Tag Archive for: ballistic missile

North Korea is the big beneficiary in its military partnership with Russia

North Korea is getting more out of its engagement in Russia’s war than Russia is getting from North Korea.

The forces that Pyongyang has sent to fight Ukraine are poorly equipped and are not performing well. Yet, the military-technological help that Russia is sending to North Korea in return is highly valuable.

Moscow’s assistance to Pyongyang is somewhat destabilising for East Asia, since any increase in North Korean military strength heightens the risk of war on the Korean Peninsula. South Korea should respond by helping Ukraine.

The growing military cooperation between North Korea and Russia is substantial. Among other reasons for this military-cum-strategic partnership, North Korea eyes several strategic and tactical goals. These include the modernisation of its military capabilities, access to Russian military technologies, combat experience, help in launching spy satellites into space, bolstering its air-defence networks and possible diplomatic cover at the United Nations from international sanctions.

The troops provided by North Korea lack battlefield expertise despite some reportedly being part of North Korea’s special forces. They’re also unfamiliar with the terrain of Russia and Ukraine. Two South Korean lawmakers, Lee Sung-kwon and Park Sun-won have said that North Korean troops deployed in Russia suffer from a ‘poor understanding of modern warfare tactics’. Recently, Ukrainian defence forces wiped out an entire battalion of North Korean troops in Makhnovka, a village in Kursk.

The artillery ammunition, rockets and missiles imported from North Korea have proliferated across Russian defences in large volumes, outdoing EU production lines. Their poor quality translates to low accuracy. While such low-tech weaponry might frustrate Russian soldiers, without it the Russian war machine would slacken.

Consider, however, what North Korea is getting in return. First, Russia sends oil from Vostochny, a port east of Vladivostok, to the North Korean city of Chongjin. But its aid to Pyongyang beyond oil is more important because North Korea is technologically starved.

Russia has already responded to North Korea’s help by sending it air defence systems. According to South Korean intelligence reports, North Korea’s air defences have been outdated and need great improvement to combat South Korean and US air power.

Although North Korean soldiers in the Russia-Ukraine war have not been highly effective, they are learning. Moreover, the war has introduced them to drone warfare. Pyongyang can look forward to this experience improving the combat power of its forces in its own theatre of potential conflict, the peninsula.

The big concern is that Russia may help improve North Korea’s nuclear forces, which in some respects remain somewhat limited. For example, Pyongyang would probably want help in improving its ballistic missile technology, particularly for intercontinental strikes. It must also want nuclear weapons—or better nuclear weapons—for submarines.

Jenny Town of the Stimson Centre, argues that if Russia’s dependence on North Korea expands, the deeper cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang is likely to intensify, and may facilitate the development of nuclear technologies in North Korea.

Earlier this year, the deputy US representative to the UN, Dorothy Camille Shea, warned the Security Council that North Korea might be gaining an upper hand in its military relationship with Moscow, which could strengthen it and make it more capable of destabilising its neighbours.

Scholar Robert Carlin argues that North Korea previously built and tested advanced weapons systems as leverage in negotiations with South Korea and the United States. However, North Korea may now be less interested such negotiations.

Although South Korea’s correct response should be to help Ukraine more, it is still debating whether to send lethal weapons. They could include the Cheonmu multiple rocket launcher, K9 self-propelled howitzer and 155 mm shells.

The South Korean public does not support arms transfers to Ukraine. Indeed, all non-lethal aid from Seoul is routed through the US, since direct supply could create unnecessary friction with Moscow.

In response to the growing relationship between Moscow and Pyongyang, Seoul is at least increasing cooperation with democratic partners.  For example, upon NATO’s request, the South Korean government sent a delegation to Brussels to discuss possibilities for intelligence sharing. And in 2022, South Korea opened its diplomatic mission to NATO.

Nuclear submarines, non-nuclear weapons and the search for strategic stability

The decision to deploy nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) in the years to come will be a product of the major paradigms and concepts used to manage nuclear dangers more broadly. Recently, an emerging literature has pointed to a change in the way that at least the major powers plan to mitigate nuclear threats to their interests. This shift in thinking can be summarised as involving a greater reliance on strategic non-nuclear weapons—weapons and enabling systems that can be used to compromise an adversary’s nuclear forces using both kinetic and non-kinetic means that don’t involve nuclear weapons—and a decreased commitment to mutual vulnerability as the basis of strategic stability between nuclear-armed adversaries.

Strategic non-nuclear weapons include ballistic missile defence, conventional precision-strike missiles, anti-satellite weapons and anti-submarine weapons. When combined with advances in enabling platforms and systems such as elements of cyber, artificial intelligence and quantum technology, they can, in principle, be used to compromise an adversary’s nuclear capabilities, with serious implications for issues of deterrence and stability.

Traditional approaches to deterrence based on the threat of punishment now compete with policies based instead on deterrence by denial. Stability based on rational calculations under conditions of mutual vulnerability appears set to be even harder to maintain.

The potential for conventional counterforce strikes makes future scenarios involving ‘use them or lose them’ logic more likely for states that face adversaries armed with more sophisticated capabilities.

The current challenge to traditional nuclear deterrence relationships has a dual but paradoxical effect on the incentives to deploy sea-based nuclear weapons. In general, as missile silos (and even, over time, mobile land-based missiles), air fields, satellites, and command, control and communications stations become more vulnerable to counterforce attacks, the incentives to diversify a state’s nuclear force structure increase. In particular, SSBNs still remain the most secure form of second-strike capability, meaning that the further spread of strategic non-nuclear weapons is likely to result in ever more nuclear weapons being deployed at sea.

