In the News

The Pentagon’s top commander in the Pacific accepted full responsibility on Wednesday for a bewildering chain of events this month that mistakenly left the impression that the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson was rushing to confront an increasingly belligerent North Korea, when it was not.

“That’s my fault for the confusion,” the officer, Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., told the House Armed Services Committee during a hearing on security challenges in the region. “I’ll take the hit for it.”

Admiral Harris, the head of the Pacific Command, ordered the Carl Vinson and three other warships this month to cancel a port call to Australia and “sail north” from Singapore into the western Pacific. An ill-timed news release by the Navy’s Third Fleet created the impression that the carrier was headed north immediately, but in reality it was steaming south to join the Australian Navy in a secretive, truncated exercise in the Indian Ocean, 3,500 miles southwest of the Korean Peninsula.

“Where I failed was to communicate that adequately to the press and the media,” Admiral Harris said in response to a question from Representative Salud Carbajal, a California Democrat. “That is all on me.”

South Korean and Japanese news media, as well as The New York Times, reported Admiral Harris’s order as evidence that the crisis was intensifying. While an aircraft carrier is not the weapon of choice for a strike on North Korea — such an operation would more likely involve long-range bombers and cruise missiles — it sends a vivid message of military might.

The confusing sequence of events — including a partially erroneous explanation later by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis — were only fully revealed about a week later when the Navy posted photographs of the carrier sailing south through the Sunda Strait, which separates the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra.

The string of errors surprised Admiral Harris’s bosses at the Pentagon, upset edgy allies and caught the White House flat-footed — especially after President Trump said an “armada” was racing toward the impending crisis.

By this week, the Carl Vinson had finally turned north and was conducting exercises with the Japanese Navy in the Philippine Sea. Admiral Harris said the Carl Vinson — a Nimitz-class nuclear-powered carrier and its strike force, two destroyers and one cruiser — would continue steaming north, toward the Korean Peninsula, but did not specify exactly when it would be there. Other officials said it was likely to arrive later this week.

Other American and ally ships are already on station in the region as a military deterrent. A Navy destroyer, the Wayne E. Meyer, started maritime exercises on Tuesday with a South Korean destroyer in the Yellow Sea, west of the Korean Peninsula, according to the United States Seventh Fleet.

Separately, another American destroyer, the Fitzgerald, was conducting drills with a Japanese destroyer in the Sea of Japan, east of the Korean Peninsula, the Navy said. Earlier in the week, in an unusual announcement, the Navy said the Michigan, an Ohio-class guided-missile submarine, arrived in Busan, South Korea, for a port call.

“This is a show of solidarity with our South Korean allies and a flexible deterrent show of force to North Korea should they consider using force against South Korea,” Admiral Harris said.

Asked how long it would take fighter jets aboard the Carl Vinson to reach North Korea from the ship’s current location in the Philippine Sea, Admiral Harris said, “About two hours.”

The Carl Vinson, the admiral said, is now “in striking range, in projection range, of North Korea, if called upon to do that.”