South Korea has detected 4 new North Korean missiles



Ltentions between the two parts of Korea are never ending. North Korea has launched four short-range missiles towards the Yellow Sea, the South Korean military said on Saturday (November 5th), after a record series of missile fire by Pyongyang this week. South Korea’s military detected the launch “from Donglim, North Pyongan province, towards the western sea, between 11:32 a.m. and 11:39 a.m. (between 2:32 a.m. and 2:39 a.m. GMT)” on Saturday, said indeed said the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff in a statement, using another name for the Yellow Sea.

The “flight range (of the missiles) was detected at some 130 kilometers, at an altitude of approximately 20 kilometers and a speed of Mach 5,” the statement added. Mac 5 is five times the speed of sound. Shortly before, the South Korean army announced the participation on Saturday afternoon of the American B-1B supersonic heavy bomber in the extensive air exercises underway in South Korea jointly conducted by Seoul and Washington. “The South Korean and American air forces conducted joint exercises on November 5 (Saturday) on the Korean peninsula with two American air force B-1Bs, four South Korean F-35As and four American F-16s,” according to a statement from the South Korean general staff at the end of the maneuvers on Saturday afternoon.

“Significant threat”

The B-1B is a supersonic bomber that the United States Air Force describes as “the backbone of America’s long-range bomber force.” Its deployment in the context of maneuvers with South Korea will be considered a “significant threat” by North Korea, Ahn Chan-il, an expert on North Korean issues, told AFP.

The “Vigilant Storm” aerial exercises, which started on October 31, are the largest ever jointly organized by South Korea and the United States. Initially scheduled until Friday, they have been extended until Saturday after North Korea has increased its missile launches in recent days, including the apparently failed launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) towards the Sea of ​​Japan.

READ ALSO10 years of Kim Jong-un – North Korea more hermit than ever

North Korea has always viewed U.S.-South Korean military maneuvers as dress rehearsals for an invasion of its territory or an overthrow of its rulers. The “Vigilant Storm” exercise constitutes “an aggressive and provocative military maneuver targeting the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea”, denounced the North Korean regime on Wednesday, which threatened Seoul and Washington with “paying the most horrible price for story “.

Although it was originally designed to carry nuclear weapons, the B-1B has only been used by the United States for exclusively conventional combat missions since the mid-1990s, indicates its manufacturer Boeing on its site. Internet. It was notably used in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. It can carry up to 34 tons of missiles or laser-guided bombs (BGL), according to the US Air Force. Its air supply allows it to strike anywhere in the world.

On Friday evening, the South Korean army announced that it had deployed some 80 F-35A stealth aircraft after detecting 180 fighter jets flying in North Korean airspace, a new episode in the spectacular rise in tension on the Korean peninsula in recent times. last weeks. The United States denounced on Friday the repeated firing of missiles by North Korea which “ridiculously ridicules” the UN Security Council, with the complicity, according to them, of Russia and China, allies of Pyongyang .

Disagreement at the UN

After attacking Russia and China, Washington, Paris, London, other non-permanent member states of the Security Council advocated in a joint declaration “unity” in the face of the “threat that South Korea North stands for international peace”.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged, through his spokesperson, that “North Korea immediately refrain from any act of provocation and fully comply with its obligations under the resolutions of the Security Council”. He said he was “deeply concerned by the tensions on the Korean peninsula and the thrust of a rhetoric of confrontation”, insisted his spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric.

Pyongyang fired about 30 missiles on Wednesday and Thursday, including one that ended its course near southern territorial waters for the first time since the end of the Korean War in 1953. South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol spoke of a “de facto territorial invasion”. Analysts attribute Pyongyang’s particularly irate reaction to the use of advanced F-35A and F-35B stealth aircraft during “Watchful Storm”, seen as an ideal tool for carrying out lightning “decapitation strikes” against North Korean leaders.

North Korea had already, in September, revised its nuclear doctrine to allow itself to carry out preventive strikes in the event of an existential threat against the Kim Jong-un regime. If North Korea’s nuclear “command and control system” is “endangered by an attack by hostile forces, a nuclear strike will be launched automatically and immediately,” the new doctrine says. Seoul and Washington have been warning for months that North Korea is about to carry out a nuclear test, which would be its seventh.




Source link -82