YONGSAN GARRISON — An F-15 fighter squadron dispatched to South Korea since the war on terrorism began is going home, U.S. Forces Korea officials said Monday.

The fighters — from the 90th Fighter Squadron at Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska, — are leaving Korea because the USS Kitty Hawk is scheduled to return Sunday to Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, said Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, assistant chief of staff for operations.

The aircraft carrier is tied to the U.S. Forces Korea war plan, and the command wanted to to be ready for war in its absence, Miller said.

"The U.S. presence here is the most visible commitment to the alliance, and it is such an important element as we ensure that we’re maintaining the armistice and the peace here," Miller said. "It gives us a similar capability so we keep our mission readiness at an appropriate level."

The Kitty Hawk, which usually carries about 70 planes aboard, left about half of them in Japan before deploying to the Arabian Sea in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Its deck was cleared for special operations helicopters.

The Alaskan fighter squadron — about 24 airplanes and about 700 airmen — was deployed at Kwangju Air Base, a South Korean air base in the southern part of the country. Airmen from Elmendorf last went there in 1999 when the Kitty Hawk was pulled to support Kosovo operations.

"Kwangju has capabilities to bed down that type of unit," Miller said. "You could put them at several combat operating bases. We elected to put them at Kwangju."

The unit regularly trained at Kwangju, and training missions took part in cooperation with the Air Component Command, a combined U.S.-South Korea war-fighting element, Miller said.

"Coming to do a real-world mission always gets a unit’s blood pumping," Miller said. "It gets them so that they are excited and focused."