Korea-US-Japan to Conduct Joint Missile Detection Exercise Next Month for North Korea

Seoae Ryu Seong-ryong ship performing PLANE GUARD duty during RIMPAC exercise

[Asia Economy Yang Nak-gyu, Military Specialist Reporter] South Korea, the United States, and Japan will conduct the joint ballistic missile detection and tracking exercise called 'Pacific Dragon' next month. This exercise, held in conjunction with the multinational maritime exercise Rim of the Pacific Exercise (RIMPAC), is likely to include Canada, a member of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, along with Australia.

According to the Ministry of National Defense on the 14th, this exercise follows an agreement among the defense chiefs of South Korea, the U.S., and Japan at the recent Singapore Asia Security Conference (Shangri-La Dialogue) to regularize and conduct the exercise openly. The alert exercise will be conducted using computer simulations or by launching missile simulators without interception. It will proceed by detecting, tracking, and intercepting SM-2 simulators fired as targets.

Australia and Canada are participating in this exercise together because they are part of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance, which includes the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

The Navy has conducted joint ballistic missile detection and tracking exercises with the U.S. and Japan during the biennial RIMPAC exercises, but the contents of the exercises were not disclosed to the public in 2018 and 2020 under the previous administration. At the defense ministers' meeting of the three countries on the 11th, they agreed on the need to strengthen trilateral security cooperation in response to North Korea's increasingly advanced nuclear and missile threats, and agreed to regularize and conduct missile alert exercises and ballistic missile detection and tracking exercises openly.

The trilateral missile alert exercises among South Korea, the U.S., and Japan are also expected to be held more than twice in the second half of the year. The three countries agreed to hold missile alert exercises quarterly after the first exercise in May 2016, but in recent years, the exercises have been held intermittently and the details have not been disclosed. Last year, missile alert exercises were held three times, and so far this year, only once in April.

In the past, North Korea has reacted sensitively and protested several times against the trilateral missile alert exercises. When the exercise was first conducted in 2016, a North Korean Foreign Ministry official condemned it as "another serious military provocation," and after the exercise in December 2017, North Korea claimed it was an "attempt to fabricate a trilateral military alliance."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.