One of two annual joint military exercises that South Korea and the United States launched last week has effectively come to an end Thursday, after the allies focused on preemptively deterring nuclear and missile threats by North Korea.
The computer-based command post exercise Key Resolve wrapped up its simulation warfare portion earlier in the day, a military official said.
The allies will have a one-day performance review on Friday before officially concluding the joint drill for this year, the source said.
With the closure of the drill, American troops and military assets that have come to the Korean Peninsula will start returning to their home bases, according to the official.
The two countries’ militaries kicked off the 12-day Key Resolve exercise and the two-month Foal Eagle field exercise on March 7. The drills are conducted every spring in order to test the South Korean and U.S. joint defense posture.
Foal Eagle will continue until April 30.
This year’s exercises were the biggest of their kinds in terms of scale, which mobilized the largest number of troops and military equipment.
The 2016 drills incorporated the allies’ new operational plan known as “OPLAN 5015,” which draws on emergency preemptive attacks on North Korea’s nuclear and missile facilities in a war strategy far more aggressive than those set up in the past.
“The latest Key Resolve focused more on verifying the validity of the OPLAN 5015 than on counteroffensive (activities),” another defense official said.
Four days into the annual exercises, North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles into the East Sea, apparently in protest against what they denounce as a dress rehearsal for an invasion.
Besides the missiles, no particular reaction has been detected from the North, according to officials.
Sources have said that in the event of North Korean provocations during the Foal Eagle exercise, the U.S. can fly its B-2 stealth bombers and F-22 fighters over the Korean Peninsula as a show of force. The B-2 bombers can be armed with nuclear weapons. (Yonhap)
