This year's Freedom Shield exercise is the allies' first major joint training since President Donald Trump returned to office in January and comes amid concerns about North Korea's booming military cooperation with Russia.
South Korea and the U.S. announced details of the exercises on Thursday, but it was overshadowed by the news of bombing which drew intense public criticism in South Korea.
Both the South Korean and U.S. militaries halted all live-fire exercises across South Korea. Military officials said that South Korea’s air force also stopped the flights of its entire aircrafts except surveillance planes and others needed for emergency situations.
Military officials said the Freedom Shield training will proceed as scheduled and they plan to restart live-fire and flight training after they find the exact cause of the bombing and formulate preventative steps.
But if they fail to resume the paused training by Monday when they kick off the Freedom Shield exercise with the U.S. military, that will hurt the workings of the early parts of the exercise, observers say.
Lee Illwoo, an expert with the Korea Defense Network in South Korea, said the suspension of flight training would particularly cause “really a big problem in examining the two countries’ operational plans.” He said flying warplanes would be essential to determining their actual capabilities, discussing the size of reinforcements of U.S. aircraft from abroad and modifying the allies’ operational plans.
Initial investigations found the pilot of one of the KF-16s entered wrong coordinates for a bombing site. Officials said the pilots of two KF-16s had more than 200-400 hours of flying time. Lee said they likely piloted KF-16s only two to three years.
The South Korean and U.S. militaries have already begun field exercises in connection with the Freedom Shield, and Thursday’s live-fire drill was one of them. Col. Ryan Donald, spokesperson for the U.S. military in South Korea, confirmed that American servicemembers were participating in Thursday’s live-fire training but no U.S. air force aircraft was still involved.
“We take this incident very seriously. We are coordinating closely with the ROK Ministry of Defense and are committed to a thorough and transparent investigation,” Donald said in a statement, using the acronym of South Korea’s official name, the Republic of Korea.
The incident happened as North Korea was ramping up its fiery rhetoric against the U.S. and South Korea, as it views their joint drills as invasion rehearsals. North Korea's state news agency warned Friday that the U.S. and South Korea "will have to pay dearly for their stupid and reckless war drills."
Trump has said he would reach out to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un again to revive diplomacy, but North Korea hasn’t responded to his overture.
In South Korea, there were concerns that Trump might scale back U.S.-South Korean military drills, because during his first term, he complained about the cost of bilateral exercises and once unilaterally announced the cancellation of one drill after his first summit with Kim.
But Lee said Trump now knows the importance of South Korea in America’s Indo-Pacific and China policies and won’t downsize drills with South Korea.
This year’s field training being held alongside the Freedom Shield involve 16 brigade-level field trainings, up from 10 such drills last year, according to South Korea's military.
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