Military quietly prepares for a last resort
WASHINGTON — Across the military, officers and troops are quietly preparing for a war they hope will not come.
At Fort Bragg in North Carolina last month, a mix of 48 Apache gunships and Chinook cargo helicopters took off in an exercise that practiced moving troops and equipment under live artillery fire to assault targets. Two days later, in the skies above Nevada, 119 soldiers from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division parachuted out of C-17 military cargo planes under cover of darkness in an exercise that simulated a foreign invasion.
Next month, at Army posts across the United States, more than 1,000 reserve soldiers will practice how to set up mobilization centers that move military forces overseas in a hurry. And beginning next month with the Winter Olympics in the South Korean town of Pyeongchang, the Pentagon plans to send more Special Operations troops to the Korean Peninsula, an initial step toward what some officials said ultimately could be the formation of a Korea-based task force similar to the types that are fighting in Iraq and Syria. Others said the plan was strictly related to counterterrorism efforts.
In the world of the U.S. military, where contingency planning is a mantra drummed into the psyche of every officer, the moves are ostensibly part of standard Defense Department training and troop rotations. But the scope and timing of the exercises suggest a renewed focus on getting the country’s military prepared for what could be on the horizon with North Korea.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, both argue forcefully for using diplomacy to address Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions. A war with North Korea, Mattis said in August, would be “catastrophic.” Still, about two dozen cur-
rent and former Pentagon officials and senior commanders said in interviews that the exercises largely reflected the military’s response to orders from Mattis and service chiefs to be ready for any possible military action on the Korean Peninsula.
President Donald Trump’s words have left senior military leaders and rank-and-file troops convinced that they need to accelerate their contingency planning.
In perhaps the most incendiary exchange, in a September speech at the United Nations, Trump vowed to “totally destroy North Korea” if it threatened the United States, and derided the rogue nation’s leader, Kim Jong Un, as “Rocket Man.” In response, Kim said he would deploy the “highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history” against the United States, and described Trump as a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard.”
Trump’s rhetoric has since cooled after a fresh attempt at détente between Pyongyang and Seoul. In an interview last week with The Wall Street Journal, Trump was quoted as saying, “I probably have a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un,” despite their mutual public insults. But the president said Sunday that The Journal had misquoted him, and that he had actually said “I’d probably have” a good relationship if he wanted one.
A false alarm in Hawaii on Saturday that set off about 40 minutes of panic after a state emergency response employee mistakenly sent out a text alert warning of an incoming ballistic missile attack underscored Americans’ anxiety about North Korea.
A conventional mission
After 16 years of fighting insurgents in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, U.S. commanding generals worry that the military is better prepared for going after stateless groups of militants than it is for its own conventional mission of facing down heavily fortified land powers that have their own formidable militaries and air defenses.
The exercise at Fort Bragg was part of one of the largest air assault exercises in recent years. The practice run at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada used double the number of cargo planes for paratroopers as was used in past exercises.
The Army Reserve exercise planned for next month will breathe new life into mobilization centers that have been largely dormant as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have wound down. And while the military has deployed Special Operations reaction forces to previous large global events, like the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, those units usually numbered around 100 — far fewer than some officials said could be sent for the Olympics in South Korea. Others discounted that possibility.
At a wide-ranging meeting at his headquarters on Jan. 2, Gen. Tony Thomas, the head of the Special Operations Command in Tampa, Florida, warned the 200 civilians and service members in the audience that more Special Forces personnel might have to shift to the Korea theater from the Middle East in May or June, if tensions escalate on the peninsula. The general’s spokesman, Capt. Jason Salata, confirmed the account provided to The New York Times by someone in the audience but said Thomas made it clear that no decisions had been made.
The Army chief of staff, Gen. Mark Milley, in several recent meetings at the Pentagon, has brought up two historic U.S. military disasters as a warning of where a lack of preparedness can lead.
Military officials said Milley has cited the ill-fated Battle of the Kasserine Pass during World War II, when unprepared U.S. troops were outfoxed and then pummeled by the forces of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel of Germany. Milley has also recently mentioned Task Force Smith, the poorly equipped, understrength unit that was mauled by North Korean troops in 1950 during the Korean War.
In meeting after meeting, the officials said, Milley has likened the two U.S. defeats to what he warns could happen if the military does not get ready for a possible war with North Korea. He has urged senior Army leaders to get units into shape, and fretted about a loss of what he has called muscle memory: how to fight a large land war, including one in which an established adversary is able to bring sophisticated air defenses, tanks, infantry, naval power and even cyberweapons into battle.
Some officials in the White House have argued that a targeted, limited strike could be launched with minimal, if any, blowback against South Korea — a premise Mattis views with skepticism, according to people familiar with his thinking.
But for Mattis, the planning serves to placate Trump. Effectively, analysts said, it alerts the president to how seriously the Pentagon views the threat and protects Mattis from suggestions that he is out of step with Trump.
“The military’s job is to be fully ready for whatever contingencies might be on the horizon,” said Michèle Flournoy, a top Pentagon official in the Obama administration and co-founder of West Exec Advisors, a strategic consultancy in Washington.
“Even if no decision on North Korea has been made and no order has been given,” Flournoy said, “the need to be ready for the contingency that is top of mind for the president and his national security team would motivate commanders to use planned exercise opportunities to enhance their preparation, just in case.”
Operation Panther Blade
In the case of the 82nd Airborne exercise in Nevada last month, for instance, soldiers practiced moving paratroopers on helicopters and flew artillery, fuel and ammunition deep behind what was designated as enemy lines. The maneuvers were aimed at forcing an enemy to fight on different fronts early in combat.
Officials said maneuvers practiced in the exercise, called Panther Blade, could be used anywhere, not just on the Korean Peninsula. “Operation Panther Blade is about building global readiness,” said Lt. Col. Joe Buccino, a public affairs officer with the 82nd Airborne. “An air assault and deep attack of this scale is very complex and requires dynamic synchronization of assets over time and space.”
Another exercise, called Bronze Ram, is being coordinated by the shadowy Joint Special Operations Command, officials said, and mimics other training scenarios that mirror current events.
This year’s exercise, one of many that concentrate on threats from across the world, will focus extensively on underground operations and involve working in chemically contaminated environments that might be present in North Korea. It will also home in on the Special Operations Command’s mission of countering weapons of mass destruction.
Beyond Bronze Ram, highly classified Special Operations exercises in the United States, including those with scenarios to seize unsecured nuclear weapons or conduct clandestine paratrooper drops, have for several months reflected a possible North Korea contingency, military officials said, without providing details, because of operational sensitivity.
Air Force B-1 bombers flying from Guam have been seen regularly over the Korean Peninsula amid the escalating tensions with Pyongyang — running regular training flights with Japanese and South Korean fighter jets that often provoke North Korea’s ire. B-52 bombers based in Louisiana are expected to join the B-1s stationed on Guam this month, adding to the long-range aerial firepower.
Pentagon officials said last week that three B-2 bombers and their crews had arrived in Guam from their base in Missouri.