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| This file photo, provided by the defense ministry, shows the South Korean Air Force's F-35A stealth fighters performing an elephant walk at an unidentified air base on March 25. Yonhap |
South Korea and the United States will hold major combined air drills, involving some 240 military aircraft, next week to verify the allies' wartime operational capabilities, the Air Force here said Friday, amid growing North Korean security threats.
The five-day Vigilant Storm exercise is set to begin Monday, as Seoul and Washington are striving to sharpen deterrence amid concerns that Pyongyang could ratchet up tensions by conducting a nuclear test or other provocative acts.
For the drills, the South plans to mobilize some 140 aircraft, including F-35A stealth jets and F-15K and KF-16 fighters, as well as KC-330 tankers, while the U.S. will deploy some 100 assets, including F-35B jets, EA-18 electronic warfare aircraft and KC-135 tankers.
It would mark the U.S. military's first dispatch of F-35B jets here, Seoul officials said, in an apparent move by the allies to highlight their combined air power in the wake of Pyongyang's continued saber-rattling.
Australia's Air Force will also join the exercise with the deployment of a KC-30A tanker transport.
"During the exercise, the Air Forces of South Korea and the U.S. plan to hone wartime operational procedures and enhance sustained operational capabilities by conducting around the clock key air operations, such as a strike package flight, the provision of air defense and emergency air interdiction," the South's Air Force said in a press release.
During the exercise, the Korea Air and Space Operations Center, tasked with spearheading wartime air operations, will check its operational capabilities by commanding allied air assets that are set to carry out a combined 1,600 sorties.
Such a combined air exercise was first held in 2015 under the name of Vigilant ACE, which was suspended in 2018 amid the then Moon Jae-in administration's drive for inter-Korean reconciliation. (Yonhap)
