North Korean warplanes conduct bombing drill, South scrambles fighter jets in response

Seoul, South Korea

In a fresh showdown after US Navy aircraft carrier entered the waters off the Korean Peninsula despite recent escalation of tensions, 12 North Korean warplanes, including eight fighter jets and four bombers, staged an apparent bombing drill on Thursday, following  which South Korea also scrambled its fighter jets.

South Korean security officials said that a US Navy aircraft carrier strike group entered into waters off the Korean Peninsula despite escalating tensions in between US allies (South Korea and Japan) and North Korea following multiple missile launches over the past two weeks. 

The North criticised the move as in a statement on Thursday (October 6), the state's foreign ministry condemned said that it posed a "serious threat" to the situation's stability. 

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As translated by the news agency Reuters, the statement read: "We are watching the United States posing a serious threat to the stability of the situation on the Korean Peninsula and in its vicinity by redeploying the aircraft carrier in the waters off the Korean Peninsula." 

After North Korea's IRBM launch over Japan, the USS Ronald Reagan and its strike group of accompanying warships were redeployed. The USS Ronald Reagan is a Nimitz-class, nuclear-powered supercarrier in the service of the United States Navy. 

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On Thursday, 12 North Korean military planes flew in formation in an apparent drill, South Korea's military said. It further added that it had scrambled 30 fighter jets in response. 

Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff said that North Korea's eight fighter jets and four bombers "staged the formation flight north of the inter-Korean air boundary [and] were thought to have conducted air-to-surface firing drills". 

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The North also condemned the US for talking to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) about Pyongyang's "just counteraction measures of the Korean People's Army on south Korea-U.S. joint drills". It suggested that its missile tests are a reaction to the allied military moves. 

Meanwhile, after a UN Security Council meeting in response to the North's recent launches, Pyongyang fired two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea in the direction of Japan on Thursday.  

A report by POLITICO cited two defense department officials who stated that the US planned to send a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to the waters near the Korean Peninsula after North Korea's missile tests on Tuesday. 

As per the US Naval Institute’s fleet tracker, the Reagan is based in Japan and frequently spends its deployments hitting different parts of the Western Pacific. The ship was operating east of northern Japan before it returned to the Sea of Japan. 

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