The stealthy, nuclear-capable US B-2 bomber is a veteran of wars in Iraq and Libya, but it is not usually a tool of Washington’s statecraft.
Yet on Thursday, the US sent a pair of the bat-winged planes on a first-of-its-kind practice run over the skies of South Korea, conducting what US officials say was a diplomatic sortie.
The aim, the officials said, was two-fold: To reassure US allies South Korea and Japan in the face of a string of threats from North Korea, and to nudge Pyongyang back to nuclear talks.
Photo: AFP / KCNA via KNS
However, whether North Korea’s young leader, Kim Jong-un, interprets the message the way the White House hopes is anybody’s guess.
His first reaction, according to North Korean state media, was to order his country’s missiles ready to strike the US and South Korea.
A senior US official said Kim’s late father, Kim Jong-il, was at least more predictable: He would issue threats that got the world’s attention without provoking open conflict, and then use them as leverage in subsequent diplomatic negotiations.
This time, US intelligence analysts are divided over whether Kim Jong-un is pursuing the same strategy.
“It’s a little bit of an ‘all bets are off’ kind of moment,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The official said the idea for the practice bombing run, part of annual US-South Korean military exercises named Foal Eagle, emerged from government-wide discussions over how to signal to Seoul and Tokyo that Washington would back them in a crisis.
It is less clear whether Washington informed China, North Korea’s neighbor and only major ally, in advance.
The plan was approved by the White House and coordinated with South Korea and Japan, the official said.
While the 20-year-old B-2 often flies for long durations — 44 hours is the record — Thursday’s flight of approximately 37-and-a-half hours was the plane’s first non-stop mission to the Korean Peninsula and back from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, air force officials said.
With Pyongyang threatening missile strikes on the US mainland, as well as US bases in Hawaii and Guam, the flight seemed designed to demonstrate how easy it would be for the US to strike back at North Korea.
It is far from clear that Pyongyang, which has had mixed success in its missile tests, can make good on its own threats.
“This is useful reminder to the South Koreans that the US nuclear arm can reach out and touch North Korea from anywhere. We don’t need to be sitting there at Osan Air Base,” south of Seoul, said Ralph Cossa, president of the Hawaii-based Pacific Forum CSIS think tank.
“This also reminds the Chinese that North Korean actions have consequences. It tells them that the US is taking North Korean threats seriously, but we’re not panicking,” he added.
The senior US official said that once the Foal Eagle exercises are concluded, US President Barack Obama’s administration hopes to pivot to a diplomatic approach to North Korea, and hopes Pyongyang will reciprocate.
US Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to travel to East Asia in about two weeks, the first of a parade of senior Washington officials headed toward the region.
Thursday’s drill was a rare moment in the limelight for the B-2 “Spirit” bomber, which began life with a slew of cost and development troubles for manufacturer Northrop Grumman Corp, but has become a mainstay of US nuclear deterrence.
Long-duration missions, in which the bomber is refueled in midair, are “a challenge on your body and mind, staying sharp,” said an air force captain and B-2 pilot.
Under the service’s security rules, the pilot could only be identified by his radio call sign, “Flash.”
The captain, who did not participate in Thursday’s practice mission over South Korea, said flight doctors have devised special regimens to keep the plane’s two-man crew sharp.
They include 45-minute naps, on a cot in the back of the plane, that end half an hour before “critical events” such as in-air refueling or dropping ordinance, he said.
All 20 of the US’ B-2 bombers are based at Whiteman, and they saw combat during the US invasion of Iraq and the NATO mission that led to Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s overthrow.
In the 1980s, the Pentagon had planned to buy 132 of the bombers, whose main mission was to penetrate the Soviet Union’s airspace undetected. The program was drastically cut back after the Berlin Wall collapsed in 1989.
So elite is the B-2 pilot corps that more people have been in outer space than have flown the aircraft, “Flash” said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing