The weeklong air and naval exercise, dubbed "Freedom Edge" involving Aegis destroyers, frigates, fighter jets, patrol aircraft, refueling planes, and helicopters, which kicked off early this week, is currently underway in waters near South Korea's southern resort island of Jeju.
Aimed at strengthening the three countries' combined operational capabilities to counter North Korea's growing missile and nuclear threats, the ongoing exercise is the third round of such drills, following previous exercises in June and November last year, which involved the U.S. Navy's aircraft carriers USS Theodore Roosevelt and USS George Washington as a show of force.
With military authorities providing no explanations, some speculate that the exercise may have been scaled back due to scheduling conflicts or not to provoke North Korea, given that Seoul and Washington have recently been making conciliatory moves to engage with Pyongyang.
The North has often reacted nervously to the deployment of U.S. strategic assets such as aircraft carriers and strategic bombers on the Korean Peninsula.
Just a day before the exercise, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's influential sister Yo-jong on Sunday strongly protested, calling the drills a "reckless show of strength" that will "inevitably bring bad results to themselves."
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