On the other hand, one of the key technologies that falls under the banner of strategic non-nuclear weapons is anti-submarine weapons themselves, and much analysis now is focusing on whether advances in this area may in fact undermine the perceived invulnerability of SSBNs. It’s important to note that growing concerns over the effects of new anti-submarine capabilities on strategic stability are, at least in part, based on projections about the future. Little serious analysis or commentary predicts that the oceans are going to become effectively transparent overnight. However, advances in sensing and signal processing in particular mean that it’s a serious possibility that the oceans will become significantly more transparent than they are today. And when it comes to nuclear force structure planning, serious possibilities are enough to keep decision-makers up at night.

As the development of strategic non-nuclear weapons and the associated shift in thinking about stable deterrence based on mutual vulnerability continues, policymakers and analysts will need to give serious attention to what might become the new determinants of stability in the global nuclear order.

The development of countermeasures will play an important role in mitigating the destabilising effects of disruptive technological breakthroughs in anti-submarine weaponry. The role of countermeasures is already evident in other domains. For example, as a reaction to US missile defence, both China and Russia today are placing increasing emphasis on hypersonic missiles because their combination of speed and manoeuvrability makes them extraordinarily difficult to defend against.

Countermeasures for anti-submarine weapons need not rely on kinetic effects. The development both of ever quieter SSBNs with smaller acoustic signatures and of new techniques of deception (for example, unmanned underwater vehicles designed to produce tonals that match those of SSBNs that are thought to have been identified by an adversary) can increase a state’s confidence that at least some of its SSBNs can remain undetected and uncompromised in a crisis.

Developments in anti-submarine weapons aimed at compromising SSBNs and developments in countermeasures aimed at mitigating those breakthroughs will take on a tit-for-tat dynamic in the years to come. This is not a new phenomenon, but as rapid increases in things such as sensing techniques and data processing allow for technological leaps in anti-submarine capabilities, countermeasures should be expected to take on a new and much greater importance.

Defensive measures for SSBNs aimed at increasing their reliability in the face of technological breakthroughs in anti-submarine weaponry are unlikely to solely rely on new technologies themselves. For example, James Holmes has suggested that both ‘bastion’ strategies for SSBNs (vessels constricted to a much smaller, actively defended area for patrols) and SSBNs being accompanied by convoys of ‘skirmisher’-type defensive units (adopting a similar principle to aircraft carrier battle groups) may be necessary to regain confidence in the survivability of SSBNs.

Stability needs to be seen as the most important goal and that will require a degree of what has been termed ‘security dilemma sensibility’ among the nuclear-armed powers. Leaders that develop security dilemma sensibility display an openness to the idea that, as Nicholas Wheeler has put it, ‘an adversary is acting out of fear and insecurity and not aggressive intent, as well as a recognition that one’s own actions have contributed to that fear’.

For example, future Chinese breakthroughs on quantum computing and their application to SSBN communication technology could be a positive development in the US–China strategic relationship. The more confidence Beijing has in the security of its second-strike capability, the less likely it is that a crisis between the US and China will inadvertently escalate.

Beyond unilateral measures, it may be possible, over the longer term, to negotiate, and design, limited multilateral efforts aimed at restoring stability between adversaries, including in relation to sea-based nuclear deployments. History suggests that confidence-building measures can play as important a role as formal arms control measures in reducing nuclear dangers, meaning that finding avenues for dialogue, even at a low level, should now be a top priority.

In the short term, the increasing salience of strategic non-nuclear weapons and the abandonment of deterrence strategies based on mutual vulnerability, is likely to continue to encourage states to deploy more SSBNs. Simultaneously, these forces will intensify the pressures to better protect SSBN fleets that are already deployed from technological breakthroughs in the anti-submarine weapons domain. Restraint in the deployment of anti-submarine capabilities may need to become a substitute for the more traditional tools used to instil stability in nuclear-armed relationships—restraint in defensive technology (such as missile defence) and negotiated limits on arms.

This piece was produced as part of the Indo-Pacific Strategy: Undersea Deterrence Project, undertaken by the ANU National Security College. This article is a shortened version of chapter 20, ‘Strategic non-nuclear weapons, SSBNs, and the new search for strategic stability, as published in the 2020 edited volume The future of the undersea deterrent: a global survey. Support for this project was provided by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Trident and the nuclear future

The nuclear world is bifurcating. Along one fork sit those favouring the nuclear ban treaty—affronted by the ongoing role that nuclear deterrence plays in key global and regional security arrangements, appalled by the prospective humanitarian consequences of any direct use of nuclear weapons, and determined to beat swords into ploughshares at the earliest opportunity.  Along the other sit those committed to nuclear deterrence—firmly attached to the idea that nuclear weapons make a positive contribution to international security, worried by the prospective return of great-power conventional war, and dedicated to modernising strategic nuclear-weapon systems for future decades.

We get a nice snapshot of that second fork by looking at the current modernisation plans for the US Trident D5 submarine-launched ballistic missile. Since submarine-based nuclear weapons tend to be the least vulnerable, and therefore the best suited to secure second-strike missions, they’re unlikely to be beaten into ploughshares anytime soon. And by ‘anytime soon’, I mean anytime before 2060 or 2070, which is about as far ahead as current modernisation planning sees.

