Move comes days after North Korea conducted ballistic missile test
The U. S. Navy is sending a strike group toward the Korean Peninsula to bolster the U. S. presence there and send a message to North Korea, which this week conducted a ballistic missile test despite U. N. Security Council resolutions banning such launches.
The Carl Vinson Strike Group was making a port call in Singapore and was scheduled to sail for Australia when U. S. Pacific Command ordered the ships to sail north instead.
“Third Fleet ships operate forward with a purpose: to safeguard U. S. interests in the Western Pacific,” Commander Dave Benham, director of media operations for the U. S. Pacific Command Third Fleet told VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb.
“The No. 1 threat in the region continues to be North Korea, due to its reckless, irresponsible, and destabilizing program of missile tests and pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability.”
The strike group includes its namesake aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson, as well as three guided-missile destroyers.
North Korea defies warning
Pyongyang has repeatedly defied international warnings about conducting missile launches and testing nuclear devices.
This year North Korean officials, including leader Kim Jong Un, have repeatedly indicated an intercontinental ballistic missile test or something similar could be coming, possibly as soon as April 15, the 105th birthday of North Korea’s founding president and celebrated annually as “the Day of the Sun.
