Seoul (EFE).- The Air Forces of Seoul and Washington carried out maneuvers today with a US B-1 strategic bomber and fighters from both countries, hours after North Korea launched a short-range ballistic missile.
The maneuvers were carried out over South Korea as part of the joint exercises that both countries have been carrying out since the 13th, and to which Pyongyang has responded with successive missile tests.
In addition to the B-1, which was already deployed on the Korean peninsula on the 3rd, the exercises involved F-35A stealth fighters from the Asian country and US F-16 aircraft.
The new deployment of the strategic bomber comes on the same day that Pyongyang launched a short-range ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan (called the East Sea in both Koreas) and three days after the regime fired an intercontinental ballistic missile, an Hwasong-17, considered the longest-range in their arsenal.
Seoul and Washington “maintain their highest level of combined defense against North Korea’s continued threats to regional stability,” the South Korean Defense Ministry said in a statement.
The North’s latest weapons tests are a reply by Pyongyang to the joint maneuvers carried out by Seoul and Washington in the south of the peninsula, seen by the North as “a test to invade its territory and to which it has promised to give” an answer without precedents”.