In Western arsenals, submarines carry a disproportionate share of the load of strategic nuclear deterrence. When the New START Treaty deadlines come into force on 5 February next year, about 70% of deployed US strategic nuclear warheads will be based on the Trident D5s (1,090 out of the allowable 1,550 warheads). And the missile already supports 100% of the UK’s nuclear deterrent—as it has done since 1998. (In Britain’s case, the American-manufactured missiles are mated with nuclear warheads of British design and manufacture.) So the importance of the Trident life-extension program should come as no surprise.

Life-extended Trident D5 missiles were introduced to the US Navy earlier this year. They’ll be the weapon system that links the current Ohio-class submarines to the future Columbia-class ones. The Ohios are forecast to move out of service between 2027 and 2040. But the incoming Columbias—the first is scheduled to enter service in 2031—will continue to deploy the Trident. And a common missile compartment, designed to house the missiles, will be a feature of both the Columbia design and the incoming British Dreadnought-class submarines, which will begin to replace the current Vanguard class from 2028.

Just how long can the Tridents last? Well, that’s a moot point. The life-extension program is a major undertaking. Some years back, the director of the US Navy’s strategic systems programs suggested that the two main challenges involved ‘determining the service life of the three-stage boost motors that comprise the missile propulsion system and modernizing the extremely complex D5 guidance system and missile electronics’. US sources suggest the missile is meant to remain in service until 2042. But that date’s probably a conservative estimate. Both Washington and London anticipate relying on sea-based nuclear deterrents into the 2060s and 2070s, and probably beyond.

Retrofitting a new missile into the common missile compartment at some point is surely possible. (After all, back in the late 1960s the Poseidon C3 was designed to use the same launch tubes as the smaller Polaris A3.) Still, much will depend on future assessments of the D5’s ongoing reliability. The Americans like to get value out of their strategic weapon systems. It’s not out of the question that a weapon system first deployed aboard the USS Tennessee in 1990 could celebrate its 60th birthday still at sea.

US Navy documents note that ‘life extension efforts will push the Trident D5 missile’s service life beyond that of all five previous systems combined’. (Those include the Polaris A1, A2 and A3, the Poseidon C3, and the Trident C4.) That’s impressive. Still, long-lived strategic weapon systems can also be found in the other two legs of the US nuclear triad. The US ICBM, the Minuteman III, first entered service in 1970—and current plans suggest it won’t retire until 2030. Meanwhile, the B-52 strategic bomber first saw service in the 1950s, and some tens of the H variant (the last of which rolled off the production line in October 1962) will still be part of the US strategic arsenal formally limited under New START.

What does all that tell us? Well, nuclear modernisation efforts aren’t undertaken lightly—necessity is typically the driver. The Americans and the British have embarked on a modernisation program for the sea-based leg of their nuclear triad which is intended to ensure a safe, secure, effective arsenal for the next 50 years. Lest readers imagine that Washington and London are forcing the pace in nuclear modernisation, let me assure you that they aren’t. Russia’s already well down this path. China’s making serious efforts to nurture its own sea-based nuclear capabilities. And France is currently retrofitting its new M51 missile to its Triomphant-class ballistic-missile submarines. Conclusion? Nuclear weapons aren’t about to disappear from the world.

Future frigates won’t provide a national missile shield

I’ve been asked a lot in the past couple of days about the significance of the ‘missile defence’ aspect of Prime Minister Turnbull’s announcement about the combat system for the future frigates. That’s not surprising, given some of the things the PM said:

This decision will maximise the Future Frigate’s air warfare capabilities, enabling those ships to engage threat missiles at long range. A number of states, notably of course, North Korea, are developing missiles with advanced range and speed. We must have the capability to meet and defeat them.

Each of the first two sentences in that quote is correct in isolation. But juxtaposed like that, they potentially give a misleading impression that the future frigates will be capable of dealing with threats to Australia from ballistic missiles launched from North Korea. Mr Turnbull also told the press that the nation’s naval capability is ‘stronger than ever at every level and in every field, whether it is defending Australia from regional or global threats, from threats from rogue states like North Korea’.

Before I explain why that isn’t quite the case—at least for now—I should say that the decision that was announced seems to be a very good one. As James Mugg and I wrote last week, there are good reasons to build on the success of both the US Navy’s Aegis combat system and the combination of the locally designed and built CEAFAR radar and Saab 9LV combat system. How they’ll all come together as a single system of systems in the future frigates remains to be determined.

I’ll also note that we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that this week’s decision is only part of the story for the frigates. In government policy documents, they have been described as ‘optimised for anti-submarine warfare’ (ASW). The air defence systems of this week’s announcements have nothing to do with ASW, and we won’t know what the ASW capabilities will be until the hull and the ASW sensors are chosen sometime next year. For now, the state of play could be summarised as ‘jack up ship, fit air defence systems’.

What we do know is that the air defence combat management system will include both Aegis (presumably the new baseline 9 or some future derivative) and 9LV, and that the radar will be a more capable evolution of the smaller CEAFAR system now on the Anzac-class frigates. Aegis brings with it a capability against short- to medium-range ballistic missiles, and the new CEAFAR radar will exploit a wider range of frequencies that will give it the ability to detect airborne threats of all kinds, including ballistic missiles inside or outside the earth’s atmosphere.

So there’s no doubt that Australia’s capability for ballistic missile defence (BMD) will improve markedly when these ships are delivered. (And, for that matter, when the Hobart-class air warfare destroyers are upgraded sometime next decade.) But it’s worth understanding what we will and won’t have. As Rod Lyon and I have written before, BMD is

workable against short-range missiles, launched in small numbers, and endowed with simple countermeasures. Once any of those three variables change, BMD becomes significantly more challenging. If all three change—and the defensive system is confronted by long-range missiles, launched in large numbers, with sophisticated countermeasures—BMD will surely fail.

The first and foremost role of any ship-borne air defence system is to protect the ship and those around it, so that the navy can pursue its other tasks. As well as cruise missiles, ballistic missiles are part of the threat spectrum, but they are of a shorter-range type—the term of art is ‘theatre ballistic missiles’—not intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) with the range required to target Australia from North Korea. To provide theatre defence, the US Navy employs SM-2 and SM-6 missiles for in-atmosphere interception and the larger SM-3 for exo-atmospheric shots.

Targeting incoming ICBMs is formidably difficult because of their very high re-entry speeds. It’s not impossible, and the US has successfully intercepted one, but it didn’t do it with the type of missile found on its warships. The ground-based interceptor missile weighs over 20 tonnes and is 16 metres long. Surface vessels can’t deploy such weapons. In comparison, the SM-3, the largest weapon in the SM family, weighs 1.5 tonnes and is 6.55 metres long.

That’s not to say that surface vessels can’t play a role in national BMD, but probably not as ‘goalkeepers’ parked off the Australian coast waiting for an incoming missile to knock down—which they’ll probably fail to do. There are claims that ships armed with SM-3 missiles could provide continental defence, but they seem to be optimistic (see the comment below that article), and the ground-based interceptor will always have better performance in that role.

A possible (though untested) approach might be to deploy them off the coast of a launch site (for example, in the Sea of Japan or the Yellow Sea in the case of North Korea) and engage missiles in the boost phase immediately after launch. That sort of operation would probably have to be done in coalition with the American and Japanese navies.

The take-home message is that Australia is heading down the road of acquiring a formidable ability to protect its fleet at sea from a range of credible air threats, as well as the ability to work with partners to tackle long-range missiles at their source. But don’t throw away those bomb-shelter plans just yet—we aren’t going to have a national defence system anytime soon.

North Korean nukes and space war

North Korea’s launch of a Hwasong-12 IRBM over Japan on 28 August, a second launch on 15 September (once again overflying Japan), and its test of what is either a boosted fission weapon or an early generation thermonuclear weapon on 3 September have accelerated the rush towards a major military crisis on the Korean peninsula. One aspect of North Korea’s nuclear developments that warrants closer attention is its ability to use nuclear weapons to generate electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks, or threaten low-Earth orbiting satellites in space.

The testing of higher yield nuclear weapons gives North Korea the ability to attack electrical and electronic systems over a wide area. Detonating a nuclear weapon at high altitude, such as in low-Earth orbit (LEO), would generate EMP, which would fry electrical and electronic circuits over a large geographic area.

EMP isn’t new; we’ve known about it since the Cold War, as a result of high-altitude nuclear testing such as the ‘Starfish Prime’ test in 1962. The effects of that test on terrestrial electrical systems generated concerns that the Soviet Union could blanket the US or NATO with sufficient EMP to burn out critical command and control networks and disrupt Washington’s nuclear retaliatory capability in the opening stages of a nuclear first strike. Such an attack would have had an even more devastating effect on non-hardened civilian infrastructure.

Earlier this year, North Korea’s testing of ICBMs included trajectories lofted to very high altitudes, which allowed Pyongyang to test warhead re-entry survivability, and minimised the risk of US military retaliation. The tests also demonstrated North Korea’s ability to detonate a nuclear weapon at high altitudes to generate EMP. Carrying out such an attack wouldn’t require accurate guidance, or high-yield warheads that are capable of surviving the heat of atmospheric re-entry, or even ICBMs.

A 2008 EMP Commission report (PDF) found that exo-atmospheric detonations of nuclear weapons would directly affect critical civilian infrastructure, most notably for power generation, telecommunications and data networks, as well as robotic industrial and manufacturing infrastructure. Analysis in June of this year on 38 North suggests that North Korea is already well placed to cause substantial damage to unprotected civilian networks using such attacks. That would hold true against the US, as well as its allies such as Japan and South Korea, or even Australia.

Evidence given by Peter Vincent Pry to the 2004 EMP Commission suggested that (PDF, p. 5) North Korea, with Russian assistance, was developing a ‘super-EMP’ weapon designed to affect a broad range of electronic systems. Such a weapon could be delivered by a missile, or it could be deployed in a satellite in a manner similar to the Soviet-era Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS).

If North Korea could detonate a nuclear weapon in space, it could also undertake a ‘Van Allen’ attack that would be designed to excite and expand the lower Van Allen radiation belt around Earth, exposing up to 803 satellites in LEO to high levels of radiation. US Defense Threat Reduction Agency analysis in 2010 suggested that satellites in LEO, which are not hardened against radiation found in higher orbits, would be vulnerable to nuclear detonations that ‘pumped’ the intensity of the Van Allen belts. Weeks or months of cumulative damage generated by passing through the zones of radiation would cause those satellites to fail. A Van Allen attack is highly indiscriminate: any satellite passing through the excited lower belt would be damaged. US satellites would be just as defenceless as those belonging to China, Russia or other states.

Certainly satellites could be replaced, but it would take years to completely restore the lost capability. The requirement to wait until Van Allen belts returned to normal levels of radiation, limited launch capability, long production queues, and the high cost for new satellites would slow the process down. If a combined Van Allen and EMP attack was effectively carried out, the ability to re-establish space systems could be at risk if satellite production facilities were damaged. In the interim, global economic systems would fall apart as the vital communications links for stock markets collapsed.

The Trump administration is maintaining that ‘all options are on the table’ for dealing with North Korea’s growing nuclear threat. The prospects for war on the peninsula are bad enough, with massed North Korean artillery attacks on Seoul a leading concern as well as the prospect of a general North Korean offensive into South Korea. The risk of a war escalating across the nuclear threshold raises the spectre of the first use of nuclear weapons in anger since Nagasaki—against South Korea, Japan or US territory—and the possibility that Pyongyang could devastate its opponents’ economies with EMP and destroy vital space infrastructure with Van Allen attacks. In any war, North Korea would certainly face defeat and, with it, the end of Kim Jong-un’s regime. In confronting his fate, Kim Jong-un would have everything to gain and little to lose by employing such a devastating tactic.

Ten lessons from North Korea’s nuclear program

North Korea has produced a number of nuclear warheads and is developing ballistic missiles capable of delivering them around the world. Many governments are debating how to prevent or slow further advances in North Korea’s capacity and what should be done if such efforts fail.

These are obviously important questions, but they are not the only ones. It also is important to understand how North Korea has succeeded in advancing its nuclear and missile programs as far as it has, despite decades of international efforts. It may be too late to affect North Korea’s trajectory decisively; but it is not too late to learn from the experience. What follows are 10 lessons that we ignore at our peril.

First, a government that possesses basic scientific know-how and modern manufacturing capability, and is determined to develop a number of rudimentary nuclear weapons, will most likely succeed, sooner or later. Much of the relevant information is widely available.

Second, help from the outside can be discouraged and limited but not shut down. Black markets exist anytime there is a profit to be made. Certain governments will facilitate such markets, despite their obligation not to do so.

Third, there are limits to what economic sanctions can be expected to accomplish. Although sanctions may increase the cost of producing nuclear weapons, history suggests that governments are willing to pay a significant price if they place a high enough value on having them. There is also evidence that some or all of the sanctions will eventually disappear, as other governments come to accept the reality of a country’s nuclear status and choose to focus on other objectives. That is what happened in the case of India.

Fourth, governments are not always willing to put global considerations (in this case, opposition to nuclear proliferation) ahead of what they see as their immediate strategic interests. China opposes proliferation, but not as much as it wants to maintain a divided Korean peninsula and ensure that North Korea remains a stable buffer state on its borders. This limits any economic pressure China is prepared to place on North Korea over its nuclear efforts. The United States opposed Pakistan’s development of nuclear weapons, but was slow to act, owing to its desire in the 1980s for Pakistani support in fighting the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan.

Fifth, some three-quarters of a century since they were first and last used, and a quarter-century after the Cold War’s end, nuclear weapons are judged to have value. This calculation is based on security more than prestige.

Decades ago, Israel made such a calculation in the face of Arab threats to eliminate the Jewish state. More recently, Ukraine, Libya, and Iraq all gave up their nuclear weapons programs either voluntarily or under pressure. Subsequently, Ukraine was invaded by Russia, Iraq by the US, and Libya by the US and several of its European partners. Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya were ousted.

North Korea has avoided such a fate, and the third generation of the Kim family rules with an iron fist. It is doubtful that the lesson is lost on Kim Jong-un.

Sixth, the Non-Proliferation Treaty—the 1970 accord that underpins global efforts to discourage the spread of nuclear weapons beyond the five countries (the US, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, and France) that are recognised as legitimate nuclear weapons states for an unspecified but limited period of time—is inadequate. The NPT is a voluntary agreement. Countries are not obliged to sign it, and they may withdraw from it, with no penalty, if they change their minds. Inspections meant to confirm compliance are conducted largely on the basis of information provided by host governments, which have been known not to reveal all.

Seventh, new diplomatic efforts, like the recent ban on all nuclear weapons organised by the United Nations General Assembly, will have no discernable effect. Such pacts are the modern-day equivalent of the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact, which outlawed war.

Eighth, there is a major gap in the international system. There is a clear norm against the spread of nuclear weapons, but there is no consensus or treaty on what, if anything, is to be done once a country develops or acquires nuclear weapons. The legally and diplomatically controversial options of preventive strikes (against a gathering threat) and preemptive strikes (against an imminent threat) make them easier to propose than to implement.

Ninth, the alternatives for dealing with nuclear proliferation do not improve with the passage of time. In the early 1990s, the US considered using military force to nip the North Korean program in the bud, but held off for fear of triggering a second Korean War. That remains the case today, when any force used would need to be much larger in scope and uncertain to succeed.

Finally, not every problem can be solved. Some can only be managed. It is much too soon, for example, to conclude that Iran will not one day develop nuclear weapons. The 2015 accord delayed that risk, but by no means eliminated it. It remains to be seen what can be done vis-à-vis North Korea. Managing such challenges may not be satisfying, but often it is the most that can be hoped for.

North Korea: the plot thickens

North Korea’s latest provocation—a successful test of an intercontinental-range ballistic missile (ICBM)—brings the long-building crisis on the Korean peninsula to a dangerous flashpoint. For one thing, it’s clear evidence that North Korea aspires not merely to have a nuclear-weapons program, but to be able to target the continental US. And that’s a dangerous aspiration for a risk-tolerant pariah state to have. While some are undoubtedly hoping that the bilateral relationship will evolve into one of long-term deterrence, it’s far from clear that Washington can tolerate a relationship of mutual vulnerability with such an actor.

But we’ve reached a point where only seriously costly options could offer a real prospect of reversing North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, because those options involve either regime change or war (and perhaps both). True, there’s increased discussion about increased discussion: something I’d feel happier about if the record of previous negotiations were a little less underwhelming. China’s gone back to pushing its idea of ‘a cap for a cap’: a freeze on North Korea’s programs in exchange for a freeze on US – South Korean military exercises. To be frank, that idea’s unappealing. While there’s some residual value in ‘freezing’ programs that have already demonstrated a considerable measure of success, staying in a freeze isn’t a long-term option—and Pyongyang has stated bluntly that it has no intention of denuclearising. (Indeed, it has written its nuclear status into its Constitution.) Not to mention that US – South Korean exercises are a necessary part of ensuring the effectiveness of the alliance.

Sanctions could surely be tightened. But they are so blunt, slow and uneven that it would take years to ensure they exercised decisive leverage upon Pyongyang’s policy choices. Certainly the North Korean economy’s in relatively good shape today—comparatively speaking, of course. It’s absolutely no match for the South Korean economy, but nor is Kim Jong-un’s regime under real economic duress. Meanwhile, Pyongyang has developed considerable skill in sanctions-busting, especially through the judicious use of front companies.

And so we come back to the military options. At one end of the spectrum, that just means strengthening deterrence against North Korean provocations, and making sure that Pyongyang understands that either direct use of a nuclear weapon or conventional adventurism under the cover of the North’s relatively small nuclear umbrella would be met with an appropriately costly response. One option would be to return US tactical nuclear warheads to South Korea. But Washington is reluctant to do that, not least because it would suggest that it’s ‘balancing’ North Korea as a recognised nuclear power. Similarly, notwithstanding Donald Trump’s remarks on the election hustings last year, Washington isn’t keen to see South Korea and Japan construct their own indigenous nuclear arsenals. That would open a Pandora’s box of proliferation worries both in Asia and elsewhere.

A second option would be to take direct steps against the North’s missile program, for example. A concerted effort of cyber warfare, electronic warfare and ballistic missile defence could slow the program. Slowing it beyond that might require provocative steps, such as pre-emptive attacks on launch facilities. But that option will become steadily more difficult as the North ‘hardens’ potential cyber targets and moves towards the greater use of mobile missile launchers—something it’s already doing.

A direct military attack on North Korea to degrade its nuclear and missile programs would be the most serious of all military options. In the long run, it’s probably the surest path to the end goal—but in the short run, Pyongyang would have available to it a set of response options that would do serious damage to both Seoul and, perhaps, Tokyo.

And that’s why some analysts have their fingers crossed that the situation can slide—however ungracefully—into a long-term relationship of nuclear deterrence between North Korea and the US. But is that really a tolerable outcome? During the Cold War, the Soviet Union endured a relationship with France under which Paris threatened to ‘rip the arm off’ the USSR and leave it a one-armed superpower. Would the US be prepared to endure a similar relationship with North Korea? To be honest, it’s a doubtful proposition. North Korea is not France. It’s a pariah state. Even leaving it as a long-term nuclear-armed actor is bad enough—because Pyongyang might eventually decide to sell key weapons technologies or actual devices to others. But accepting a long-term relationship of mutual vulnerability with such an actor is a more difficult proposition than it first appears.

In the meantime, the latest missile test can only sharpen worries in Seoul about a potential decoupling of the US from security on the peninsula. The South Koreans have long worried that the development of a North Korean ICBM capability would make Washington more hesitant to come to the South’s aid in any possible nuclear showdown with the North. Seeing the capability begin to unfold now will probably stiffen the sinews of those in Seoul who believe the country needs to look more to its own strategic resources for the long-term future.

That’s a gloomy picture, I know. Let me add just one more thought to make it a little gloomier: time is not on our side.

Ballistic missiles and the ‘½ rule’

Image courtesy of Flickr user U.S. Missile Defense Agency.

North Korea’s ballistic missile tests are indeed a roller-coaster ride. After a string of failures in its recent ballistic missile testing program, with some missiles failing almost immediately after launch, last Sunday it conducted what some are calling its most successful ballistic missile test to date. The test provides a shot in the arm for Pyongyang’s WMD programs. It also signals to the broader international community that the North’s ballistic-missile capabilities are definitely improving. Yes, the missile flew to a range of 787 km—on the face of it, nothing startling. But over at 38North, John Schilling noted that the test represents ‘a level of performance never before seen from a North Korean missile’ and suggested that the missile’s range is better seen as 4,500 km, not 800 km. He’s not making a wild guess.

The test provides an excellent opportunity to remind readers of an important general rule about missile range. The rule can be found in a useful—and free—little publication called The physics of space security: a reference manual (which can be downloaded here). In their chapter on space launches, the authors take the reader through what’s called the ‘½ rule’.

