SEOUL, Aug. 31 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. military on Thursday sent strategic bombers and stealth fighter jets over South Korea for the joint bomb-dropping drill with the South Korean jetfighters in the country's northeastern region, local media citing the South Korean air force.
Two U.S. B-1B strategic bombers and four U.S. F-35B stealth combat planes were dispatched Thursday afternoon over the Korean Peninsula from the U.S. island of Guam and the U.S. military base in Japan respectively.
The U.S. combat aircraft conducted a joint flight drill with four South Korean F-15K fighter jets over the peninsula, before dropping MK-84, MK-82 and GBU-32 bombs on a target at the Pilseung firing range in Gangwon province, the northeastern region of South Korea.
The U.S. KC-135 aerial refueling plane was also dispatched to South Korea for the joint air drill, according to local media reports.
The South Korean air force was quoted as saying that the joint air exercises were carried out to counter the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s repeated ballistic missile launches and its nuclear development.
The air exercises came two days after the DPRK fired an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), called Hwasong-12, over the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.
U.S. President Donald Trump said "all options are on the table" following the DPRK's missile launch, indicating the dispatching of U.S. strategic military assets, such as nuclear-powered submarine and aircraft carriers, to the peninsula in a show of force against the DPRK provocations.
