And they are making great progress in a lot of key areas. Norah O'Donnell: Do you get briefed on China's growing military threat and the progress that their navy is making? We will sail wherever international law allows. And I think that's the message that we really want to convey to not only China, but the entire world. David Ash: I'll tell you this: we are here to stay, right, in the South China Sea, and in this part of the world. That's China's two diesel-fueled carriers, to the U.S.'s 11 nuclear-powered ones that can carry a total of about a thousand attack aircraft… more than the navies of every other nation on earth, combined. And they have- they have two operational aircraft carriers right now. Norah O'Donnell: So even though China now has the largest Navy in the world, they don't have anything like this in terms of aircraft carriers.Īdmiral Samuel Paparo: They do not. Navy?Īdmiral Samuel Paparo: It's an aircraft carrier and its airwing is capable of 150 strike or air-to-air sorties per day, with at its surge levels, the ability to deliver 900 precision-guided munitions every day, and reloadable every night Norah O'Donnell: When you talk about ships, what's the most powerful in the U.S. It was a short flight to the ship…īefore Admiral Paparo rose to lead the Pacific Fleet, he flew jets and graduated from the school known as "Top Gun." The Cold War-era transport plane takes people and supplies back and forth from land to the carrier.
marines recaptured it two and a half years later, and the island, about the size of Chicago, became an indispensable strategic foothold in the Western Pacific, as it remains today.įrom Guam, we boarded a Navy C-2 Greyhound.
Guam was taken by Imperial Japan two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. To reach the USS Nimitz, we first traveled to America's westernmost territory, the island of Guam, in the middle of the Pacific.
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