South Korea, the United States and Japan conducted anti-missile maneuvers at sea – Reuters

According to the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Kazakhstan, one destroyer from each country participated in the exercises: Sejong the Great (displacement 7600 tons) participated from the Republic of Kazakhstan, Barry (6900 tons) from the United States, Japan – “Atago” (7700 tons). All ships are equipped with the multifunctional Aegis combat information and control system, which performed the main information processing and decision-making work.According to the script for the exercise, which lasted five hours, South Korean and Japanese ships detected and escorted a simulated North Korean missile launch, relaying information to a US destroyer, which carried out a simulated missile intercept. . After that, the information was passed from the American side to the Koreans and the Japanese. It was noted that this time there were no real firings to intercept the missile, but all happened on computer screens.According to the statement of the OKNSh of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Kazakhstan, these exercises were a response to recent rocket launches from the DPRK. On February 18, North Korea launched the Hwaseong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile, and on February 20, two 600mm MLRS short-range ballistic missiles. According to Pyongyang, the MLRS can be equipped with tactical nuclear warheads.Seoul promised that in the near future, together with the United States and Japan, they would continue and conduct exercises even more frequently to practice neutralizing the missile threat from North Korea.Journalists from the Republic of Kazakhstan also found that despite US attempts to “make friends” between the South Koreans and the Japanese, there are still some frictions between them, which the drills revealed. It turned out that the United States acted as a liaison center between the Republic of Korea and Japan, since the ships of the two countries did not trade directly with each other. The mini-scandal was caused by the fact that on American maps the sea where the exercises were taking place was named in Tokyo’s favorite way – “Japanese”. Seoul insists on the name of the “Eastern” sea. The South Korean side eventually demanded adjustments, bringing its position to the Americans’ attention.