US Spy Plane Watches North Korea Amid War Games in South

An American reconnaissance aircraft kept tabs on movements behind the North Korean border on Monday as the United States launched its summertime military drills with allied forces in the South.

Data recorded on the aircraft tracking website Flightradar24 captured in part the roughly 10-hour sortie by an RC-135W Rivet Joint, the U.S. Air Force’s powerful airborne intelligence-gathering platform, which collects electronic signals for analysis by a mission crew of over two dozen.

The flight coincided with the start of the annual U.S.-South Korea war games known as Ulchi Freedom Shield. The mixed military and civilian exercises come amid repeated missile tests north of the border and this year will simulate a North Korean nuclear attack for the first time.

A day earlier, Pyongyang labeled the event a “large-scale” provocation, and vowed to build up its own military to “change the security environment of the Korean Peninsula and the region in our favour.”

Newsweek‘s map traces the Rivet Joint’s operation out of Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, the Japanese island serving as a major hub for the U.S. military.

The available GPS data, which includes coverage gaps filled by assumed flight routes, suggests the Rivet Joint used friendly South Korean airspace near Seoul to scan the border area about 30 miles away, with Pyongyang situated about 90-100 miles further north.

The RC-135 family of reconnaissance aircraft, which is expected to remain in service until the 2040s, has a range of around 4,000 miles, the Air Force says. All aircraft are assigned to the Air Combat Command’s 55th Wing at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, with forward deployments worldwide.

North Korea has previously complained of frequent U.S. spy flights near its border. Its embassy in neighboring China, its only formal treaty ally, could not be reached for comment after hours.

The U.S. and South Korea host their largest combined war games every March, called Freedom Shield. In August, joint training with the South Korean government’s Ulchi civil defense drills is called Ulchi Freedom Shield.

Lee Sung Joon, a spokesperson for South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, said about 19,000 South Korean troops would take part in the 11-day exercise through August 29. This year’s maneuvers will include defense against “weapons of mass destruction,” he said at a briefing last week.

The U.S. Forces Korea didn’t immediately respond to a written request for comment before publication.

On Sunday, the North Korean foreign ministry’s Institute for American Studies blasted Ulchi Freedom Shield as “offensive multinational muscle-flexing,” in a dismissal of Washington and Seoul’s description of the event as defensive in nature.

Its statement, carried by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency, accused the U.S. of openly pursuing a policy of “using nuclear weapons against the DPRK,” referring to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the North’s official name.

Its complaints pointed to deployments of more American sea and air power near North Korea’s southern border, moves the U.S. and the South say will help deter further provocations by Kim Jong Un’s regime.