Carl Vinson strike group seen near Indonesia, not the Korean peninsula 
 
 YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan — If the USS Carl Vinson strike group is heading to the Korean peninsula, it is taking its time. 
 
 More than a week after reports first emerged that the aircraft carrier and its accompanying ships were headed toward the peninsula amid fears North Korea may conduct another nuclear test, Navy photos from Saturday show Vinson operating nearly 3,500 miles away, off Indonesia. 
 
 Defense News first reported the existence of the photos, which are freely available on the official Navy.mil website. 
 
 If traveling at maximum speed, which the Navy lists at “34.5+ mph,” it would take the carrier, two destroyers and a cruiser roughly four to five days to reach the peninsula from Indonesia’s Sunda Strait. 
 
 Submarines also regularly provide undersea cover for carrier strike groups. 
 
 U.S. Pacific Command officials in Hawaii on Monday referred questions about the strike group to Pacific Fleet, which said it does not discuss details of ship movements. 
 
 “The Carl Vinson Strike Group cancelled a previously planned port visit to Australia and is continuing on track for all assigned missions in the Western Pacific,” a statement said. 
 
 Thus far, reports on Vinson’s impending arrival in waters near South Korea have come from White House and other Washington officials. The Navy and Pacific Command haven’t dissuaded any of those reports, but never explicitly confirmed Korea as its destination or discussed a timeline. 
 
 PACOM directed the Vinson strike group “to sail north and report on station in the Western Pacific Ocean after departing Singapore on April 8 … rather than executing previously planned port visits to Australia,” according to its initial statement on the move. 
 
 Soon afterward, PACOM spokesman Cmdr. Dave Benham said the strike group was ordered north “as a prudent measure to maintain readiness and presence. 
 
 “Third Fleet ships operate forward with a purpose: to safeguard U.S. interests in the Western Pacific.,” Benham said. The number one 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.” 
 
 In an interview with President Donald Trump on Fox Business News last week, host Maria Bartiromo asked, “You redirected Navy ships to go toward the Korean Peninsula. What are we doing right now in terms of North Korea? 
 
 “You never know do you? You never know,” Trump responded. 
 
 After declining to discuss military movements initially, Trump then said that, “We are sending an armada. Very powerful.” 
 
 “We have submarines. Very powerful; far more powerful than the aircraft carrier, that I can tell you,” he added. 
 
 A Reuters reporter covering the Pentagon first reported April 9 that the Vinson strike group was headed toward the Korean peninsula, citing an unnamed U.S. official. 
 
 “We feel the increased presence is necessary,” the official told Reuters, citing North Korea’s worrisome behavior. 
 
 The Vinson group includes the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson and its embarked air wing, the destroyers USS Wayne E. Meyer and USS Michael Murphy, and the cruiser USS Lake Champlain. 
 
 Trump has stated that all options, including military action, are possible as North Korea continues to develop its ballistic missile and nuclear weapons program. The communist state has conducted two nuclear tests and test-fired nearly 30 missiles since last year. 
 
 A North Korean missile exploded seconds after launch Sunday, according to U.S. officials. The failure came as Vice President Mike Pence arrived in the South for talks. 
 
 Stars and Stripes reporter Wyatt Olson contributed to this report. 
 
 slavin.erik@stripes.com 
 
 Twitter:@eslavin_stripes 

 (CNN) The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson and its strike group will arrive off the Korean Peninsula at the end of April, multiple US defense officials tell CNN. 
 
 The carrier and its escorts left Singapore on April 8, according to a statement from the Navy's Pacific Fleet. They were ordered to head north to the Korean Peninsula in response to North Korean provocations, defense officials told CNN at the time. 
 
 JUST WATCHED US warships sent to Korea: What to know Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH US warships sent to Korea: What to know 01:32 
 
 Officials later said the strike group, including the 97,000-ton carrier and its 60-plus aircraft, the guided-missile destroyers USS Wayne E. Meyer and USS Michael Murphy and the guided-missile cruiser USS Lake Champlain would participate in naval exercises with the Australian navy south of Singapore before heading to Korea. 
 
