SEOUL – American military forces partaking in a recent joint drill with their South Korean counterparts simulated capturing North Korea’s nuclear weapons at the event of war, according to new reports.
The operation, part of the Warrior Strike IX war games earlier this month, saw a US military unit known as “The Black Jack Brigade” exercise “infiltrating” and “removing weapons of mass destruction,” Fox News reported Wednesday, citing foreign military sources.
Images from the operation show a group of heavily-equipped soldiers train with night-vision gear and full-face protection near armored vehicles.
The training exercise comes amid escalating tensions between North Korea and the US, over Pyongyang’s development of ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads.
While North Korean leaders have denounced the joint military activity, which sometimes also involves Japan, as rehearsals for an invasion, the US and the South insist that they are defensive in nature.
The war games were said to be a response to the North’s test-firing of what US military experts said was an all-new Hwasong-15 missile capable of hitting targets across the US mainland.
Pyongyang has fired a ballistic missile which splashed down in the Sea of Japan. North Korean leader personally oversaw the launch of the ICBM, which Pyongyang claims is a Hwasong-15, tipped with super-large heavy warhead and capable of hitting the whole mainland of the US.
Tensions have been building on the peninsula following a series of nuclear and missile tests by Pyongyang as well as threats of war and personal insults traded between US President Donald Trump and the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un have exchanged a series of personal insults, with Trump calling Kim a “little rocket man” and Pyongyang calling the US president a “mentally deranged dotard” and “old lunatic”.
In 2017, North Korea carried out 20 ballistic missile launches, while the United States and its allies, for their part, are constantly conducting far-reaching sea drills in the region. The parties are exchanging tough rhetoric and admit that any scenario – including military action – is possible.
North Korea has been under a raft of crippling United Nations sanctions since 2006 over its nuclear tests as well as multiple rocket and missile launches.
Pyongyang has firmly defended its military program as a deterrent against the hostile policies of the US and its regional allies, including South Korea and Japan.
US President has vowed to impose additional “major sanctions” against North Korea, while Washington has thousands of troops in the region, partially in South Korea and Japan, and routinely threatens the North with military action to stop its weapons program.