Incredible photos from the military exercise that is North Korea's worst nightmare

Operation Foal Eagle 2016, which runs from March 7 to April 30, is a massive joint US-South Korean military exercise held in North Korea's backyard.

The operation runs contemporaneously as another US military exercise in South Korea, Operation Key Resolve, which starts March 7 and ends March 18.

The operations in total involve about 17,000 US troops, along with an astonishing 300,000 of their South Korean counterparts.

North Korea views the drills as aggressive and denounces them each year.

Pyongyang has ratcheted up the rhetoric and warned that its armed forces "holding tightly the arms to annihilate the enemies with towering hatred for them are waiting for the dignified Supreme Command to issue an order to launch a preemptive strike of justice."

On March 9, North Korea launched two ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan. And on Monday, Pyongyang claimed it could wipe out Manhattan with a nuclear bomb. These photos highlight the exercises going on in South Korea: