Chapter 24

The group that the POTUS had come to refer to as his War Council were again gathered in the White House Situation Room. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had notified the Secretary of Defense that their Pentagon staff had completed revising their North Korean war plan. It would be a massive first strike attack designed to decapitate government and military leadership while simultaneously crippling the DPRK’s ability to retaliate. They were ready to brief the President.

Looking around the room, the POTUS opened the briefing. “Before we start I want to say I appreciate the loyalty and dedication everyone in this room have displayed over the past, almost, four years. I also appreciate what I know has been an unbelievable amount of work the SecDef, the JCS, and the men and women at the Pentagon have done in the development of the plan we are about to hear. As I said in our last meeting, we are about to embark on the most perilous voyage our country has ever undertaken. We will either make the world a safer place, or we will destroy it. There is little more I can add to convey the gravity of our situation or the importance of this meeting. Dennis, you have the floor and what I assure you is our undivided attention.”

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff stood up and pressed the Enter key on the Situation Room’s presentation computer. A map of the Korean Peninsula appeared on the screen located at the east end of the room. “Thank you, Mr. President. As you know and as most of you suspected, we have had a North Korean first strike plan for several years; ever since they started their mass destruction weapon build up. We update it on a regular basis using ongoing intelligence assessments of their weapons development progress, troop buildups, and our military capabilities. The plan I will present today took into account the capabilities of their Hwasong-16 and demonstrated cyber warfare capabilities. Equally important, it includes the President’s directive to minimize civilian and allied casualties. We also have a trick up our sleeve, metaphorically speaking of course. I will go into more detail on that later. First, it is critical that we understand the way the DPRK plans to wage any future conflict on the Korean peninsula. I will begin by saying unlike the 1950’s it will not be a “conflict,” it will be an all-out “war.”

North Korea’s publically stated strategy in the event of a preemptive strike, or any other type of aggression, is total war. They have the military power and the national will to take on the United States, at least on their turf. To put their capabilities into perspective consider the fact that they have over nine hundred thousand soldiers in their active military. That’s almost equal to the United States, and we have over ten times the population. And, they have more submarines, tanks, and rocket launchers than we do. They have zero intention of getting bogged down in a drawn-out regional struggle like they did in the fifties or like the United States did in Vietnam and every other conflict since World War Two. That’s our enemy folks, that’s the environment we are about to enter. If we don’t accept it, we lose. And South Korea will cease to exist.

We based our preemptive strike strategy on the facts and assumptions that I have just described. At its highest level, there are three components to our plan, the initial strike, follow-up strikes, and threat mop-up.

Each component will consist of multiple, independent tactical actions. The initial strike and follow-up will occur literally within minutes of one another, a one-two punch so to speak. Our opening, initial strike gambit is that trick up our sleeve I referred to earlier. It’s not a “trick” per se. It’s something that has been bantered about for decades but never tested in a true military engagement. Something called high altitude electromagnetic pulse or HEMP. This is a short, intensely powerful burst of electromagnetic radiation that occurs any time a fission weapon is detonated. This burst of energy can damage or destroy unprotected electrical circuits.

The result could shut down power grids, destroy aircraft and vehicle control systems, and disrupt or disable virtually any unshielded electrical device. In 2008 a report from the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from EMP, better known as the EMP Commission, concluded that a 20 megaton bomb exploded 200 miles above the United States could, theoretically, generate an EMP that could knock out a large portion of the civilian electronic equipment across the entire country. As I said, this is theoretical.

However, in 1962 the United States conducted a test by detonating a 1.5 megaton bomb 240 miles above the Pacific. This, comparatively small explosion damaged electrical equipment in Hawaii, almost 900 miles from the point of detonation. When an above ground detonation occurs, its EMP is generated spherically, like a giant basketball. Most of the energy travels upward and horizontally and diminishes inversely to the center of the detonation. In other words, the further away from the blast the EMP travels the weaker it gets.

It’s on the ground, where the basketball flattens out that the charge is at its strongest. That’s where the damage to electrical equipment occurs. By estimating the height of our blast, and the size of the bomb we can calculate, well more or less, the area on which we will inflict the most damage. We don’t want to shut down the electrical grid in Seoul or Southern China so we will be erring on the safe side. There will most likely be sections of the southern part of the DPRK that will not be affected by the EMP. But almost all of the rest should have their circuits fried.

Within seconds of detonating the EMP weapon, we will deliver a W-78 300 kiloton firecracker to Pyongyang, and smaller 100 kiloton W-76’s to military headquarters in Nampo, Chongjin, Toejo Dong, Wosan, Hwangju, Orang, and Taechon.

The Supreme Leader seldom ventures too far away from the capital, so this is intended to be the decapitating blow. But despite his dictatorial, total control of the military, and everything else for that matter, we know we are dealing with a many-headed hydra. Our tactics to deal with remaining leadership will be addressed in the second, follow-up, action. It’s important to remember that the first two components of our attack strategy, the initial strike, and the follow-up, occur within the first hour. It may seem like we are spacing these events out but unlike previous wartime scenarios, they are happening almost simultaneously.

