“When word of a crisis breaks out in Washington, it’s no accident that
the first question that comes to everyone’s lips is:
‘Where’s the nearest carrier?‘”

President Bill Clinton
March 12, 1993
aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt

With all the Sabre rattling going on between North Korea and the United States, Globalsecurity.org keeps up to date on where the big U.S. super-carriers are. North Korea said they will sink the USS Carl Vinson when it arrives in the Sea of Japan. Good luck. Their puny obsolete fighters would be decimated by U.S. aircraft on the carrier and land based in South Korea and Japan. The North Korean navy is a joke. Basically patrol boats and rust bucket antique submarines.

So where are the carriers?

Forward deployed:

CVN-76 Reagan: Homeported in Yokosuka, Japan. Could be ready for action in days.

CVN-70 Vinson: 18 April 2017. Indian Ocean steaming towards east Asia.

CVN-77 George H. W. Bush: Persian Gulf.

Pre-Deployment:

CVN-68 Nimitz: April 2017. Composite Training Unit Exercise (Comptuex) eastern Pacific. Work up to full deployment.

CVN-71 Roosevelt: Planned incremental deployment. Western Pacific deployment fall 2017.

CVN-69 Eisenhower: Departed for a sustainment exercise. At sea western Atlantic off Norfolk, Virginia.

In port:

CVN-75 Truman: March 2017. Planned Incremental Availability (PIA). In port Norfolk.

CVN-74 Stennis: 29 March 2017. Planned incremental availability (PIA). In port Bremerton, Washington.

CVN-72 Lincoln: Mid 2017, return to fleet. Nearing end of 48 month mid-life overhaul at Newport News, Virginia. Deployment late 2017.

CVN-73 Washington: 2021 return to fleet. 48-month refuelling and complex overhaul (RCOH) at Newport News.

Building:

CVN-78 Gerald Ford. April 2017. Acceptance trials.

CVN-79 John F. Kennedy. Delivery 2021.

CVN-80 Enterprise. Keel laid 2017.

Artist’s Impression