‘A useful rule of thumb is that a ballistic missile that can launch a given payload to a maximum range R on the Earth can launch that same payload vertically to an altitude of roughly R/2. This relation is exact in the case of a flat Earth and therefore holds for missiles with ranges up to a couple thousand kilometers (the Earth appears essentially flat over those distances, which are small compared to the radius of the Earth). But the rule continues to hold approximately for even intercontinental range missiles.’

Broadly, the rule states that if a missile is fired straight upwards into space, it will achieve an altitude of ½ its maximum range. A Scud missile with a maximum range of 300 km, for example, would—if fired straight up—reach an altitude of 150 km before falling back to earth.

So the interesting statistic from the recent North Korean test is not the missile’s range but its altitude. That’s been reported at 2111.5 km—a figure that, had it been achieved by firing the missile straight up, would point to a range of 4,223 km. That altitude was achieved while using some of the missile’s thrust to go almost 800 km downrange, which points to a range figure a little greater than that.

Of course range also depends on payload, so perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the test missile might have flown to a range in excess of 4,223 km with that particular payload. North Korea has emphasised that the missile is capable of carrying a large, heavy warhead. From publicly-available sources, it’s hard to tell how large the actual payload was.

Several analysts have pointed to the fact that this missile is not an ICBM. That’s true. An ICBM is defined in the strategic arms control agreements between the US and Russia as any ballistic missile with a range of, or above, 5,500 km. That range wouldn’t actually allow North Korea to target the continental US—or, at least, not the 48 contiguous states. But President Trump has said that North Korea will not be allowed to develop an ICBM, without providing any different definition of such a capability.

Some commentary on Sunday’s test has observed that the North Koreans might well be testing ICBM ‘subsystems’ in their current program. By flying the missile on a highly-lofted trajectory, for example, the North Koreans have been able to subject their re-entry vehicle to a more stressful heat test than could have been achieved by a standard trajectory. William Broad and David Sanger, writing in the New York Times, suggest that such gains show a Pyongyang tip-toeing over the line that the US has attempted to draw in relation to ICBM-applicable technologies.

As North Korea makes greater efforts to field an arsenal of longer-range missiles, we might begin to see a pattern of more frequent lofted missile tests. If so, that’s going to set Washington’s teeth on edge, not to mention Tokyo’s and Seoul’s. Australia itself has already been threatened with nuclear attack by North Korea, and the credibility of that threat can only grow as Pyongyang’s missile capabilities increase.

If we’re witnessing the start of a new wave of longer-range missile tests, we might all soon be paying much greater attention to the ‘½ rule’. Pyongyang needs to be particularly careful about conducting a test where the missile reaches an altitude suggestive of a 5,500-km range. If that were to occur, the ‘½ rule’ might end up being a trigger for war.

The RS-28 Sarmat and the future US nuclear triad

Russian media recently claimed that the Federation’s new intercontinental ballistic missile will be able to penetrate even America’s most effective defence systems—but are they right? Russia claims the new RS-28 Sarmat heavy ICBM, being introduced as part of its nuclear modernisation, can wipe out an area ‘the size of Texas or France’. They may be referring to the missile being able to deliver nuclear weapons via the South Pole rather than the traditional ‘over the north pole’ route. It may also be typical Russian grandstanding in an effort to intimidate. Whilst the RS-28 will certainly get US planners thinking about nuclear modernisation, it seems unlikely that such hyperbole will have US leaders rushing for the nuclear bunkers.

For starters, the US missile early warning systems means it is not blind to its southern approaches, as it has radars on the east and west coasts that provide coverage out to 5,500 km along the southern approaches to North America. In addition, the US maintains effective space-based missile early warning systems which detect launches. There’s no way the Russians would be able to attack with sufficient surprise to catch US nuclear forces on the ground or to decapitate the US political leadership. In any case, the US always keeps sufficient numbers of ballistic missile submarines at sea to ensure devastating retaliation.

The Russians claim their aim is to circumvent US missile defences. Yet going the long-way round over the South Pole seems unnecessary given US national missile defence efforts are designed to respond to limited attacks from nuclear armed rogues like North Korea, and potentially in the future, Iran. The US national missile defence capability has just thirty US ground-based interceptors (GBI) deployed in Alaska and California and their effectiveness is very questionable. They could not prevent a large scale Russian nuclear attack. So building large, heavy ICBMs to get around almost non-existent missile defence systems—whichever way the warheads fly—seems a curious thing to do and it suggests the Russians themselves lack a clear rationale for deploying such a weapon. As my colleague, Rod Lyon, has noted, such a missile generates destabilising dynamics that forces the Russians to fire first in a crisis.

The real significance of the RS-28 Sarmat is the effect it will generate on debates over US nuclear force modernisation. It’s likely to begin deployment next year when debate over replacing the aging US Minuteman III force will be gathering pace with the Trump Administration. In characteristic fashion President Trump has tweeted that the US must ‘greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability’, amid intense debate within US nuclear circles on issues such as the wisdom of maintaining a ‘launch on warning’ posture, and the continuing relevance of land-based ICBMs. It’s not clear exactly what Trump’s nuclear tweet may mean in the real world of US force structure planning, not to mention budgetary considerations, however Russian nuclear force modernisation is directly relevant to US nuclear policy choices.

