The top US general in Korea says that US and South Korean forces can handle "anything North Korea can throw at us."
In December 2002 I posted an analysis of the military situation on the Korean peninsula. I served there with the 2d US Infantry Division from 1977-1978. That division is now a mechanized division, considerably heavier and more powerful than the "straight leg" division it was when I was there.
Below is my copy and paste of that 2002 essay. It's still the case today, I think. Links were valid at the time of original posting. I called it, "What we have got that they have not."
What has the Battle on Omdurman in Sudan, 1898, got to do with a potential new war in Korea? Bear with me. In Sept. 1898, British troops under Sir Herbert Kitchener destroyed the Islamic Dervish army in Sudan in the Battle of Omdurman. The battle was exceedingly one-sided. The weapons and tactics of the Dervishes could not compete with British supply, weapons and tactics. (The Dervishes were the successor to the army under the Islamic Mahdi, which had driven the British out of Sudan 14 years earlier.) Winston Churchill, who fought in the battle, wrote that after the fighting, Sir Kitchener concluded the Dervishes had been given "a good dusting," so he ordered the British troops to break off the engagement.
Meanwhile the great Dervish army, which had advanced at sunrise in hope and courage, fled in utter rout, pursued by the Egyptian cavalry, harried by the 21st Lancers, and leaving more than 9,000 warriors dead and even greater numbers wounded behind them. Thus ended the Battle of Omdurman - the most signal triumph ever gained by the arms of science over barbarians. Within the space of five hours the strongest and best-armed savage army yet arrayed against a modern European Power had been destroyed and dispersed, with hardly any difficulty, comparatively small risk, and insignificant loss to the victors.[Editor's Note: The Dervish Army, approximately 52,000 strong, suffered losses of 20,000 dead, 22,000 wounded, and some 5,000 taken prisoner--an unbelievable 90% casualty rate! By contrast, the Anglo-Egyptian Army, some 23,000 strong, suffered losses of 48 dead, and 382 wounded - an equally unbelievable 2% casualty rate, thus showing the superiority of modern firepower!]
British poet Hilaire Belloc famously summed it up,
"Whatever happens we have got
the Maxim gun and they have not."
Sir Edward Arnold observed that heretofore, it had been the dash, skill and bravery of the officers and troops that had carried the day, but the Battle of Omdurman was won by quiet, scientific gentlemen living in Kent.It is worth noting that the Dervishes had destroyed a British army under General Charles Gordon 14 years before at Khartoum. In fact, they had even beheaded Gordon and placed his head on display. (Gordon had been ordered by the Prime Minister to withdraw, but he refused, saying that he was honor-bound to the Sudanese people, whom he had promised to preserve from slavery under the Islamic Mahdi.)
England finally sent a relief column, but it arrived two days too late. It then reversed march and left, leaving Sudan bereft of British presence. In the 14 years between Khartoum and Omdurman, the Royal Army made a technological quantum leap, not least of which was the adoption of the Maxim gun, the invention of American Hiram Maxim. Maxim's first model, 1885, had a cyclic rate of fire of 500 rounds per minute. An improved version was adopted by the Royal Army in 1889. The Brits also made improvements in artillery that would both outrange Dervish guns and make rubble of Dervish forts. In short, the British Army spent 14 years improving its technology, weapons, tactics, training, communications and supply. The Dervish army (successors to the army led by the Mahdi, who had died a few years after Khartoum) had not.
Whatever happens we have got
MLRS and they have not.
In all the hue and cry over North Korea's increasing bluster and threats, I have detected in my web readings near-panicky assertions that the North has overwhelming superiority over the South and the American forces stationed in the South. Some commentators have claimed that the 2d Division there is nothing more than a speed bump and that if the US has significant forces engaged against Iraq, the South is as good as lost.
To which I say, "No." In fact, I have already said that North Korea is a paper tiger - in conventional arms, let me be specific. When it attains a nuke or two, the paper teeth will have some bite, unfortunately. But in conventional arms, the South and the US are quantitatively superior to the North.
I served in the 2d US Infantry Division (2ID) in Korea from 1977-1978, in 1st Battalion, 38th Field Artillery. The battalion was then equipped with 18 105mm towed howitzers, M102A1. Today it is equipped with 27 Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) vehicles, an exceptionally powerful rocket artillery system. 2ID then resembled a World War II division more than it did its present configuration and even then we did not then consider ourselves a "speed bump." The technological advances since 1978 have increased the division's combat power exponentially.