The instant the W-78 is detonated over Pyongyang, we initiate the third and fourth elements of the initial strike phase. First, we sever all North Korean internet connections. We know their military has a cyber warfare division and we don’t want them wreaking havoc on our digital infrastructure. The United States Cyber Command, USCYBERCOM, headquartered at Fort Mead, Maryland has been preparing for this type of confrontation since 2009.

At the same time, we will begin jamming their radar and communication equipment using, among other things, our carrier-based EA-18G Growler aircraft. Five minutes after the initial strike phase begins the Chang dynasty will have come to an ignominious end. The country will be isolated from the internet, seventy percent of civilian electronics and some military equipment will be useless, their radar tracking and targeting capability reduced to zero, and the majority of military command and control leadership eliminated. Now comes the second punch, the follow-up strike phase.

North Korea has eight deepwater ocean ports. In addition to being supply line destinations, several of them serve as a home base for the 76 submarines they have in their navy. It’s essential that we neutralize their sub threat at the very beginning for several reasons. First some, not all, are capable of retaliating with a submarine-launched ballistic missile, SLBM, strike of their own. We aren’t sure how many have this capability, but we do know they have successfully tested an SLBM.

Second, we believe that some of their subs are armed with Russian VA-111 Shkval supercavitating torpedos. Unlike most conventional torpedos, these things are capable of sinking one of our aircraft carriers. We can’t let that happen.

Finally, our sources tell us that North Korean battle plans call for the insertion of Special Forces, SF, units along the South Korean coast. The DPRK has the largest collection of SF units in the world. Over 130,000 highly trained, combat ready, troops comparable to our SEALS or Green Berets. Although problematic using conventional weapons, the fear is that squads of these soldiers could be deposited behind the line of battle and covertly attack civilian targets using anthrax or VX nerve agents. Imagine how easy it would be for some guys in sanitation uniforms to walk around a city wearing backpack sprayers. They would appear to be killing roaches or ants but in reality, would be spraying for people. At the first signs of an anthrax outbreak or chemical fatalities, there would be riots and widespread panic in the streets.

At the end of the Cold War, the U.S. started scaling back, at least officially, on its decades-old but effective submarine Sound Surveillance System better known as SOSUS. You might recall the Walker family spy network that was exposed in the late eighties. These traitors more or less crippled SOSUS and our abilities to track and monitor enemy submarines by letting the Russians know where our equipment was located and what our capabilities were. On the bright side, those events coupled with renewed efforts by the Soviets and Chinese to expand their submarine warfare capabilities spurred the Office of Naval Research to upgrade our submarine detection and tracking network.

A few years ago General Dynamics was awarded a contract to develop the Deep Reliable Acoustic Path Exploitation System (DRAPES) to replace SOSUS. DRAPES is just one tool in our submarine warfare toolbox. I say all that to say we have been tracking the DPRK submarine fleet for some time now. We know where most of them are. At least the ones that are at sea. All of their subs are diesel powered, and their ever-present petroleum shortage keeps most of them in anchored near the deepwater ports in their hidden dens. When the follow-up phase of our mission kicks off, we will simultaneously destroy all eight of their deepwater ports using our W-80 150 kiloton submarine-launched cruise missiles, SLCM. These devices are large enough to destroy everything in and around the ports but not so large as to needlessly cause civilian casualties. Or to render them postwar useless.

This action will completely cut off their oil and gas supply lines. The DPRK currently consumes around 15,000 barrels of oil per day, yet they have a production capacity of fewer than 500 barrels per day. And, they have zero oil reserves. You can do the math and see how long their war machine will last once we cut off shipments from Russia and the Middle East. We estimate the destruction of the ports will also eliminate ninety percent of their sub fleet. We will use our Los Angeles and Virginia class attack submarines and our P-8 Posideon aircraft to pick off the remaining subs before they even learn a war has started.

We are positioning two attack boats off both sides of the North Korean coast. Two in the Yellow Sea and two in the Sea of Japan. The P-8’s will launch from U.S. Navy Base Sasebo near, ironically, Nagasaki. We will have these components in place before the end of the month. We have to tread lightly to avoid detection by the Chinese.

Yes Bulldog, I know you have assurance from the Chinese that they will sit quietly on the sidelines and not interfere but we aren’t taking any chances. Besides, even though these are the fastest subs in our fleet, it still takes time for them to slip unseen across an ocean.

There are two other threats we need to address during our follow-up phase. These are their troop tunnels and artillery. It’s a little-known fact that North Korea is the most “tunneled” nation in the world, if I may use “tunnel” as an adjective. We know of twenty tunnels near and deep, deep beneath the DMZ. It is estimated that each one of these tunnels is capable of transporting ten to fifteen thousand troops, and vehicles, per hour underneath the DMZ and into South Korea. In the event of war, they would blast out the last fifty or so meters of the tunnel to create an exit and then start shoving their army thru it and into the south. These tunnels are designed to withstand our thirty thousand pound, GBU-57, bunker buster bombs like we used in Afganistan.

