Military flights at Kunsan Air Base resumed Thursday following a five-month reconstruction of the installation’s 9,000-foot runway.
The $22 million project began in April and required the 8th Fighter Wing’s roughly 30 F-16 Fighting Falcons to temporarily relocate 75 miles north to Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek city, according to a news release from the wing on Thursday.
Kunsan’s F-16s returned to their home base Wednesday after the flightline was checked for debris the previous day by the wing and the South Korean air force’s 38th Fighter Group.
ICYMI: South Korea and the United States will soon conduct one of their biggest #military exercises of the year, #Ulchi Freedom Shield (#UFS), to improve their ability to respond to North Korea’s #nuclear and #missile threats.https://t.co/sy1XhCyZ2h
That is a lot of firepower on display during this exercise:
U.S. warplanes conduct a training exercise in this photo captured from the Facebook account of the U.S. 7th Air Force. (Yonhap)
The U.S. military in South Korea conducted air force training involving dozens of warplanes, including F-16 fighter jets and U-2 high altitude reconnaissance aircraft, earlier this month, the U.S. 7th Air Force has said.
The training “underlines our commitment to the defense of the Republic of Korea,” and it demonstrated “our ability to rapidly generate combat air power,” the U.S. military said in a Facebook post Saturday, referring to South Korea by its official name.
The display of airpower came amid lingering tension on the Korean Peninsula over North Korea’s continued weapons testing.
During the “Elephant Walk” training, the fully armed jets taxied in formation along an unspecified airfield to practice standard pre-takeoff procedures and check their readiness, it said.
Fortunately no one was injured or killed from this crash:
Officials work at U.S. jet crash site Officials examine the site on a farmland in Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul, where a U.S. F-16 jet crashed, on May 6, 2023. The pilot escaped and no civilian damage was reported. (Yonhap)
An American F-16 Fighting Falcon crashed Saturday in an agricultural field near Osan Air Base, according to the 51st Fighter Wing
The crash occurred around 9:45 a.m. about 10 miles from Osan and 30 miles south of Seoul, the wing said in a news release. The pilot ejected safely and is in stable condition after being taken to an urgent care facility on base.
No other injuries were reported and an investigation is underway, the wing said.
The F-16 was assigned to the 8th Fighter Wing out of Kunsan Air Base, about 115 miles south of Seoul. Around 30 F-16s from Kunsan were temporarily relocated to Osan in March due to routine repairs of the base’s runway.
Another U.S. Soldier has self selected himself out of continued service it looks like:
An American soldier suspected of assaulting a South Korean bus driver was arrested over the weekend by police in Suwon city, according to a police official.
Police allege that a junior enlisted soldier stationed at Camp Humphreys boarded a tourist bus around 6:40 a.m. Sunday and “made a commotion” by yelling, a spokesman for the Suwon Seobu police station told Stars and Stripes by phone Monday.
South Korean law enforcement officials customarily speak to the media on the condition of anonymity and do not publicly identify criminal suspects until trial. Suwon is roughly 20 miles north of Camp Humphreys, the largest U.S. military base overseas.
The bus driver was pushed to the ground while attempting to restrain the soldier, the spokesman said. The driver notified police, who apprehended the soldier at a convenience store about 330 yards from the bus.
The bus driver and police officers at the scene said they smelled alcohol on the soldier’s breath, the spokesman said. Police will review security camera footage from the bus and plan to interview the soldier at a later date.
It looks like there is not going to be much activity going on this summer at Kunsan AB as its runway goes through a complete overhaul:
The last U.S. Air Force fighter jets from Kunsan Air Base moved this week to Osan Air Base, about 75 miles north, ahead of a scheduled runway overhaul expected to last through the summer.
Around 30 F-16 Fighting Falcons of the 8th Fighter Wing will continue flight operations over South Korea from Osan while their 9,000-foot-long home runway receives a makeover, wing spokeswoman Capt. Kaylin P. Hankerson told Stars and Stripes by email Thursday.
Kunsan is on the country’s west coast about 115 miles south of Seoul and is home to around 4,200 U.S. troops.
