LT.GENERAL JAMES G. ZUMWALT (RET.)- NORTH KOREA NOT YOUR FATHER’S BATTLEFIELD ANYMORE
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/north-koreanot-your-fathers-battlefield-anymore
As North Korea attempted to trigger an international incident by firing 500 artillery rounds into the Yellow Sea-of which about 100 crossed over into South Korean territorial waters-the South responded with about 300 rounds of its own. This incident comes on the heels of Pyongyang’s warning it will soon conduct another nuclear test.
Incidents such as this support the U.S. effort to supply the South with some very advanced weapons armament.
During its late 1951/early 1952 deployment off the coast of North Korea during the Korean war, the battleship USS WISCONSIN (BB-64)-representing the Navy’s longest range gunfire support ship-received fire from an enemy artillery battery hidden in defilade atop a hill.
The North Koreans had made use of the far side of the hill to afford them protection from the ship’s 16-inch guns. While the enemy was well within the battleship’s twenty-four mile range, WISCONSIN was unable to elevate its massive gun barrels to achieve the proper trajectory to hit the battery in its defilade position.
But, determined to silence the enemy battery, the ship shifted to Plan B. It continuously fired its 2000-plus pound rounds at the hilltop until it was leveled. Eventually denied its topographical protection, the battery was left exposed to WISCONSIN’s final fatal fire.
Long gone now are those huge explosive shells and the battlewagons that could fire them.
North Korea’s topography is 80% mountainous. Taking advantage of such terrain, should war erupt again, would be an obvious part of Pyongyang’s battle plan. Whenever possible, it would seek to use the terrain to its tactical advantage.
There is also a level of stubbornness, or ignorance, among North Korean military leaders to rely on past battlefield tactics, even when they have become outdated by new technology.
This was evident when-unknown to Americans at the time-the North Koreans pressed the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam war to allow Pyongyang to send a squadron of pilots to study U.S. air combat tactics by engaging American pilots. Initially, the Vietnamese were reluctant to do so but after mounting pressure, Hanoi finally acquiesced.
But every North Korean pilot that took off to engage an American pilot was shot down. The Koreans were flying North Vietnamese aircraft so, after losing fourteen planes within a two month period, the North Vietnamese had to send the North Koreans packing. Today, those fourteen pilots are buried in the town of Voi, outside of Hanoi, in a cemetery that remains a testimonial to Pyongyang’s folly against the Americans during the Vietnam conflict.
A North Vietnamese instructor who attempted to train the North Koreans reported years later they were not good students, refusing to adapt to the technological advancements aircraft had made since the Korean war.
Close range air combat engagements between planes armed with rapid-fire guns had given way to much longer stand-off ranges between planes armed with missiles. The Vietnamese trainer indicated the North Korean pilots were like Rip Van Winkles-awakening after many years of slumber-only to find themselves totally out of sync with the weaponry and tactics of the day.
In 2010, North Korea again relied on its topography to protect an artillery battery that initiated an unprovoked, hour-long attack on South Korea’s Yeongyeong Island-75 miles west of Seoul-killing four people as 200 shells rained down. Although it was the fiercest attack by the North in decades, Seoul offered a very limited response for both political reasons and due to a lack of tactically-capable weaponry to silence the battery.
Other than the two month air combat experience in Vietnam (from which no Korean pilot survived to benefit) and very brief and violent periodic encounters initiated by the North against the South, Pyongyang’s military has gone more than sixty years without battlefield experience. It has generals-born long after the Korean war ended-who focus more on currying favor with the ruling Kim family dynasty than on ensuring adequate troop training to fight a 21st century conflict.
Most assuredly, in any future conflict, the North Koreans will resort to their old tactics of using defilade to their advantage. If so, they will now be in for a big surprise; for the South will have new armament, courtesy of the U.S., denying the North that long-time advantage.
Enter the Raytheon and BAE M982 Excalibur artillery round-named in 2007 by the U.S. Army as one of the greatest inventions of the year.
South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reports the shells are being shipped to South Korea by the U.S. Army to permit a more effective response in the future to North Korean provocations. With almost 30,000 U.S. troops along the Korean peninsula’s De-militarized Zone, serving as a trip wire for another North Korean invasion, the rounds will provide the South with a deadly accurate capability to protect them as well.
The round’s uniqueness lies in its capability to destroy those hard-to-hit artillery batteries hiding in defilade by striking the target almost vertically. What goes up, comes directly down, as if dropped by a hand in the sky, thus unimpeded by any terrain barriers.
The round is accurate to within thirteen feet with an effectiveness rate of 92%. It also can be programmed either to detonate just above the target or to penetrate a concrete protective barrier, detonating after doing so.
North Korean artillery batteries are no longer safe hiding on the far side of a hilltop while seeking to rain death and terror down upon the South.
The South Koreans have learned it is no longer “your father’s battlefield,” with U.S. technology now giving them an edge their grandfathers were denied during the Korean war. But, if the experiences of the North Koreans during the Vietnam war are any indication, it is a lesson they will grasp much more slowly.
Lt. Colonel James G. Zumwalt, USMC (Ret.), is a retired Marine infantry officer who served in the Vietnam war, the U.S. invasion of Panama and the first Gulf war. He is the author of “Bare Feet, Iron Will–Stories from the Other Side of Vietnam’s Battlefields,” “Living the Juche Lie: North Korea’s Kim Dynasty” and “Doomsday: Iran–The Clock is Ticking.” He frequently writes on foreign policy and defense issues.
Comments are closed.
