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The deployment of three 100,000-ton US Navy aircraft carriers to the Pacific Ocean for the first time in years has drawn swift reaction from China, with state-sponsored media saying Beijing will not back down to defend its interests in the region.
The USS Ronald Reagan and the USS Theodore Roosevelt are both patrolling in the western Pacific, while the USS Nimitz is in the east, according to US Navy press releases. With each vessel containing more than 60 aircraft, it represents the biggest deployment of US aircraft carriers in the Pacific since 2017 — when tensions with North Korea over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program were at their peak.
The presence of the carriers was first highlighted in an Associated Press report on Friday.
“Carriers and carrier strike groups writ large are phenomenal symbols of American naval power. I really am pretty fired up that we’ve got three of them at the moment,” Rear Adm. Stephen Koehler, director of operations at Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii, told AP.
On Sunday, the Communist Party’s Global Times mouthpiece said the carriers could threaten troops in the disputed South China Sea.