 But the announcement that the Vinson had been dispatched to Korea increased tensions with Pyongyang, with its official Korean Central News Agency calling the carrier's deployment "nothing but a reckless action of aggression to aggravate the tensions in the region." 
 
 US President Donald Trump added to the tension early last week by telling Fox Business News he was sending "an armada" of powerful warships and submarines to waters off Korea. 
 
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 WASHINGTON — For more than a week, media reports in the U.S. and around Asia routinely have mentioned the approach of the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson's carrier strike group, seemingly implying an attack on North Korea could be imminent. But a week after the U.S. announced the carrier and its escorts would leave Singapore, forego port calls in Australia and instead return to Korean waters, the carrier and its group had yet to head north. 
 
 
 
 Rather, the ships were actually operating several hundred miles south of Singapore, taking part in scheduled exercises with Australian forces in the Indian Ocean. 
 
 
 
 On Saturday — according to photographs released by the U.S. Navy — the carrier passed north through the Sunda Strait, the passage between the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Java. It's about 3,500 miles from Korea. 
 
 
 
 U.S. Navy officials in Pearl Harbor and Washington declined to comment on the ship's movements, other than to confirm the April 15 movement through the Sunda Strait. Off the record, several officials expressed wonderment at the persistent reports that the Vinson was already nearing Korea. "We've made no such statement," said one official. 
 
 
 
 Those same officials did not push back on reports that the Vinson would return to Korean waters, where the strike group operated for much of March as part of the annual U.S.-Korean Foal Eagle exercises. While declining to confirm a specific date, they did not dispute speculative media reports from South Korea that the strike group could be in the region by April 25 or so. 
 
 
 
 Officials did, however, flatly deny reports that three U.S. carrier strike groups were being directed to mass off the Korean peninsula in a few weeks. 
 
 
 
 Speculation has been rising that the Ronald Reagan and Nimitz strike groups could join with the Vinson. The Japan-based carrier Reagan, however, is in a maintenance period at Yokosuka scheduled to complete in May. The Bremerton, Washington-based Nimitz and her strike group is off Southern California, nearing the completion of its major pre-deployment exercise. The ship is scheduled to deploy this spring to relieve the Vinson in the Western Pacific. 
 
 
 
 The Vinson's return to Korea was ordered on April 8 by Adm. Harry Harris, commander of U.S. Pacific Command. On April 11, Defense Secretary James Mattis – having just met with Harris in Washington – noted that no specific incident prompted the order to curtail the exercise program and head north. 
 
 
 
 "She's stationed there in the western Pacific for a reason," Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon. "She operates freely up and down the Pacific, and she's just on her way up there because that's where we thought it was most prudent to have her at this time. There's not a specific demand signal or specific reason why we're sending her up there." 
 

– If the USS Carl Vinson is supposed to be near the Korean peninsula sending an ominous signal to North Korea, nobody informed the USS Carl Vinson. Despite a slew of reports suggesting that the aircraft carrier was in the area, or about to be, a report at Defense News reveals the reality: The Vinson is currently about 3,500 miles away, taking part in military exercises with the Australian navy south of Singapore. That's not to say the carrier won't get to the Korean peninsula, but even if it left now and traveled at its top speed, it would take four to five days, reports Stars and Stripes. Defense officials tell CNN that things won't happen that quickly: They expect the Vinson and its strike group to arrive off the Korean peninsula around the end of the month. Just don't expect an announcement about the destination from the Navy, which doesn't divulge details about the location of its warships. Stars and Stripes notes that reports suggesting the Vinson was high-tailing it toward North Korea have come from officials in Washington, not the Navy, which has said more broadly that the carrier is moving toward the "Western Pacific Ocean" and avoided any mention of a timetable. Last week, President Trump spoke of "sending an armada" to the region, and reports about the Vinson even caught the attention of North Korea, which called it "nothing but a reckless action of aggression to aggravate the tensions in the region."