But we have another surprise for them. Two years ago we completed the development of a B61-12 Earth-Penetrating low yield, only two kilotons, nuclear bunker buster. This is a high precision, guided bomb which can be delivered by any of our fighter-bombers. We will deposit one of these puppies at the entrance to each of their troop tunnels. That will bring a screeching halt to any thoughts of positioning forces behind us. We will also use the B61’s to destroy their Sup’ung, Taipingwan, Weiyuan, and Ynfeng hydroelectric dams.

This brings us to the DPRK’s massive conventional artillery capability. They have at least thirty artillery brigades equipped with an array of self-propelled cannons, mortars, and multiple-tube rocket launchers. Their big guns are hidden in caves and tunnels strung along the north side of the DMZ. The CIA estimates that the North Koreans could fire ten thousand rockets per minute at Seoul which is only thirty-five miles from the DMZ. Unless we knock them out in the first round of the fight, they could potentially kill three hundred thousand South Koreans, and Americans within a matter of hours. Here is where our cruise missiles come into play. By the end of the month, we will have two carrier groups within striking distance of North Korea. Each group has sixty fighter-bombers and two guided missile destroyers. We will also have two Ohio class submarines prowling off the North Korean coast. Each of these subs carries one hundred and fifty-four Tomahawk cruise missiles. When the opening bell rings for round two, we will unleash four hundred extremely accurate ship, and sub launched Tomahawks on the DPRK rocket launchers, artillery, and airfields. We will follow this barrage up with round-the-clock surgical strikes with our F-18 and F-35 fighter-bombers. The north has almost eight hundred fighters and one hundred bombers. However, for the most part, these are old Russian MIGs and some homemade clones that are no match for our F-22’s or F-35’s.

Never before, in the history of warfare has so much destructive power been delivered in such a short period. Outside of world war two, and immediately after nine eleven, our country has not been able to muster the political courage that will be necessary to obliterate our enemies’ ability to wage war. We plan to do it so fast and so completely that it will be over before our liberal politicians and news media know it has started. Like it or not folks, that’s the only way we are going to defeat the DPRK without getting hundreds of thousands of people killed.

On the heels of these follow-up strikes of our “blitzkrieg,” we begin what we will refer to as our mop-up operation. We know that the Norks have the most massive stockpile of chemical and biological weapons on the planet. They have eighteen chemical and four biological production and storage facilities. These are scattered across the country disguised as fertilizer or drug manufacturing plants. During the mop-up phase, we go after these and other, conventional, weapon factories, and any still resistant military units, using even more cruise missiles and fighter-bombers. Following the widespread nuclear attacks on the capital, and military headquarters disrupted power and communication, and zero prospect of getting gas, oil, and other supplies we will issue a demand for the immediate and total surrender of all combat forces.

We know that North Korean soldiers are highly motivated and loyal to the Supreme Leader. Hell, they have been brainwashed to the point that they think he and his entire family are divine beings. These soldiers are different than those we have fought over the last few decades. For example, once we blooded their nose, Iraqi troops were surrendering to CNN news crews. We expect them to be more like the Okinawan defense forces in world war two, prepared and willing to fight to the death.

On the other hand, we also know that, with the exception of their Special Forces, they are underfed and incapable of unit level, independent action. No doubt there will be pockets of resistance. We plan to go around those while we establish temporary military governance and allow South Korean led Civil Police to restore and maintain law and order. There is no real animosity among the South Koreans towards the North. It will take years to deprogram the North Korean populace fully but this, along with food and the restoration of fundamental human rights will be a welcome first step.Mr. President, ladies, and gentlemen that concludes my briefing.”

The POTUS stood up and motioned for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to return to his seat. “Thank you, Dennis. That was an excellent, albeit chilling, overview of what we can expect once all of our assets are in place and I press the “start a war” button. I want all the pieces on the board by the first week of December. I know, originally I said by the end of November, but I am giving you a little additional time because I know we are behind in B-61 production. And you have convinced me that we can’t go scooting another Ohio class sub from its current location to the Yellow Sea without alerting the Russians. I’m not a patient man, but sometimes, especially in this case, a little caution goes a long way. But I want all of our prepositioned assets, and staff, ready to go at an hours notice. Worse comes to worse; we go to war with what we’ve got. I am not going to open this briefing for the normal round of questions. This was, and is, supposed to be information only. If someone in this room sees a major show stopper speak up now.” No one said a word. “In that case, Dennis, you and your team continue to polish up any rough spots. If you need anything from anyone here, say so. You speak for me until this thing is over. Ladies and gentlemen, we are dismissed.”