sea over claims flotilla was heading to North Korea

I think the most generous interpretation of what happened is that “Mad Dog” Mattis doesn’t know his ass from his elbow, and his subordinates were too afraid to correct him.

Is the White House so dissociated from reality? What really happened?

I suppose it doesn’t sound very inspiring to announce, “We suspect that North Korea is going to carry out a nuclear test. The USS Carl Vinson is heading in the opposite direction as fast as possible.” :eek:

Kim Jong-un must be laughing.

Next time they try to face down North Korea it’s going to be a lot harder.

[GIGObuster]

Well, it was the Armada Invisible…

(Said with a Spanish accent)

[elucidator]

Find myself wondering if the sailors deployed were glancing at cable news and scratching their heads. Also wondering why this isn’t a bigger story, news-wise. My guess is we are getting used to it.

We have no idea what we are doing, and our threats mean just as much as our promises. America! Fucked, yeah!

[MEBuckner]

Speak LOUDLY and carry a little teeny-tiny stick.

[bobot]

The earth is round, perhaps they were taking the long way. For stealth, or something.

[HurricaneDitka]

@GIGObuster

Well, it was the Armada Invisible…

(Said with a Spanish accent)

Our submarines aren’t quite invisible, but they are very stealthy.

[Czarcasm]

@HurricaneDitka

Our submarines aren’t quite invisible, but they are very stealthy.

Yes, but can they Moonwalk(travel in one direction while appearing to travel in another direction)?

[HurricaneDitka]

@Czarcasm

Yes, but can they Moonwalk(travel in one direction while appearing to travel in another direction)?

Like a reverse gear? I’d be surprised if they couldn’t, but if they’re doing it right, they don’t “appear to travel” in any direction because nobody’s supposed to know they’re there.

[Czarcasm]

@HurricaneDitka

Like a reverse gear? I’d be surprised if they couldn’t, but if they’re doing it right, they don’t “appear to travel” in any direction because nobody’s supposed to know they’re there.

No, not like a “reverse gear”.
Like the White House saying it is going in one direction, when it appears to everyone that it is traveling in the opposite direction.

[XT]

They are merely taking the scenic route…

(Actually, the ships were already scheduled for a joint exercise with regional allies, so the fault lies with Trump et al on this…as I’m sure will shock everyone)

[Stranger_On_A_Train]

@MEBuckner

Speak LOUDLY and carry a little teeny-tiny stick.

Well, Trump can’t carry a full-sized stick because of his little fing…nope, much too easy.

Also, Trump clearly knows less about naval terminology than he does about operating casinos. Four ships don’t comprise an armada (a fleet-sized collection of ships) unless you are the Grand Admiral of the Swiss Navy. As for Sean Spicer, he holds the rank of commander in the US Navy Reserve (albeit as a public affairs officer) and earned an MA in national security and strategic studies from the Naval War College, so his only excuse is that he is Sean Spicer. #LetHisMisspeak

Stranger

[BobLibDem]

The presidential limousine has turned into a clown car and every day another one climbs out.

This is incompetence on an industrial scale. When the commander in chief says a carrier group is heading to an alleged hot spot but indeed is sailing in another direction entirely what are our allies to make of it? What confidence does it inspire in them? What do our adversaries think of the gang that can’t sail straight? And most importantly, how do they blame Obama for this?

[XT]

So, if anyone is interested in a rough timeline of this cluster fuck, here is a CNN article talking about it.

(CNN)The ship that was coming to take on North Korea is making a stopover first.

When it was announced that a carrier strike group headed by the USS Carl Vinson was being deployed to the Korean Peninsula, it was seen as a ratcheting up of tensions with North Korea, which was reported to be on the verge of a nuclear test.

But US officials later clarified it would first head for planned joint exercises with the Australian Navy before it began the journey north to the Korean Peninsula.

On Tuesday night, a senior administration official said a miscommunication between the Pentagon and the White House was to blame for the mixed reports.