I do not claim that 2ID can defeat an invading North all by itself. I certainly do claim that those who write the division off, saying that it would be destroyed, are just wrong. In the 50-odd years since the Korean War, the US Army has been well funded most years, has fought in several wars large and small, and has been the direct beneficiary, and sometimes the engine, of the revolution in computerization. The Army's history since 1953 has been dynamic. Capabilities in conventional munitions have been so improved that tactical atomic weapons are no longer necessary to achieve massively destructive effects against enemy soldiers or installations. In fact, a single MLRS launcher is more destructive than a 155mm atomic projectile, and at longer range.
There have been enormous improvements in training and the systems and equipment used for training. Intensive combat simulations ("war games" being a hopelessly inadequate term) are now used that integrate vehicles, simulators, communications, computers, aerospace assets and ground/naval units in ways never before possible, linked worldwide. In contrast, the North Korean army has done none of this. In particular, they have not been required to stretch their doctrine because they have not fought a war since 1953. They have read and studied, of course, but they have had no chance to test whether their theoretical doctrine is any good. Their millions of soldiers are far from uniformly effective. (Of the five million men under arms the North is said to have, about three-fourths are reserves with little regular training.)
None of their services have the combined arms operations skills that US and Southern forces have. They rarely conduct large-scale maneuvers, and when they do, the maneuvers are scripted. Free-play exercises are not done. Their air force does not fly near the hours that US and ROK air forces do, and with nothing like the training intensity. They do not have stealth aircraft. Their most numerous fighter plane, the MIG-19, dates from not long after the Korean War.
That NK troops could cross the Military Demarcation Line can't be denied; doing so has been the main focus of their military for, lo, five decades. (When I served on the DMZ, US and ROK engineers were blowing up tunnels that the North had dug under the DMZ; at least one could handle trucks. There are certainly tunnels we have not discovered.) But it is highly likely that they have no real imagination for doing anything much more than making the initial assault, except for taking Seoul, only 30 miles from the DMZ. In short, their whole operational model has been their previous invasion of 1950, when they drove all the way to Pusan. But in 1950 they did not face a well-prepared defense in depth, manned with well-trained troops. Nor had Northern troops and their families suffered from decades of communist oppression and literal starvation. Neither had the inherent corruption of the communist system yet destroyed the integrity of their officer high command. If the North invades again, from the beginning Allied forces will enjoy --
- communications dominance,
- position advantage,
- clear firepower superiority,
- better weapons and equipment,
- better trained units, staffs and procedures,
- better combined arms integration,
- air superiority, then air supremacy,
- better tactical and strategic intelligence,
- better round-the-clock combat capability.
What the North does have is troops - lots and lots of troops. But "hording" as a combat tactic will result in the Allies enjoying something close to Omdurman-type victory. 2ID is armored and mechanized. The US Abrams tank outshoots and outruns anything the North has. The North has perhaps 3,500 main battle tanks, but how many of them run is another matter. And how many crews are trained is yet another. The vast preponderance of Norther troops are foot soldiers who would perish in untold numbers to American artillery and Air Force weapons.
By no means would such an invasion be easily resisted. Casualties would be high on both sides, but much higher for the North. Probably more South Korean civilians would die than ROK troops. NK special ops forces would be of serious concern and would spearhead an invasion, operating well south of the DMZ. They would commit sabotage, assassination and special attacks. The North almost certainly has fairly modern UAVs that would be used as a "poor man's cruise missile." Some analysts think that the North would launch nonpersistent chemical agents at Seoul, intending to kill as many Southern government workers as possible; that many ordinary Seoulians would die also is of no consequence. Steven Den Beste has said that civilian refugees fleeing the battle would constitute major mobility problems for Allied forces, and he's probably right.
While the North's army slugged its way south, American air power would be devastating North Korea's lines of communication, ports, installations and infrastructure. The North's air force would pretty quickly be dispatched. Military and government buildings in Pyongyang would be leveled. I think US commanders would show much less restraint against North Korea than they did against Iraq in 1991 or 2003.
In short, the North can invade the South, but it cannot win. The ensuing war would be disastrous for the South in terms of human loss, also for the North unless the war ended with the South's suzerainty over the North. But even so, the North Korean people would suffer very greatly until then.
The problem, though, is not that the North could win such a war. It is that its isolated, self-justifying oligarchy might think it can win. And with its impending development of atomic weapons, it may think that all the more.
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