Just hours after Trump made his famously heated vow to unleash "fire and fury" on North Korea if provocations by the Kim regime continued, the US Air Force issued a very clear statement in which it explicitly said that it was "ready to fight tonight", launching an attack of B-1 bombers if so ordered:
“How we train is how we fight and the more we interface with our allies, the better prepared we are to fight tonight,” said a 37th EBS B-1 pilot. “The B-1 is a long-range bomber that is well-suited for the maritime domain and can meet the unique challenges of the Pacific.”
Now, according to an NBC report, it appears that the B-1 pilot was dead serious, as the Pentagon has unveiled a plan for a preemptive strike on North Korean missile sites with bombers stationed in Guam, once Donald Trump gives the order to strike.
Echoing what we said yesterday that war "under any analysis, is insanity", the preemptive strike plan is viewed as the "best option available" out of all the bad ones:
"There is no good option," a senior intelligence official involved in North Korean planning told NBC News, but a unilateral American bomber strike not supported by any assets in the South constitutes "the best of a lot of bad options."
The attack would consist of B-1 Lancer heavy bombers located on Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, a senior acting and retired military officials told NBC news.
“Of all the military options … [President Donald Trump] could consider, this would be one of the two or three that would at least have the possibility of not escalating the situation,” retired Admiral James Stavridis, former Supreme Allied Commander Europe and an NBC News analyst, said.
There is another important consideration: according to one senior military officer, "the B-1 has also been selected because it has the added benefit of not being able to carry nuclear weapons. Military planners think that will signal China, Russia, and Pyongyang that the U.S. is not trying to escalate an already bad situation any further."
The plan explains why in recent weeks pairs of B-1s have conducted 11 practice runs of a similar mission since the end of May, the last taking place on Monday, around the time Trump and Kim were exchanging unpleasantries in the media, with the training has accelerated since May, according to officials. In an actual mission, NBC notes that the non-nuclear bombers would be supported by satellites and drones and surrounded by fighter jets as well as aerial refueling and electronic warfare planes.
- North Korea’s conventional forces, which include 700,000 men under arms and tens of thousands of artillery pieces, would be able to cause immense damage to the South Korean economy. If the North was able to set off a nuclear bomb in South Korea, the consequences would be even greater. Many of the main targets in South Korea are located close to the border with the North. The capital, Seoul, which accounts for roughly a fifth of the country’s population and economy, is located just 35 miles from the North Korean border, and would be a prime target.
North Korea may well fulfil its threat to hit US targets on South Korean territory if continued pressure by Washington puts Pyongyang at an impasse, Pavel Zolotarev, a retired Russian Major General, told RT.
“A US strike against North Korea may go against common logic, but when a country is governed by propaganda – and the United States are going through such a period – political decisions go beyond rational logic, and there we can have consequences that are hard to foresee,” Zolotarev warned.
On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump promised to bring “fire and fury like the world has never seen” on North Korea if it doesn’t stop tests aimed at the developing a nuclear-tipped long-range ballistic missile. Than the next day he went even further to say that the “fire and fury” warning to North Korea may not have been “tough enough.”
Increased pressure from Washington may force the North to “be more assertive in terms of retaliatory measures,” with South Korea becoming hostage in this situation, he warned.
“Strikes may be carried out, targeting either US facilities in South Korea or the South Korean territory itself,” Zolotarev, who is the Deputy Director of the Institute for US and Canadian Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences, said.
“One shouldn’t forget that the South Korean capital, Seoul, is within the reach of (North Korean) artillery,” he added.
The expert stressed that claims by Korean People’s Army that they have plans worked out to strike US bases in Guam are “no bluff.”
“Every country’s military have to elaborate deployment strategies for any eventuality. It is politicians – not the military – who decide on whether or not to use such plans… So, if North Korean military talk of such plans, it means they actually have them,” he explained.
If the armed confrontation between the US and the North eventually breaks out, the Americans shouldn’t expect it to be a walk in the park, Zolotarev said.
“The North Korean military may inflict significant damage to US forces during a conventional conflict. Though their equipment is far beyond the American assets, their combat readiness and military morale are much higher,” he said.
South Korea and Japan reaffirmed their support for the US on Thursday following North Korea’s announcement that they are considering a ballistic missile attack against Andersen Air Force Base on the US island territory of Guam in Micronesia.
An attack on Guam would be met with a "strong and resolute retaliation" from South Korea’s military, a South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesman told reporters. "If North Korea commits provocations despite our stern warning, it will face a strong response from South Korea’s military and the US-South Korea alliance," the spokesman added.
Meanwhile, Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said Japan can legally intercept
North Korean missiles aimed at Guam if they pass over Japanese territory, and that Tokyo reserves the right to invoke collective self-defense to ensure Japan’s security.
"If bombers attacked us or warships bombarded us, we would fire back," the defense minister said in March, adding that "striking a country lobbing missiles at us is no different."
Trump’s declaration that North Korea will endure the “fire and fury” of the US military arsenal was “one of the most bellicose remarks made in public by a US president since the atom bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that were announced back in 1945,” Asia political expert Keith Bennett told Radio Sputnik’s Loud & Clear on Wednesday.
North Korea’s military says President Donald Trump’s warning of “fire and fury” if it threatens the U.S. is a “load of nonsense.”
The North is responding to Trump’s threat in a statement from its military carried by state-run news agency KCNA. The statement says that “only absolute force” can work on someone as “bereft of reason” as Trump.
The North Korean statement also says the military action its army “is about to take”will be effective for restraining America’s “frantic moves” in and near the southern part of the Korean Peninsula.
It says North Korea will complete a plan by mid-August for the “historic enveloping fire at Guam,” convey it to the commander in chief of its nuclear force and then “wait for his order.” North Korea says it will “keep closely watching the speech and behavior of the U.S.”
The North Korean military is “awaiting orders” to unleash four missiles at military bases near Guam — because officials believe President Trump is too “bereft of reason” for negotiations, the country’s state-run media reported Wedneday.
North Korea’s state-run news agency KCNA said Tuesday that the government was looking at an “operational plan” that would send numerous medium- to long-range strategic ballistic missiles toward the US-owned Pacific island to counteract the bombers positioned there and “send a serious warning signal to the US.”
Specifically, the country claimed they would be firing Hwasong-12 rockets at “Andersen Air Force Base” — where US strategic bombers currently are waiting.
These bombers “get on the nerves of the DPRK and threaten and blackmail it through their frequent visits to the sky above South Korea,” according to KCNA.
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