Is North Korea playing rope-a-dope?

Nuclear threat may not be quite what we think, writes Sean M. Maloney.

Let the sabre-rattling commence! In our last instalment in this fine newspaper, I provided a primer on 1960s Soviet technology that North Korea could use against North America: Fractional Orbital Bombardment Systems and Electromagnetic Pulse. I emphasize “North America” because, once again, numerous Canadian pundits think that somehow if the feces hit the rotating wind-making device, we’ll be left out of proceedings because we’re nice guys/girls/trans people.

Ostrich-type thinking will not save us, however, not if this current situation goes the distance. We share a land mass with the primary target. North Korea has not done enough missile testing to reduce the Circular Error Probable — that is, the circle in which 50 per cent of the launched missile’s re-entry vehicles will land.

Think of it this way: Each missile, when launched, has a “footprint” that it may land in. It looks like an elongated egg when superimposed on a map. A variety or factors affect how small or how large that footprint is. These include the Coriolis effect — where the location of the target is actually further away from the original point of missile launch because of the Earth’s rotation — and the effect of the Earth’s irregular shape, which in turn produces variable gravitational fields that affect ballistic missiles. These forces can deflect missiles and re-entry vehicles: to the left in northern hemispheres and to the right in southern hemispheres. Guess where we live?

But enough about ballistic missiles. Undoubtedly you have heard of Muhammad Ali and “rope-a-dope.” This is a sophisticated military strategy whereby one keeps an opponent distracted with ostentatious moves, then clubs him from an unexpected direction. So ….

At last count, North Korea possessed 50 coastal submarines with limited range and is working on a ballistic-missilelaunching submarine. Kim Jong Un also owns about 22 Romeo-class ocean-going diesel-electric submarines and a handful of Whiskey-class subs. Romeos and Whiskeys are Cold War-era submarines, but unlike their nuclear-propelled counterparts, they are comparatively quiet and more difficult to detect. Romeos are each equipped with eight 21-inch torpedo tubes and 14 torpedoes.

However, in September 1955 the Soviet Union tested a nuclear 21-inch torpedo called the T-5. A re-test of the system in October 1957 yielded 10 kilotons. By 1961, the Soviets were able to boost the yield of the T-5 to 16 kilotons, close to the yields of the weapons used by the Americans against Japan in 1945, and were working on a Megaton yield torpedo by adding a secondary stage to the T-5’s existing primary.

Fortunately, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty kicked in in 1963 and we could no longer monitor Soviet developments in this field. The T-5 was standard equipment every time a Soviet submarine set to sea during the Cold War. One such weapon was armed during a confrontation with an American destroyer during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and a Whiskey carrying T-5s grounded herself trespassing in Swedish waters in 1981.

Forget the nonsense in the media about “miniaturized” nuclear weapons: Nuclear weapons have been “miniaturized” since the late 1950s. If Dr. Evil’s scientists can reduce the size of a thermonuclear warhead to fit in a ballistic missile, they can also modify a torpedo to carry a nuclear weapon. The Soviets did, 60 years ago. A single sub equipped with such weapons could destroy Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego by detonating nuclear weapons underwater, thus producing a radioactive base surge onto land.

Canada and the United States used to have underwater listening systems called SOSUS (sound surveillance systems) to track Soviet submarines, and we used to have maritime patrol aircraft, some capable of employing nuclear depth bombs to ensure a kill against a nuclear-armed target. None of these systems exist today. If Kim decided to send submarines this way and fire nuclear torpedoes or drop nuclear mines opposite Vancouver in Bangor, Wash., where the U.S. Trident missile-carrying submarines operate from, shouldn’t Canada have the ability to detect and engage such intruders?