By Michael Bielawski

Vermont’s Green Mountain Boys – via the Air National Guard – are home from joint military exercises with their counterparts among Japanese, Korean, and other East Asian allies.

As reported by Senior Master Sgt. Michael Davis, hundreds of Airmen of the 158th Fighter Wing, are back after spending months deployed at Kadena Air Base in Japan. There will be more airmen, equipment, and F-35 Lightning II planes to return in the coming weeks.

“While deployed, the Green Mountain Boys participated in a series of multinational exercises alongside the Japanese, Australian, and South Korean militaries,” Davis wrote for the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service. “The unit also conducted joint training with locally assigned forces and other units deployed to Kadena.”

He wrote that the Airmen demonstrated “exceptional professionalism and readiness” and that they “only strengthened partnerships with our Indo-Pacific allies.”

Korea and the US have a strong military relationship since the Korean War between the southern and northern portions of the peninsula began in 1950. One high-profile incident in 2010 was the sinking of the Cheonan, a South Korean Naval ship. In the incident, 46 seamen were lost. Reports indicated that an old sea mine from earlier in the war caused the sinking.

The Associated Press reports that such exercises are ongoing.

“South Korean and U.S. troops will begin their large annual joint military drills next week to enhance readiness against North Korean threats, the allies announced Thursday, days after North Korea threatened high-profile provocations against what it called escalating U.S.-led aggression,” their early March report states.

There are similar reports that Japan and the US have ongoing military cooperation.

“The United States has stationed a group of four supersonic B-1B bombers in northern Japan, which is located close to Russia’s Far East, to ‘discourage aggression,’” a Newsweek report states.

It continues that this deployment is a “Bomber Task Force” mission. It will enable “the U.S. bomber fleet to maintain proficiency, enhance readiness, and strengthen integration with other American or coalition forces,” the U.S. Eighth Air Force told Newsweek.

New threats with new technology

A 2023 Popular Mechanics report indicates that there are new threats to US forces and their allies via new technologies being invested in by the Chinese. Their story says that “Chinese scientists have figured out how to nearly double the range of hypersonic missiles, according to a recently published paper. The study could increase fears that China’s growing hypersonic missile program may be used to defeat U.S. defenses.”

The author is a writer for the Vermont Daily Chronicle