WORLD
US, ROK and Japan hold nuclear bomber drills after North Korean missile launch
Baku, April 2, AZERTAC
The U.S., South Korea and Japan staged joint aerial drills featuring a nuclear-capable bomber on Tuesday, following a North Korean ballistic missile launch earlier in the day, NK news reported.
The allies’ first trilateral aerial exercise this year included U.S. B-52H strategic bombers and F-16 fighters, ROK F-15 fighters and Japanese F-2 fighters, Seoul’s defense ministry said in a press release.
The joint drills in the overlapping ROK and Japanese air defense identification zones near South Korea’s Jeju Island came after North Korea fired an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) on Tuesday morning.
Fired from the Pyongyang area, the missile flew around 370-400 miles (600-650 km) before landing in the East Sea (Sea of Japan), according to South Korean and Japanese estimates. The launch came a few weeks after North Korea tested a solid-fuel engine for a hypersonic IRBM.
The ROK military condemned the launch as “a severe threat to the peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula and a clear provocation,” and the nuclear envoys of the U.S., South Korea and Japan subsequently discussed the need for a unified global response to North Korea’s missile activities.
The defense ministry did not specifically identify the drills as a response to this morning’s launch but stated that the three countries’ air forces conducted the exercise to improve their ability to “deter and respond to North Korea’s advancing nuclear and missile threats.”
However, the U.S. and South Korea have occasionally conducted such aerial drills soon after DPRK launches in recent years, sometimes triggering a North Korean response.
The latest joint aerial exercise is in line with a pledge by the three countries’ leaders at last August’s Camp David summit to increase security cooperation, which led to their first-ever trilateral air drills in October.
Tuesday’s drill comes less than three weeks after the U.S.-ROK Freedom Shield springtime exercise ended, following the precedent of the first trilateral aerial drills being staged after the bilateral Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise.
North Korea has yet to react to the trilateral drill, but in the past, it has condemned increasing cooperation between the U.S., South Korea and Japan and Washington’s deployment of strategic assets like B-52H bombers as a pretext for war.
Ahead of October’s aerial exercise, the state-owned Korean Central News Agency criticized the drill as part of the United States’ “provocative moves” and threatened to respond in kind in the event of a “nuclear war.”