Here’s what was said about the Vinson and where it was at the time:

April 8
A week and a half ago it was reported that Admiral Harry Harris of US Pacific Command had told the carrier strike group to start sailing north, towards Korea, after the ships left Singapore on the 8th.

The group consisted of aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, weighing 97,000 tons with 60 aircraft, as well as two guided-missile destroyers and a guided-missile cruiser.

A US defense official told CNN at the time the decision had been made in direct response to North Korean provocations.

April 10

South Korea’s Defense Ministry spokesman Moon Sang-kyun tells CNN that the US Navy’s deployment of the Vinson “Is a result of recognizing the grave situation.”
“We are keeping a fully prepared position against North Korea to deter any provocations, given that many political events are taking place (in April),” he said, referencing North Korea’s annual Day of the Sun celebrations.

Analysts said at the time that the carrier group’s purpose could be to shoot down “some number” of ballistic missiles if they were fired by North Korea.

April 11

Two days after the announcement, North Korea expressed its fury at the US carrier group’s new orders, calling it “reckless acts of aggression.”
“We will make the US fully accountable for the catastrophic consequences that may be brought about by its high-handed and outrageous acts,” the statement said.

But US officials clarified to CNN that the carrier group would be conducting some training with Australian forces and possibly Japanese forces prior to heading to the Korean peninsula.

April 12
On Wednesday, the US Navy posted photos to its website of the USS Carl Vinson in a location in the South China Sea, on what it describes as a “regularly scheduled Western Pacific deployment.”
The photos are dated between April 10th and 11th.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters in Moscow, that the Vinson’s deployment was routine and it had “no particular objective.” He also warned them “not to read too much” into reports of its Korea deployment.

That night, in an interview with Fox News Business, US President Donald Trump said he was sending an “armada” to North Korea.

“Very powerful, we have submarines, very powerful, far more powerful than the aircraft carrier, that I can tell you,” he told the program.

April 15

That weekend, North Korea celebrated the Day of the Sun, an annual event commemorating the birth of the country’s founder Kim Il Sung.

Many observers expected a nuclear test or missile launch in honor of the occasion, but in the end, nothing happened on that day.

Meanwhile, according to photos posted on the US Navy website, the Vinson enters the Sunda Strait off the coast of Indonesia – more than 4,000 kilometers from the Korean peninsula.

April 18

Senior Trump administration officials blamed a miscommunication between the Pentagon and the White House for earlier incorrect reports that the USS Vinson was already on its way to the Korean Peninsula.

Officials said there had been a lack of follow-up with commanders overseeing the aircraft carrier’s movements.

The Vinson and its carrier group will arrive off the Korean Peninsula by the end of April, US defense officials told CNN, after it finishes training with the Australian navy.

[Sam_Stone]

@Stranger_On_A_Train

Well, Trump can’t carry a full-sized stick because of his little fing…nope, much too easy.

Also, Trump clearly knows less about naval terminology than he does about operating casinos. Four ships don’t comprise an armada (a fleet-sized collection of ships) unless you are the Grand Admiral of the Swiss Navy. As for Sean Spicer, he holds the rank of commander in the US Navy Reserve (albeit as a public affairs officer) and earned an MA in national security and strategic studies from the Naval War College, so his only excuse is that he is Sean Spicer. #LetHisMisspeak

Stranger

Four ships may not constitute an Armada, but a carrier strike group isn’t necessarily just four ships. They typically have four to six combat surface ships (a carrier, a cruiser, a couple of destroyers, sometimes one or two more, plus support ships, fueling ships, submarines… allowing for a little poetic license, calling it an armada when trying to impress someone isn’t totally crazy. It’s a mistake of the same quality as Obama calling a member of the military a ‘corpse-man’, which he did more than once.

As for the supposed terrible error of saying the Carl Vinson CSG was heading for Korea when it wasn’t, there are many potential explanations for that - some of which make the administration look stupid, and some which don’t. For example, they may have known exactly where the Vinson was, but with NK readying a launch they didn’t want to say, ‘We are sending a carrier group there in a while, after it’s finished some exercises.’ They may have wanted it to suond more definite and immminent to deter NK.

