US Banks on Technology in Revised Military Plan for a Possible North Korea Conflict

      By THOM SHANKER     NYT    Published: August 29, 2005

CAMP CASEY, South Korea - American commanders are making significant changes in their plans in the event of a military conflict with North Korea, to rely in large measure on a new generation of sensors, smart bombs and high-speed transport ships to deter and, if necessary, counter that unpredictable dictatorship, the senior United States commander in South Korea says.

The shift in strategy is being undertaken even as the United States cuts the number of troops here by one-third and begins moving the remaining soldiers farther from the demilitarized zone, to improve their chances of surviving any North Korean offensive.

Army headquarters in Washington has made a formal announcement that a brigade of Second Infantry Division soldiers sent urgently from South Korea to Iraq last year will not return to South Korea, but will instead return to a base in the United States. That puts the American troop commitment to South Korea on track to drop from 37,500 - a figure maintained since the early 1990's - to 25,000 by 2008.

In a recent interview that provided a detailed public description of the highly classified war-planning process, Gen. Leon J. LaPorte, the commander, described how American contingency plans are being reshaped by new theories of war-fighting and by new military technology.

"We have better intelligence," he said, so the American and South Korean militaries will have more advance warning if North Korea mobilizes for war, providing the opportunity to locate and attack its vast arsenal of artillery and rockets.

"We have precision-guided munitions," he added. "We have better weapons systems. We have better communications. So we are able to not only accomplish our current mission, but increase our capabilities - at the same time reducing the number of personnel it takes to do this."

American plans call for moving those troops remaining in South Korea away from the border with North Korea - where for decades they have been within easy killing range of 12,000 artillery pieces and rocket tubes - to new positions where the troops would have greater chances of absorbing, and then responding to, a North Korean offensive. The plans were under discussion before the war in Iraq began.

"Why would we want to have our valuable resources underneath the artillery of North Korea?" General LaPorte said. "Our high-value assets are now disposed where they would not be under immediate fires. It gives us the operational agility we need."

The shift of the American footprint here has an added benefit, as the movements also ease tensions with South Koreans. The tight embrace of urban sprawl from the South Korean capital, Seoul, had surrounded a number of American bases that were set up decades ago at what had been the end of dusty roads.

As the nation's senior war planners survey the world for potential military rivals, there is no doubt that the most significant state rivals are China and North Korea - and that the nuclear, Communist North Korea is by far the more unpredictable. In the interview, General LaPorte also pulled back the curtain on the latest intelligence assessments of a North Korean threat across a demilitarized zone just 11 miles from this American base. His detailed description of American military efforts can be at least partly be interpreted as a desire by the United States government to indicate to the North Koreans that there is continued commitment in South Korea, despite the reduction in troops.

Although the tenor of political exchanges between the United States and North Korea depend on the status of talks seeking to dismantle North Korea's nuclear program, the state of readiness maintained by North Korea's conventional military forces has not altered in response to either a sharper tone of criticism from either side or the resumption of six-party negotiations.

"We have not seen any significant changes," General LaPorte said. "They are operating within what we would call operational norms, seasonal norms. They have a summer training cycle and a winter training cycle. We have not seen any significant deviation outside the norms over the past five years."

At the same time, this steady state of readiness has been maintained despite the near collapse of North Korea's economy, including its agricultural system, with the nation's military receiving about one-third of the gross domestic product regardless of the poverty thrust upon North Korea's population.

North Korea has announced that it is a nuclear power. But chemical weapons are a source of concern as well, General LaPorte said. "North Korean doctrine does not see chemicals as a weapon of mass destruction, but as a conventional munition," he said. "Their doctrine is that every third round is a chemical round."

Michael E. O'Hanlon, a scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said the plans initiated by General LaPorte to shift American forces on the peninsula received widespread support when analyzed purely on military grounds, although a few members of Congress have questioned whether some might misinterpret the reduction of troops here as a sign of lessening support from the United States.

The reworking of the war plans, at least those that have been described in public, incorporates advances in technology and combat skills that were successfully executed during the rush to Baghdad in 2003, said Mr. O'Hanlon, an author of "Crisis on the Korean Peninsula: How to Deal With a Nuclear North Korea."

Advances in satellite-guided targeting of bombs let the Americans attack Iraqi Republican Guard units even as ground forces were slowed by blinding sandstorms.

In case of war with North Korea, "There are a large number of targets that we have a chance of taking out in the opening days of a battle, but not the opening minutes, because of our precision-strike capabilities and I.S.R.," Mr. O'Hanlon said, using the initials for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. "Even if that artillery is pulled back inside caves, we have a pretty potent capability."

North Korea is believed to have more than 800 missiles that can strike South Korea and beyond, and more than 12,000 artillery pieces, a large proportion in underground bunkers where they could strike Seoul. The North Korean military is said to number 1.2 million in its standing army, with the ability to mobilize another five million. North Korea also has 120,000 special operations forces, whose mission is to infiltrate South Korea for reconnaissance and attacks.

The South Korean military has 645,000 active-duty personnel, and a reserve of 1.5 million that can be doubled in case of wartime mobilization. As the South Korean military has grown in capability in recent years, about a dozen significant military missions have been transferred from the United States military here to South Korean forces, including full responsibility for security along the demilitarized zone.

American and South Korean war planners have reworked contingency plans in one of the most dramatic examples of how military transformation - often a cliche and vague buzzword in Pentagon conversations - has actually been put into place in a potential crisis zone.

General LaPorte emphasized how different the current plans are from those of even his recent predecessors. "Why? Because we can do things faster and with more precision than we could five years ago," he said.

The new plans would rely, for example, on being able to move Army units and the service's new Stryker infantry fighting vehicle on C-17 cargo jets from their base at Fort Lewis, Wash., to reinforce South Korea in just 11 hours, General LaPorte said.

High-speed troop transport ships can bring larger numbers of marines from Okinawa in less than a day. Heavy equipment for arriving troops is already positioned in South Korea in climate-controlled warehouses, the general said.

Fighter aircraft and bombers based in Japan, Guam and as far away as Alaska, Hawaii and the continental United States also would be put under General LaPorte's command in time of war. Aircraft carriers also could be ordered to steam within striking range.

A highly visible example of the shift in war plans could be seen in the squadron of F-117 Stealth fighters dispatched in recent weeks to South Korea from their bases in the United States for a series of military exercises.

The message of their presence could not have been lost on the North Korean leadership, as it was that exact type of aircraft that opened the war with Iraq by slipping past Baghdad's radar network to bomb a suspected hide-out of Saddam Hussein.