The U.S. Navy has deployed special, radar-hunting warplanes to South Korea to train for a possible air war against North Korea.
The five EA-18G Growlers have joined more than 200 American and South Korean planes and tens of thousands of military personnel for a five-day annual war game known as Vigilant Ace.
The two-person crews of the twin-engine EA-18Gs are responsible for arguably the most dangerous mission in all of aerial warfare. Officially called “suppression of enemy air defenses,” the mission involves clearing a path through sophisticated air defenses so that other planes can safely strike their targets.
The EA-18Gs carry sensors for detecting radars’ emissions, jammers for interfering with the sensors’ functions, and radar-homing missiles to destroy them. But to take out enemy air defenses, the Growler crews have to get close—and that puts them directly in harm’s way. In North Korea, the crews would face a growing arsenal of radars and surface-to-air missiles based on deadly Russian and Chinese designs.
The Boeing-made Growlers arrived during the first week of December at Osan air base, around 50 miles from the border with North Korea. The EA-18Gs, from squadron VAQ-134 based in Washington State, were in the middle of a six-month training rotation with two squadrons of U.S. Air Force F-16s flying from an air base in Japan.
I think it is safe to say that the North Koreans have made more progress with their nuclear weapons program in the first year of the Trump presidency than they did in the last three administrations combined.
Nothing like having a thin skinned megalomaniac in office poking at another thin skinned megalomaniac to really speed up the production of weaponry, don't you think?
You know I keep thinking of all of those idiots who voted fro Jill Stein because they had been convinced, possibly by the Russians, that Hillary Clinton was going to take this country into another war.
Perhaps THEY should be the first ones drafted and sent to die in this one.
Source http://ift.tt/2juUZ6j