If the US decides to stick with the ‘triad’, that comprises land-based ICBMs, manned bombers and ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) carrying ballistic missiles, the RS-28 deployment could force the US to take another look at mobile land-based missiles, last considered during the MX basing studies in the Reagan era, rather than continuing with the current vulnerable silo-based weapons. After all, it is the vulnerability of the silo-based ICBMs that mandates a rapid response ‘launch on warning’ posture to ensure a credible US deterrent. That increases the risk of inadvertent nuclear war, particularly if Russia’s persistence with heavy MIRVed ICBMs accentuates escalatory pressures in a crisis.

Minimising the risk of nuclear decapitation of one or two legs of the triad (the SSBNs are largely invulnerable), or against political leadership and nuclear command and control, must be a key consideration in this debate. Given this, it may be simpler to take this opportunity to break with the traditional structure of a triad, and go instead towards a ‘dyad’ of relatively invulnerable SSBNs and bombers, with the introduction of around 100 B-21 Raider bombers from the late 2020s. Getting rid of the land-based ICBMs reduces pressure for the US to maintain the risky ‘launch-on-warning’ posture because most of the US warheads will be safely tucked away on submarines at sea that are virtually impossible to find or track. Furthermore, the manned bombers could be dispersed reducing their vulnerability too. There are also measures the US could take to protect its political leadership, further reducing the RS-28’s ability to deliver an effective first strike against the US.

The end result may be that the big Russian ICBM will have few targets left to hit. So the RS-28 Sarmat may ironically force badly needed US nuclear posture change that strengthens US deterrence, and leaves the Russian nuclear forces less credible.

An object lesson? The first British nuclear ballistic missile submarine program

The recently published history of the British submarine service since 1945, The Silent Deep by Peter Hennessy and James Jinks, contains much food for thought for those interested in Australia’s future submarine capability. One particular episode, the construction of four nuclear powered ballistic missile submarines to carry Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent in the form of the Polaris A3 missile, is worth exploring in detail.

The order for the quartet was announced in February 1963, in the wake of the US–UK Nassau agreement of December 1962. The rate of progress required was such that the staff requirements for the new class were completed within eight weeks of the Nassau Agreement and the overall design approved less than a year later. The first boat (7,500 tons on the surface and 8,400 tons dived) was laid down in February 1964 and completed its trials in August 1967. The first operational deterrent patrol was conducted in 1968, nearly in accordance with the original schedule, while the last boat commissioned in December 1969. The project remains a remarkable achievement, one much smaller than, but nevertheless directly comparable to, the American effort that saw 41 SSBNs completed between 1961 and 1967.

Several points are notable. First, there was strong and continuing oversight by a well-led project team, designated the Polaris Executive, which had the authority to make decisions and force change. The chief executive officer assigned at the start of 1963 remained in office until the first boat was fully operational. One of his earliest initiatives was to circulate within the departments of state (aimed most particularly, at the Treasury) a paper entitled ‘What’s So Special About the Polaris Programme?’ which made clear the formidable challenges ahead.

Second, there was no competition. Only one builder, Vickers-Armstrongs at Barrow in Furness, was already building nuclear submarines and had some—although not all—of the expertise required to embark on a ballistic missile submarine construction program. Cammell Laird, the second builder, was only brought on line when it became apparent that Vickers couldn’t manage all four boats in tandem with the existing attack submarine construction line. Vickers remained the lead yard. In fact, most of the biggest problems with the whole program derived from the fact that Cammell Laird experienced a steep learning curve in developing the necessary techniques for nuclear submarine construction from scratch.

What substituted for competition was a sustained effort to identify and contain cost, to improve—and this was vital—quality control to achieve a standard of hull and machinery construction that had never been reached before. Vickers understood the requirement, but still had to vastly expand its expert workforce if both SSBN and SSN production lines were to be maintained. Such quality control included extensive training programs to give design staff and technicians the skills they needed to move from relatively simple, shallow diving diesel-electric craft to the much more demanding requirements of the missile boats. This included working with new varieties of high tensile steel and developing the welding techniques to match. It also included much more attention to detailed design and the inter-relationship of major systems and sub-systems than had ever before been required or attempted. In retrospect, this remained one of the weak areas of the program—and it’s still one of the key challenges for the successful new build of any submarine. The associated changes in Vickers’ manpower indicate the scale of the effort (and may cast some light on the Australian requirement for building the future submarine). The yard force increased from 3,100 men in 1963 to 4500 in 1967, but the support staff—including planning, testing and quality control—went from 800 to 2,400 in the same period.

Next, problems were identified and a solution sought as early as possible; there was little or no ‘learned helplessness’ and if money had to be found, it was, since the requirement for contingency funding to be available was understood from the start. Most impressive was the early acceptance that a British decision to eschew stainless steel piping in the first indigenous naval nuclear reactor was gravely flawed. The British couldn’t fix the problem from within their own resources and keep to the schedule. Notwithstanding the loss of British ‘face’ and the foreign currency cost, American assistance was asked for and given.

There’s one ironic footnote to the British SBBN programme, not mentioned in The Silent Deep but since acknowledged by other UK authorities. Training and preparing eight nuclear and missile qualified crews for the four twin-crewed boats in such a short time placed a severe strain on the manpower of the British submarine service, already under stress introducing the nuclear powered attack boats. Britain was only able to maintain its declared number of operational submarines for NATO over the critical period 1965–68 because Australian and Canadian submariners, in training and gaining experience for their brand new, British-built, diesel-electric submarines aboard RN units, made up some of the manning shortfall. Australia’s Collins class program applied some, but not all the lessons that the British had learned from their SSBN build. It will be vital that the new Future Submarine Program will have learnt and applied them all.