The US Air Force on Tuesday flew the B-1B Lancers over Osan Air Base, south of Seoul, as a warning to North Korea following its fifth nuclear test last week.
Advertisement
“US and South Korean fighter jets escorted the bombers in their low-altitude flight over South Korea’s Osan Air Base. about an hour from the border between North and South Korea”.
A U.S. Air Force B-1B bomber flies over Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, September 13, 2016.
North Korea has said the recent U.S. bomber flight over South Korea was no more than a “bluff” and a “laughing stock” for the whole world.
The two officials also said that the alliance military forces continue to be ready to satisfy mutual defense obligations against the threats to the security of the country and the Indo-Asia-Pacific region.
The Air Force has previously deployed strategic bombers to South Korea in response to North Korea provocations, and the deployment is taking place after North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test on Friday.
Both Park and Brooks reaffirmed that the USA and South Korea are still committed to the deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in Seongju.
Following a meeting with his South Korean counterpart, Kim said that it was up to North Korea to start any diplomatic conversations with the US – the six party talks stalled in 2008 when North Korea walked away from table.
“The standardisation of the nuclear warhead will enable to produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power”, said Kim Ki Nam, North Korea’s vice chairman of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK).
The bombers are from the 34th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron, which dropped more than 2,000 “smart bombs” during more than 630 missions over Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan from January to July of 2015, officials at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam said in August.
“Left unchecked, Pyongyang will likely develop the capability to reach the continental United States with a nuclear tipped missile in a decade or so”.
But the supersonic bombers may be rattling the North Korean leadership.
The revelations came as North Korea accused the United States of pushing the Korean peninsula to “the point of explosion” after it dispatched two huge bombers in a show of force against North Korea.
“They absolutely took notice”, Ripley said of the North Koreans.
But Beijing prefers keeping a nuclear-armed North Korea afloat as a buffer against the South and the United States, to risking the collapse of the North’s government with too severe enforcement of sanctions, said analysts.
Advertisement
The United States wants China to do more, with U.S. Defence Secretary Ash Carter last week singling out the role he said China should play in curbing its neighbor.
