The aircraft carrier USS Enterprise is deploying to the Gulf region where it will replace one and possibly both carriers already there, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.
Navy officials had earlier raised the possibility that the Enterprise would increase the number of carriers in the region to three, which would be the biggest US naval presence in the Gulf since the US invasion of Iraq.
But Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman denied that US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has decided to up the number of carriers to three, and said the deployment of the Enterprise was part of a "routine swap."
"Has the department made a decision for 3.0 carriers in the Gulf? No. They haven't," Whitman said. "What Secretary Gates has said is still the current guidance with respect to the level of effort in the Centcom area of responsibility."
"There is an allocation plan for major assets like carriers, and the secretary would be involved in any decisions with respect to that," he said.
Defense officials later told reporters that the carrier USS Stennis is expected to have left the region by the time the Enterprise arrives, and that the new carrier will replace the USS Nimitz.
"I don't think it's a one for one replacement. But Enterprise is coming in and one would logically conclude that both (the Stennis and Nimitz) are leaving in the not too distant future," said a Pentagon official.
The next carrier, the USS Truman, is not scheduled to deploy to the Gulf until the fall, which would leave only a single carrier for a period, the official said.
"That's not a decision that has been made," said another senior defense official. "We could maintain two, we could go to one. We're not going to go to three."
Shortly after assuming office in January, Gates moved to raise the US naval presence in the Gulf with the stationing of a second carrier there as a sign of US commitment to the region at a time of rising tensions with Iran.
In May, the Stennis and the Nimitz maneuvered together in the Gulf in the biggest display of US naval power there in years.
The US Fifth Fleet based in Bahrain announced that the Enterprise, which set sail Saturday from Norfolk, Virginia, was also on its way.
Navy officials in Bahrain said the Enterprise was not replacing either the Stennis or the Nimitz, leaving what Pentagon officials later said was an erroneous impression that the number of aircraft carriers would go up to three.
"The Enterprise is heading to Fifth Fleet waters and is not replacing any other ships in the area," a US Navy spokesperson told AFP without elaborating.
The Enterprise "provides navy power to counter the assertive, disruptive and coercive behavior of some countries, as well as support (to) our soldiers and marines in Iraq and Afghanistan," Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, the fleet commander, said in the statement.
"Regular deployments of the strike groups to the Middle East are not designed to provoke any of the Gulf countries," it added.
