This lot will be joined by the Eisenhower Carrier group and Expeditionary Strike Group 5 who are already at sea and scheduled to be in place within 6 weeks.

So this news that they will be joined by the Nimitz group certainly looks like a massive build-up of forces in the region.

course it's not intended to be pre-emptive at all. Provocative ? Good grief, noooooo.

I don't subscribe to all the thinking that suggests that, as the enterprise is old and possibly "expendable", it is there as a sacrificial pawn in a Gulf of Tonkin recreation. But it's interesting that many people think their government might act like that.

keep to the Fen Causeway