The two Chinese representatives had spent the morning at the operations center, coordinating communications and making sure that the two armies, now cooperating, wouldn’t shoot at the wrong people. Luckily, the geography of the Kim redoubt area made it simple. The Chinese would attack from the north, across the Chongchon River, while the American and Han armies would attack from the east, west, and south. The three sides also shared intelligence about the redoubt and its defenses, and coordinated reconnaissance.
The two Chinese had come over from the nearby ops tent within minutes of General Sohn’s summons. Now Long sat quietly, studying the map on the large flat-screen display and making notes. Evidently, Long spoke excellent Russian, and passable French, but no Korean or English, so everything would have to be relayed through the young captain who sat at the general’s elbow.
General Tae, who had been out in the assembly area, finally arrived and bowed politely to the Chinese general before taking his seat. Neither man smiled.
Moments later, General Sohn entered and, even as everyone came to attention, waved them back into their seats. Evidently warned about the Chinese interpreter, Sohn spoke in short sentences, with frequent pauses. He managed to get his point across.
“We know, with high confidence, where the Kim faction holdouts have their nuclear weapons hidden. What we don’t know is their timetable. Therefore, we will move tonight.” That got a reaction. A major operation like this would normally take days to organize. “We cannot wait any longer. If the enemy learns of our preparations, they may launch another missile attack before we can stop them. Tonight, it ends!”
Taking a lead from Sohn’s urgent tone, Colonel Won, the deputy intelligence chief from Sohn’s staff, quickly walked over to the flat-screen display. It showed the area held by the holdouts, now described with the Chinese term “the Redoubt.” He said simply, “The missile site is here, about fifteen kilometers northeast of Sukchon. The area is mountainous and heavily wooded.”
He pointed to a place on the map almost in the center of the area controlled by the holdouts. A long valley formed by two high ridges ran north and south. A narrow road, little more than a track, ran the length of the valley. There were no signs of habitation in the valley, but a military base occupied the north end, and the Sunchon air base sat at the southeast corner. Won pointed to a symbol in red a third of the way up the valley from the air base. “It’s here.”
The intelligence officer pressed a key and the map was replaced with a rough schematic showing a tunnel network that extended well within the mountain and ran three stories deep. The colonel began pointing out different parts of the installation: the missile magazines, the liquid fuel tanks, a storage area for the multi-wheeled launch vehicles. There were strong defenses both outside and inside, including pillboxes guarding the entrances and even a series of decoy tunnels…
General Tae was amazed and interrupted the colonel. “This is very detailed information. No one on the General Staff was aware of this place. Are you sure your source is reliable? Can any of this be confirmed from other sources?”
In the meantime, Won had looked to General Sohn, who gave a small shake of his head. The colonel answered Tae, “Collecting more information has been discussed, sir. We’ve avoided sending UAVs or other aircraft into the area, to prevent tipping our hand. The air base at the southern end has been attacked several times, as have some of the other nearby installations, but this missile complex itself has remained untouched and unnoticed. A special operations team would take too long to get in, collect the data, and get out. And then there is the risk of them being discovered, which is assessed as being high.”
Rhee agreed emphatically with Won’s explanation. He’d been asked earlier in the day by Sohn’s staff about the feasibility of a Special Forces scouting mission, but it simply couldn’t be done quickly enough. They’d have to wait until dark to even begin, cover many kilometers of rough, wooded country to get into position, and then wait till first light to actually get a good look at the complex. It would mean postponing the attack for at least two more days, and a recon team couldn’t do much more than confirm the site’s location and any outer defenses. It just wasn’t worth the delay.
Through the interpreter, Long asked, “Then could we interview the source ourselves? Ask him some questions to determine the accuracy of his statements?”
To see if you believe him, Rhee thought. It was not unreasonable, but General Sohn was more direct this time. “His information has been confirmed to the best of our ability, in the time available. We will move using what we have.”
Won started again. “We can’t tell how many missiles, or even of what type, they have inside, but the complex is large enough to hold about a dozen BM-25 Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missiles. Since they’ve launched five missiles already, we’re looking at possibly seven to eight missiles in the storage bunkers. Alternatively, there could be about half a dozen Hwaseong-13, or KN-08, intercontinental ballistic missiles. We have reason to believe that some KN-08 missiles are there, because during Ga Seung-ho’s debrief, he said that the people who summoned him were concerned with ‘progressive guidance errors over long ranges.’”
Kevin Little’s Korean was good enough to keep up with Won, but he was still grateful for the pauses that gave the Chinese interpreter a chance to work. General Long reacted strongly to the phrase “over long ranges,” but Little could see him work to control it. The BM-25 and KN-08 were both crude by modern standards, but the former could cover almost all of China, as well as Japan. The latter could hit targets as far away as European Russian and India. Neither had been tested before the civil war, but four Musudan missiles had managed to find their way to Guam — operational test completed satisfactorily.
As for payloads, he’d heard a lot of speculation since the crisis began about how many nuclear weapons the DPRK possessed, or how big they were, or what they could fit into the nose cone of a missile. To Kevin’s thinking, it didn’t really matter. A nuclear explosion anywhere, of any size, would be a disaster. He found it hard to imagine the calamity more than one would create.
Won had moved on to the defenses in the area. There was the Sunchon air base nearby with a squadron of MiG-29 Fulcrums. Like so many military installations in the North, most of it was underground, with only the runway and a couple of hangars vulnerable to attack. Based on other such installations, the entire squadron could be sheltered underground. Both the runway and taxiway had been pummeled during earlier strikes.
The air defenses also included an unknown number of surface-to-air missile launchers that emerged from behind concrete doors just long enough to fire, and then were retracted to reload. Batteries of radar-guided guns were emplaced in hidden revetments on the hillsides, with mobile AAA guns that could be set up for aerial ambushes, and then moved before they could be targeted.
The Chinese, Koreans, and Americans had all lost both UAVs and manned aircraft to the air defenses. Cruise missiles had a difficult time threading their way through the terrain to reach their targets, and even if they could, they didn’t have the ability to penetrate the hardened bunkers. It was just as hard for manned aircraft as well. Flying at a safe height would expose them to the full force of the defenses. Missions were still being flown, but bringing the pilots back safely meant choosing their targets carefully, and giving them a lot of support they wouldn’t usually need. And even with Cho’s information, the striking aircraft lacked the exact coordinates to put GPS-directed weapons onto the bunkers — a near miss just wasn’t good enough.