The South Korean and US militaries responded to Pyongyang’s missile launch on Saturday with aerial maneuvers involving more than one bomber, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.
The JCS communiqué did not specify the exact number of the Pentagon’s B-1 strategic bombers, but with this action, the Allies are trying to provide a comprehensive response to North Korea, as Washington often has only one bomber of this type on the peninsula. used. when it intends to issue a warning to Kim Jong-un’s regime.
In 2017, at the height of escalating tensions between North Korea and former US President Donald Trump, the Pentagon sent two planes as it did in early November last year after Pyongyang fired more than 30 missiles in three days.
The North Korean military performed a “sudden launch” of the missile on Saturday, firing it from a very pronounced angle, according to the official KCNA news agency, which indicated that the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) was a Hwasong-15, the second missile with the largest potential range of his arsenal and which he first used in 2017.
The rehearsal, which took place at 5:22 p.m. (local time) on Saturday, “was arranged suddenly and without notice”, based on “an emergency order issued in the early hours of February 18”.
According to KCNA, the missile traveled 989 kilometers in 1,015 seconds (one hour and six minutes) and reached an apogee of 5,768.5 kilometers, data that coincides with Saturday’s revelations by the South Korean and Japanese militaries.
North Korea had only tested the Hwasong-15 once, in November 2017 and amid an escalation of verbal threats between Pyongyang and Donald Trump.
Also, the text of the North Korean news agency states that “military threats” from South Korea and the US are “becoming very serious, to the point that they cannot be ignored”.
On Friday, Pyongyang threatened an “unprecedented” response to the annual military maneuvers Seoul and Washington began preparing in March, which the regime described as “preparations for a war of aggression”.
In 2022, North Korea conducted a record number of missile launches, about half a hundred, in many cases in response to joint maneuvers by the two allies and the strengthening of the US strategic presence on the peninsula.
Source: DN
