Four US F-22 stealth fighters have flown low over South Korea in a clear show of force against North Korea, a day after the South's president warned of Pyongyang's collapse amid a stand-off over its nuclear and missile ambitions.
The high-tech planes capable of sneaking past radar undetected were seen by an Associated Press photographer before they landed at Osan Air Base near Seoul.
They were escorted by other US and South Korean fighter jets.
North Korea will likely view the arrival of the planes flown from a US base in Japan as a threat as they are an apparent display of US air power aimed at showing what the US can do to defend its ally South Korea from potential aggression from the North.
"The F-22 Raptor is the most capable air superiority fighter in the world, and it represents one of many capabilities available for the defence of this great nation," Lieutenant-General Terrence O'Shaughnessy, deputy commander of the US military command in South Korea, said in a statement.
He said "the US maintains an ironclad commitment" to the defence of South Korea.
The US military would not say how long the F-22s will be deployed in South Korea.
The United States often sends powerful warplanes to South Korea in times of tension with North Korea. In January, it sent a nuclear-capable B-52 bomber to South Korea after North Korea defiantly conducted its fourth nuclear test.
The international stand-off over North Korea deepened earlier this month when Pyongyang ignored repeated warnings by regional powers and fired a long-range rocket carrying what it calls an Earth observation satellite. Washington, Seoul and others consider the launch a prohibited test of missile technology.
Foreign analysts say the North's rocket launch and nuclear test put the country further along in its quest for a nuclear-armed missile that could reach the US mainland.
South Korea's president on Tuesday warned North Korea faces collapse if it doesn't abandon its nuclear bomb program, an unusually strong broadside that is certain to infuriate Pyongyang.
In a speech at parliament, President Park Geun-hye said South Korea would take unspecified "stronger and more effective" measures to make North Korea realise its nuclear ambitions will result only in accelerating its "regime collapse".
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