By Solomon "Customs" Bridges
The USS Abraham Lincoln did not come to Guam to make news. That, the Navy says, is rather the news itself.
The Nimitz-class carrier, flagship of Carrier Strike Group 3, pulled into Apra Harbor on Sept. 19 for what the service called "a brief logistics stop." It arrived alongside the destroyer USS Frank E. Petersen Jr., with the staffs of Carrier Air Wing 9 and Destroyer Squadron 21 embarked. U.S. Navy Master-at-Arms 2nd Class James Stiehmokel stood watch as the ship came in; Cmdr. Patrick Reilly held the bridge. Both were photographed at their posts — small human details in a maneuver that is, by design, unremarkable.
That is how the Navy wants it read. Abraham Lincoln is conducting what it describes as routine operations in the 7th Fleet area of responsibility, the stretch of ocean running from the international date line to the India-Pakistan border, from the Kuril Islands to the Antarctic. The Navy's own language is direct about the purpose of ships like this one moving through it: continuous patrols meant "to deter aggression, strengthen alliances and partnerships and advance peace through strength."
Guam is no accidental stop. The island, a U.S. territory since 1898 and home to Andersen Air Force Base and Naval Base Guam, sits roughly 1,500 miles from the Chinese coast — close enough that Beijing has long treated it as a marker in its own military planning, far enough to sit outside the immediate reach of much of China's shorter-range missile arsenal. A carrier refueling there is a supply errand. It is also a sentence in a longer conversation between two militaries that mostly talk past each other, in patrols and port calls rather than statements.
Nothing in the available reporting indicates why this particular stop was timed for this week, or how long the ship will remain before returning to patrol. The Navy has not said what comes next for the strike group. What is documented is simpler: on a Saturday in September, an American carrier tied up in a Pacific harbor, took on supplies, and prepared to sail on — one entry in a patrol schedule that rarely makes headlines and is not meant to.
— Compiled from U.S. Navy reporting via DVIDS.
The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."