Or, it may have been the most common reason for communication foul-ups: a large bureaucracy with a long chain of commmunications, where at each level messages may get slightly garbled.

In any event, it strikes me as pretty weak tea to get bent out of shape over the precise schedule of the Vinson, so long as it is eventually heading where they said it’s going.

[GreenWyvern]

@Sam_Stone

In any event, it strikes me as pretty weak tea to get bent out of shape over the precise schedule of the Vinson, so long as it is eventually heading where they said it’s going.

Of course, there is also the effect on other countries. China, Japan, and South Korea obviously knew all along exactly where the flotilla was, and that the Trump administration was lying. Maybe North Korea knew too. It was only the public that was in the dark.

On Wednesday, after it was revealed that the carrier strike group was actually thousands of miles away and had been heading in the opposite direction, toward the Indian Ocean, South Koreans felt bewildered, cheated and manipulated by the United States, their country’s most important ally.

“Trump’s lie over the Carl Vinson,” read a headline on the website of the newspaper JoongAng Ilbo on Wednesday. “Xi Jinping and Putin must have had a good jeer over this one.”

“Like North Korea, which is often accused of displaying fake missiles during military parades, is the United States, too, now employing ‘bluffing’ as its North Korea policy?” the article asked.

…

Kim Ky-baek, who runs the nationalist South Korean website Minjokcorea, expressed fears that the Carl Vinson episode would damage Mr. Trump’s credibility among South Koreans.

“Trump may say this was part of his smoke-screen tactic,” he said. “But the impression we get is that the Trump administration still doesn’t know what it is really trying to do with North Korea, and has no clear and efficient line of communication.”

When the chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga, the Japanese government spokesman, was asked about the issue at his daily news briefing on Wednesday, he declined to address the misreported itinerary directly.

“It’s an operational matter for the United States military,” he said.

But Hideshi Takesada, a professor at the Institute of World Studies at Takushoku University in Japan, said it was inconceivable that the Japanese military was unaware of plans for the Carl Vinson’s deployment.

“When it comes to matters that concern Japan, the two militaries communicate essentially in real time,” he said.

By allowing misconceptions about the strike group’s location to persist, he added, the Trump administration had ratcheted up pressure on North Korea. Officials in Tokyo effectively cooperated by not speaking out.

“Whatever the case, whether it was deliberate misinformation or a miscommunication between the Pentagon and the White House, it’s quite serious,” said Narushige Michishita, a specialist in international security at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. “It undermines the credibility of U.S. leadership.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/19/world/asia/aircraft-carrier-south-korea.html

I can imagine Trump having dinner at Mar-a-Largo with Xi Jinping:

Trump: And we are sending a huge, powerful armada to North Korea! The most powerful armada in the world!

Xi: Really, how very interesting, Mr. President!

(Smiles, and puts another pinch of salt on his food.)

[HurricaneDitka]

@GreenWyvern

China, Japan, and South Korea obviously knew all along exactly where the flotilla was, and that the Trump administration was lying.

How precisely do you imagine those countries can track US Navy carriers?

[Czarcasm]

@HurricaneDitka

How precisely do you imagine those countries can track US Navy carriers?

How precise do they have to be to tell that a ship is going in the opposite direction of where it was supposed to be going?

[Ravenman]

@Stranger_On_A_Train

As for Sean Spicer, he holds the rank of commander in the US Navy Reserve (albeit as a public affairs officer) and earned an MA in national security and strategic studies from the Naval War College, so his only excuse is that he is Sean Spicer. #LetHisMisspeak

I thought the hashtag for his nonsense was, #StillHePersisted

[HurricaneDitka]

@Czarcasm

How precise do they have to be to tell that a ship is going in the opposite direction of where it was supposed to be going?

Not very. The phrase I was questioning was “obviously knew all along exactly where the flotilla was”.

[GreenWyvern]

@HurricaneDitka

How precisely do you imagine those countries can track US Navy carriers?

Ever heard of satellites?