US, South Korea to hold biggest joint field exercises in 5 years
South Korean and US armies announced Friday that they will hold their largest joint field exercise in five years later this month, as the US sent long-range B-1B bombers to the Korean Peninsula in a show of strength against North Korea. Fly the plane
North Korea has threatened to take “unprecedented” tough action against such exercises. It is likely that it will respond to the upcoming training with the missile test as it sees it as an invasion rehearsal.
At a joint news conference, the South Korean and US military said they would hold the Freedom Shield exercise, a computer-simulated command post training, from March 13 to 23 to strengthen their defense and response capabilities, and a large-scale joint area separate the training. Exercise called Warrior Shield FTX.
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Colonel Isaac L. Taylor, a spokesman for the US Army, said the field trainings would include a joint amphibious drill and their size would return to the scale of the Allies’ earlier largest springtime field exercises called Foal Eagle.
Both the countries last organized Foal Eagle in 2018. He then canceled or scaled back some joint exercises with North Korea to support the now stalled diplomacy and to guard against the COVID-19 pandemic. Recently, however, the two countries have been expanding their joint military exercises in light of the growing nuclear threat from North Korea.
Colonel Isaac Taylor of the United Nations Command, Joint Forces Command, and United States Army Korea left, and Colonel Lee Sung-joon of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of South Korea attend a press briefing March 3, 2023 in Seoul, South Korea. Korea. The US and South Korea will hold their annual joint training this month. (Chung Sung-joon/Pool Photo via AP)
Friday’s deployment of US B-1Bs was the aircraft’s first flyover in joint aerial training with South Korean warplanes since February 19. North Korea is highly sensitive to the deployment of B-1Bs, which are capable of carrying a large conventional weapons payload. , It responded to previous flights of several B-1Bs by test-launching two short-range missiles the next day.
South Korea’s Defense Ministry said the use of the B-1B demonstrated US determination and ability to use the full range of its military capabilities, including nuclear, to defend its allies.
North Korea tested more than 70 missiles last year, the most in a single year, and many more this year. Many of the missiles were nuclear-capable weapons designed to strike the US mainland and South Korea.
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North Korea has already threatened to use its nuclear weapons in possible conflicts with the United States and South Korea. The US military warned him that the use of nuclear weapons “will spell the end of that regime.”
In January, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the US would also increase the deployment of advanced weapons such as fighter jets and bombers to the Korean Peninsula.
Last month, North Korea’s foreign ministry warned that the US and South Korea would face “unprecedentedly persistent and strong retaliation” if the US and South Korea held planned military exercises this year, which the North described as “preparations for a war of aggression”. accepts as
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Later, senior North Korean Foreign Ministry official Kwon Jong Gun said that the only way to ease military tensions on the Korean Peninsula was for the United States to reverse its plans to deploy strategic assets in South Korea and to establish peace with the South. Joint practice has to be stopped. He said that if the United States continues its “hostile and provocative practices” against North Korea, it could be considered a declaration of war.
North Korea has previously issued similar rhetoric during times of hostility with the United States and South Korea.
