Today, the US Navy aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) and its accompanying strike group left Busan to be part of exercises to be carried out with the US naval forces of South Korea and Japan in the first days of August.
In this sense, the aircraft carrier left South Korea while the Marine Corps and Japanese forces will conduct a series of exercises around the southwestern islands of Japan that will begin on Friday, while Dong Diao surveillance ships of the People's Liberation Army Navy and a Chinese drone were seen operating near the island. In the same vein, the Japanese Defense Minister acknowledged that there is a difficult security environment and that it is necessary to strengthen capabilities in the region.
The exercise, titled Freedom Edge, is the first-ever multi-domain trilateral military exercise between the United States, South Korea, Japan, and South Korea. Based on the premise of strengthening cooperation and security in the Indo-Pacific region, the exercises will begin on August 7 with the participation of 3,000 American soldiers, as it was emphasized that all possible measures will be taken to ensure the safety of aircraft flights.
The JGSDF said the exercises were based on the JGSDF's cross-domain operations in island defense and the Marine Corps' advanced expeditionary basic operations doctrines, and that the joint training establishes guidelines between two forces at the operational and tactical level.
Although at this time it is not known exactly how many assets will participate, it is known that in addition to the aircraft carrier and Embarked Air Group 11, the destroyers USS Halsey (DDG-97) and USS Daniel Inouye (DDG-118) will also participate.
After the exercise, the aircraft carrier will head to the Red Sea to replace the aircraft carrier USS Dwight Eisenhower, which has been in the region since the explosion in Israel in October 2023, to provide security for commercial ships. She left the region last Saturday after working for seven months, which included attacks launched by Houthi forces in Yemen.
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