STORY HIGHLIGHTS
The planes flew to South Korea and back in one mission, the U.S. says
It says the flights show its ability “to conduct precision strikes quickly”
U.S. and South Korean defense chiefs spoke by phone Wednesday evening
A previous announcement about B-52 flights over South Korea angered the North
(CNN) — The United States said Thursday it sent stealth bombers to South Korea to participate in annual military exercises amid spiking tensions with North Korea.
The B-2 Spirit bombers flew more than 6,500 miles from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri to South Korea, dropping inert munitions there as part of the exercises, before returning to the U.S. mainland, the U.S Forces in Korea said in a statement.
The mission by the planes, which can carry both conventional and nuclear weapons, “demonstrates the United States’ ability to conduct long range, precision strikes quickly and at will,” the statement said.
The U.S. military’s announcement earlier this month that it was flying B-52 bombers over South Korea to participate in the routine exercises prompted an angry reaction from the regime of Kim Jong Un, which has unleashed a torrent of threats in the past few weeks.
There was no immediate reaction to the U.S. statement Thursday from the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency.
“The United States is steadfast in its alliance commitment to the defense of the Republic of Korea, to deterring aggression, and to ensuring peace and stability in the region,” the statement said, using South Korea’s official name. “The B-2 bomber is an important element of America’s enduring and robust extended deterrence capability in the Asia-Pacific region.”
The disclosure of the B-2 flights comes a day after North Korea said it was cutting a key military hotline with South Korea, provoking fresh expressions of concern from U.S. officials about Pyongyang’s recent rhetoric. There are several hotlines between North and South Korea.
“North Korea is not a paper tiger so it wouldn’t be smart to dismiss its provocative behavior as pure bluster,” a U.S. official said Wednesday.
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel spoke by phone to his South Korean counterpart, Kim Kwan-jin, on Wednesday evening, Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said, noting the “heightened tension on the Korean Peninsula.”
The recent saber-rattling from Pyongyang has included threats of pre-emptive nuclear strikes against the United States and South Korea, as well as the declaration that the armistice that stopped the Korean War in 1953 is null and void.
On Tuesday, the North said it planned to place military units tasked with targeting U.S. bases under combat-ready status.
Most observers say North Korea is still years away from having the technology to deliver a nuclear warhead on a missile, but it does have plenty of conventional military firepower, including medium-range ballistic missiles that can carry high explosives for hundreds of miles.
Tensions escalated on the Korean Peninsula after the North carried out a long-range rocket launch in December and an underground nuclear test last month, prompting the U.N. Security Council to step up sanctions on the secretive regime.
Pyongyang has expressed fury over the sanctions and the annual U.S.-South Korean military exercises, which are due to continue until the end of April.
The North has claimed that the exercises are tantamount to threats of nuclear war against it.
Sharp increases in tensions on the Korean Peninsula have taken place during the drills in previous years. The last time the North cut off military communications with the South was during similar exercises in March 2009.
Obama defends drone strikes
(By Chris Kaufman, AP)
(Phatforums News / USA Today) — President Obama is defending his use of unmanned drone attacks in Pakistan and elsewhere, saying they have been used to kill more terrorists than civilians.
“I want to make sure that people understand actually drones have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties,” Obama said during a forum with YouTube and Google-plus. “For the most part, they have been very precise, precision strikes against al Qaeda and their affiliates. And we are very careful in terms of how it’s been applied.”
In his most extended public comments on drones, Obama disputed the “perception” that “we’re just sending in a whole bunch of strikes willy-nilly.”
“This is a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists, who are trying to go in and harm Americans, hit American facilities, American bases and so on,” Obama said.
Obama added: “It is important for everybody to understand that this thing is kept on a very tight leash. It’s not a bunch of folks in a room somewhere just making decisions. And it is also part and parcel of our overall authority when it comes to battling al Qaeda. It is not something that’s being used beyond that.”
The president also disputed news reports about drone activity in Iraq, saying they have been “a little overwritten.”
“The truth of the matter is we’re not engaging in a bunch of drone attacks inside of Iraq,” Obama said. “There’s some surveillance to make sure that our embassy compound is protected.”
A questioner at the YouTube/Google forum persisted, wondering about the use of drones and national sovereignty.
Said Obama:
Well, you know, I think that we have to be judicious in how we use drones.
But understand that probably our ability to respect the sovereignty of other countries and to limit our incursions into somebody else’s territory is enhanced by the fact that we are able to pinpoint strike on al Qaeda operative in a place where the capacities of that military in that country may not be able to get them.
So, obviously, a lot of these strikes have been in the Fattah and going after al Qaeda suspects, who are up in very tough terrain along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. For us to be able to get them in another way would involve probably a lot more intrusive military actions than the one that we’re already engaging in.
That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be careful about how we proceed on this. And you know, obviously, I’m looking forward to a time where al Qaeda is no longer operative network and, you know, we can refocus a lot of our assets and attention on other issues.
But this is something that we’re still having to deal with, there’s still active plots that are directed against the United States, and I think we are on the offense now. Al Qaeda’s been really weakened, but we’ve still got a little more work to do, and we’ve got to make sure that we’re using all our capacities in order to deal with it.
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