Korean forces would seize Seoul within 48 hours and overrun
the peninsula in 96.
Before that happens, it would take the North Koreans just 24
hours to neutralize most or all airfields in South Korea. That’s
where their stealth airplane comes in. They have 300 Antonov
The Korean peninsula has been a
tinderbox ever since the July 27, 1953
cease-fire. North Korea has almost a
million men under arms, South Ko-
rea about 675,000 (plus 26,000 U.S.
troops), the two sides confronting
each other across the four-kilometer
(2.5-mile) Demilitarized Zone, or
DMZ, that despite its name is the
most heavily armed border in the
world. Skirmishes and military and
naval actions take place along or
near the DMZ from time to time. In
2010, North Korea shelled the South
Korean island of Yonpyong-do and
sank a South Korean warship.
The July 27, 1953 armistice was
signed by commanders of the armies
in the field — on our side, the United
Nations Command (UNC), which represented 16 allied nations;
and on the other side the Chinese Peoples Volunteers and the
Korean Peoples Army. No government signed the agreement.
The South Korean government resisted it and acquiesced only
in exchange for a payoff — the 1954 Mutual Defense Treaty
with the United States. In those days, an “ally” was defined as a
country with which the United States was signatory to such an
agreement (a definition that leaves out Israel, for one).
The Chinese withdrew troops from North Korea soon after
the cease-fire and dropped out of the armistice process, under
which negotiations take place regularly in the Joint Security
Area at Panmunjom on the border between north and south.
Typically, the KPA and UNC each provide a military negotiator
of two-star rank, the UNC member being an American. During my era in the 1970s, our Panmunjom negotiator was World
War II P- 51 Mustang 7-kill ace Maj. Gen. (later, Gen.) Felix M.
“Mike” Rogers, who told me recently that he is experiencing
déjà vu again, too.
lighter and diversified” nuclear weapons. “The Korean People’s
Army top command declares that all artillery troops including
strategic rocket units and long-range artillery units are to be
placed under class-A combat readiness,” Pyongyang’s Korean
Central News Agency said on April 9. The saber rattling with its
unprecedented, explicit threats against U.S. soil also included a
threat to transform Seoul into a “sea of fire.”
The Obama administration anticipated some of this and re-
acted to more of it with show-of-force flights by nuclear capable
The White House concluded the
playbook had gone too far with its
late-March deployment of two guid-
ed-missile destroyers — the USS John
S. McCain (DDG 56) and the USS
Decatur (DDG 73) with Aegis bal-
listic missile defense systems using
the RIM-161 Standard (SM- 3) mis-
sile — to the Western Pacific in case
Kim’s missile-rattling threatened
South Korea or Japan. Having just
one DDG in the region would have
been sticking with tradition. As of-
ficials revised their thinking about
the complex chess game playing out
on the Korean peninsula, Defense
Secretary Chuck Hagel cancelled a
planned, routine, stateside launch of
an LGM-30G Minuteman III inter-
continental ballistic missile — unre-
lated to events in Korea — to avoid
any misunderstanding.
The U.S. Air Force maintains four
fighter squadrons permanently on
the Korean peninsula — one with F-16s and one with A-10C
Thunderbolt IIs at Osan and, two with F-16s at Kunsan. The
ongoing presence of a deployed Theater Security Package or TSP
— an additional F- 16 squadron deployed from stateside — is a
routine measure. American F-16s on the peninsula, including
the TSP visitors, are F-16CM Block 40s, while the South Korean,
or Republic of Korea Air Force, the ROKAF, operates KF-16C/D
Block 52 models.
In a real, all-out war, U.S. F-16s and A-10s would go after
ground targets, starting with artillery tubes sheltered inside
mountain slopes just north of the so-called Demilitarized Zone,
the DMZ. The air-to-air mission against North Korean combat
aircraft, including what would be the duty of the ROKAF’s KF-
16s and F-15K Slam Eagles.
No one wants an all-out war on the Korean peninsula, least
of all the UNC commander, U.S. Army Gen. James D. Thurman
(who canceled routine travel from Seoul to Washington in April
because of heightened tensions). Thurman’s deputy and the air
commander for all forces in South Korea is Lt. Gen. Jean-Marc
Jouas, a respected pilot and leader with the F-4G Advanced Wild
Weasel, F- 15 and F- 16 in his logbook. We can all hope that the
best of their talents won’t be needed and that the situation will
calm down. At press time, it appeared to be doing that.
The F- 22 Raptor was deployed
to Korea earlier this year
in limited numbers.
Troop-carrying
An-2s are numerous,
invisible to radar, and
threaten airbases.
Provocation from Pyongyang
North Korea detonated its third nuclear device on February 12
and announced on March 11 that the armistice signed in 1953
is now “invalid.” Worse, North Korea’s military announced that
it was authorized to attack the United States using “smaller,
