(Korea Herald) South Korea’s military on Oct 19, 2017 announced a plan to develop “Frankenmissile” to counter North Korea’s escalating missile and nuclear capabilities in a bid to overwhelm the North during the initial phase of the war.
In its report to an annual parliamentary audit by the National Assembly’s Defense Committee, the Army said they would develop the “Hyunmoo IV” surface-to-surface missile, powerful enough to destroy North Korea’s underground military facilities and command center.
Combined with indigenous tactical surface-to-surface missiles and Hyunmoo-class intermediate-range ballistic missiles, the advanced pre-emptive strike capability would inflict “unbearable cost” to the North by neutralizing the North’s nuclear and missile sites, as well as long-range artillery units.
South Korea would use three types of missiles in their first salvos.
South Korea has been suspected of working on advancing ballistic missiles capability since it struck a deal with the US to scrap limits on the missiles’ payload in September. Previously, Seoul was banned from fitting warheads weighing more than 500 kilograms on its ballistic missiles with a range of over 800 kilometers.
The development of such an advanced ballistic missile is a part of the Army’s effort to establish a “game-changing” operational concept, which is designed to minimize civilian casualties and end the war as soon as possible, the Army said.
The “five-pillar” concept calls for the military to develop high-precision powerful missile, establish agile maneuver corps, build units using drones and robots, develope advanced battle system and create a special warfare brigade for “deception strikes” against North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un.
South Korea’s Marine Corps, for its part, announced a plan to establish a new command dedicated to protecting border islands, pledging to defend the sea border against North Korea’s potential attacks and infiltration attempts.
The Marine Corps said the new command will be built around 2020 and based on the current Northwestern Island Defense Command. It was formed in 2011 following North Korea’s artillery attack on Yeongpyeongdo, one of the farmost islands in the West Sea.
The new fleet will include several 6,000-ton KDDX Aegis destroyers and three additional 7,600-ton KDX-III Aegis destroyers. The KDDX ships, which will be built in the mid-2020s, are to be equipped with an advanced ballistic missile defense system and ship-to-surface missiles.
By Dec 1, 2017, South Korea will have a brigade-sized unit, known as The Spartan 3000, would form the bulk of this force. The 2,000 to 4,000 member strong force would be able to quickly infiltrate into North Korea in the dead of night using a variety of helicopters and fixed wing aircraft, not unlike the North Korean military’s own plans to launch massive commando raids using its fleet of aging An-2 biplanes.
The South Korean government plans to launch five spy satellites between 2021 and 2023 and could rent commercial-grade space-based assets in the meantime. In addition, the country’s military is in the process of buying a number of long-range, high altitude RQ-4 Global Hawk surveillance drones.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
Nobody mentions the fact that South Korea proposes a budget almost every year to merge the two parts of Korea.
I imagine that if NK used nuclear weapons in the opening of conflict, a normal conventional conflict would follow after the OMG shock became acceptance of a new reality. It is like any tragic happening; you wake up the next day and say “Sh1t, it wasn’t a dream!”. Then you get back to work. It is like waking up with a headache in a jail cell; the unimaginable happened and the only useful question/thought is: what do I have to do to right this? Conflict doesn’t end when NK fries Seoul; conflict ends when either China or the remains of SK posses the entire peninsula.
“SK posses the entire peninsula” is only a wet dream come up by somebody in his mother’s basement, even the Japanese does not believe that.
Point was that actually dropping the bombs isn’t the be-all, end-all to the conflict. I would tend to agree that China would successfully take the peninsula in the aforementioned scenario. As for your mom and I in her basement, that was between two consenting adults.
scaryjello, you are lying, history has shown Italian enjoy to be screwed and kicked by the Anglo and German. The Italian proud to be the lick dog of the German and Anglo even the German and Anglo destroyed their Roman Empire. sacked Roman and sold Romans into slaves in the old days and treated them as political and physical prostitutes in the modern history.
So… shouldn’t this all have been done years ago, when NK first looked like getting nukes?
rajaram kumawat
Yep. No grownup can hope to successfully deal with an existential threat just by pointing their finger at it and yelling, “That’s not fair!”
Sure it should have, but that would have required people making policy that offended others, and that would have been impermissable. The ability of the State Department to tell themselves they cannot finesse the next obvious step of a dictator is next to zero.
This was so, in the buildup to the first invasion from Pyonyang’s forces, when in early 1950 the US Secretary of State drew a Pacific Ocean defensive line on a map at a public news conference that excluded Korea, in the same week that 2 brigades of T-34-85 tanks were sent South by rail from Vladivostok, to head up the invasion down the 3 corridors to Seoul. Even our recon aircraft had been pulled away from the Korean coastlines, where they would have been able to see those tanks on their pallets headed South to the 38th parallel. Meanwhile, Martin Caiden (later aviation author on the P-38) sat on the edge of an airfield in Japan, watching as a State Department rep. checked to make sure of the destruction of the last 100 P-38L fighter bombers in Japan, that might have been sent to the ROK, so they must be destroyed. He, and Caiden, watched as a bulldozer drove over the empennage of all the P-38L aircraft in a line. Then he picked up his briefcase and marched off to report to his State Dept Superiors that no one could piss off the Soviets and their clients that way.
This is not a new pattern.
We would expect the USA to stuff this up as you say.
But why did South Korea wait? This article is about stuff the Koreans are doing.