USFK Cuts Down Combat Aircraft by 25

The U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) has cut the number of its combat aircraft by 25 percent over the past four years, a military source said Sunday. According to a USFK spokesman, the U.S. 7th Air Force operates about 45 aircraft now. According to a 2005 National Assembly report, the 7th Air Force, the air component of the USFK, then operated about 60 F-16 and A-10 aircraft belonging to the 51st Fighter Wing in Osan, Gyeonggi Province, and the 8th Fighter Wing in Gunsan, North Jeolla Province.Some strategists see the decrease as a de facto decline in U.S. military capability in South Korea, which runs counter to Washington's repeated pledge to maintain a troop capacity of 28,500 with related combat assets on the peninsula to help deter any North Korean aggression. The reduction is also seen as part of USFK's ongoing ``strategic flexibility'' scheme aimed at changing the mission of American forces abroad from stationary ones focused on defending host nations to rapid deployment troops that can be swiftly dispatched to other parts of the world where the United States faces conflict. As a result, if a war broke out on the Korean Peninsula, the USFK would be largely dependent on reinforcements of fighters and aerial assets from U.S. forward-deployed bases in the Asia-Pacific region in carrying out operations to support South Korean troops. The downsizing involves the pullout of a squadron of Block 30 F-16 models during an upgrade to newer Block 40 aircraft and the recent retirement of three A-10 attack aircraft under the U.S. Air Force's restructuring plan to eliminate 250 older planes, the source told The Korea Times. The 7th Air Force currently has a squadron of F-16 Fighting Falcons and a fleet of A/OA-10 Thunderbolt IIs in Osan, while the other squadron, backed up by a fleet of F/A-18Ds rotationally redeployed from a U.S. Marine aircraft wing based in Japan, flies missions from Gunsan, he said. Another fleet of 14 F-16 fighters from the Mizawa Air Force Base in Japan arrived at an air base in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, in February on a six-month temporarily mission to replace a permanently departing battalion of 24 Apache helicopters. ``The 7th Air Force's basic formation of four squadrons remains unchanged, but actual aircraft numbers in the squadrons have decreased over the past years in stages and unofficially,'' the source said, asking to remain anonymous. ``I can't judge, but it remains controversial on whether or not the decrease will cause a capability gap here since the USFK claims the smaller number of newer F-16 fighters are successfully replacing the larger number of older models.'' In a Camp David summit in April last year, then U.S. President George W. Bush announced that planned U.S. troop cuts in South Korea would be halted at 28,500. Seoul and Washington had initially agreed in 2004 to slash the number of U.S. forces from 37,000 to 25,000 in phases by the end of 2008. Defense Secretary Robert Gates also said at a news conference in Seoul later that his government would maintain ``at least the same capabilities'' that the USFK had then.Last March, the USFK withdrew one of two AH-64D Apache Longbow helicopters from South Korea to make the unit available for rotational deployment to Afghanistan or Iraq. The relocation of the advanced helicopter unit fanned public jitters here over a possible security vacuum. The USFK has pledged it will provide ``overwhelming'' air- and naval-centric support to South Korean troops after 2012 when it transfers operational control of Korean forces during wartime to Seoul.

gallantjung@koreatimes.co.kr

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