Four F-22s will fly over Korea Wednesday

F-22 Raptor stealth fighters

By Jun Ji-hye

Pilots of the United States Air Force will fly four F-22 Raptor stealth fighters to South Korea, Wednesday, in an apparent show of force against North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats, sources said Tuesday.

“The U.S. Air Force plans to dispatch four F-22s to Korea tomorrow (Wednesday),” a defense official told reporters on condition of anonymity.

Cited as the world’s best attack aircraft, the F-22 is a core strategic weapon of the United States.

The Raptor will be the third strategic asset of the U.S. armed forces that Washington has dispatched to the Korean Peninsula since North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test on Jan. 6.

The U.S. Air Force sent a B-52 Stratofortress strategic bomber to South Korea on Jan. 10. The U.S. Navy also dispatched a nuclear-powered submarine, the USS North Carolina, to the three-day Korea-U.S. joint exercise held in the East Sea which began on Saturday.

The U.S. was initially planning to dispatch the F-22s in late January, but the plan was delayed due to the heavy snow in Washington.

In the wake of the fourth nuclear test last month, the North continued to take provocative action by launching a long-range rocket on Feb. 7, which is widely seen as a cover for testing intercontinental ballistic missile technology, aimed at striking the U.S. mainland.

In the allies’ efforts to show off their combined military might against the isolated state, the U.S. is also planning to dispatch the USS John C. Stennis Strike Group to the annual Key Resolve and Foal Eagle joint military exercises that will kick off on March 7 and run until April 30.

During the annual drills this time, Washington will exercise a prompt dispatch of its overseas armed forces to the peninsula in the event of a contingency, according to officials.

A military official told reporters, on condition of anonymity, that the drills will check how fast the U.S. overseas forces, comprised of a variety of elements including the Air Force and Navy, can arrive at the peninsula in the event of provocations by the North.

He added that the drills this time will be carried out more intensively than usual and with more advanced hardware than previously deployed.

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