Yonhap Agency: S. Korea, US stage live-fire air drills

South Korea and the United States began a joint live-fire aerial exercise Monday, Seoul's Air Force said, in the latest move to reinforce capabilities to counter North Korean threats, Yonhap News Agency reported. The three-day exercise got under way earlier in the day over waters off South Korea's western coast, mobilizing some 60 military planes, including South Korea's F-35A, F-15K and KF-16 fighters and US A-10 attack aircraft, according to the Air Force. It said that the exercise is designed to inspect response procedures to simultaneous air and land provocations by the North, such as cruise missile launches and long-range artillery firings. "We will maintain a strong posture to immediately respond to any provocations by the enemy," Major Cha Seung-min, a South Korean pilot who participated in the drills, said in a release. The live-fire exercise is taking place in conjunction with the allies' 11-day Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise set to conclude Thursday. Meanwhile, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ha s overseen a performance test of various drones, calling for the development and production of more suicide drones to enhance war preparedness, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported Monday. Kim supervised the test organized by the Drone Institute of the Academy of Defense Sciences on Saturday, in which the drones flew along various preset courses, and correctly identified and destroyed the designated targets, the report said. Kim stressed that it is important to develop drones of different types and improve their combat capabilities, it said. Source: Kuwait News Agency