1. Another 20 F-35As for Korea (block 4) as part of the country’s F-X project (which comprises the government’s preemptive strike strategy Kill Chain); looks like the Korean Defense Acquisition Program Administration may eventually revisit the need for F-35Bs — but this not fully reported in the developing story.
2. Instead of properly preparing for the OPCON transition, the previous Moon administration focused on the F-35B (over the F-35A as part of the light aircraft carrier project CVX), despite preliminary research performed from 2018 to 2019 that found the country was in need of the “A” variant.
3. Thus far, Lockheed Martin has delivered all 40 F-35A Block 3 fighters the country ordered, as of December 2021. The new proposed order is in addition to the existing fleet of 40 F-35As and 60 F-15Ks. If their true goal is the ability to conduct a preemptive strike on North Korean nuclear missiles, IMHO, 60 F-35As by 2030 is not enough — they need at least 80 to 100, for me to see the effort as credible, given day 1 of war needs.
4. The goal of crisis bargaining is to avoid war in the Korean peninsular. But counter-intuitively, North Korea often has to escalate the threat of war to get Kim Jong-un’s desired best bargaining outcome WITHOUT going to war.
(a) The bombardment of Yeonpyeong island by North Korean artillery on 23 Nov 2010 and North Korea firing multiple artillery shots into the sea, on 12 Jun 2022, are examples of escalation. China’s President Xi understands Kim Jong-un’s crisis bargaining tactics, and that gives Beijing the upper hand in dealing with Seoul.
(b) Another North Korean bargaining tool uses brilliantly is brinkmanship, which is taking actions that increase the chance of an accidental war. The goal is to make the adversary lose their nerve and back down.
(c) Kim Jong-un engaged in brinkmanship when he launched 8 short-range ballistic missiles towards the sea off its east coast on 5 Jun 2022. North Korea has launched 31 ballistic missiles from Jan to Jun 2022. Japanese Defence Minister Nobuo Kishi said the North had launched multiple missiles, and that the act "cannot be tolerated." He said at a briefing that at least one missile had a variable trajectory, which indicates it could manoeuvre to evade missile defences. This is in effect, an implied nuclear ballistic missile threat on American bases in Japan and Korea.
5. To complicate matters, in South Korean domestic politics, the OPCON transition is subject to much confusion and Moon created misconceptions, meaning that conspiracy theories tend to gain traction not only among the public but also at the elite level. OPCON transition needs to be conditions based and South Korea has elected not to spend enough for this transition to occur under former President Moon; & it is unclear Yoon will up spending enough for it to occur in his term of office.
(a) The road map for the three-phase preparation for wartime OPCON transition – Initial Operational Capability (IOC), Full Operational Capability (FOC), and Full Mission Capability (FMC) — agreed upon in Aug 2019, is not easy to achieve at current defence spending levels.
(b) IMHO, the political leadership of South Korea under President Yoon needs to state what sacrifices OPCON transition calls for, such as raising taxes to meet the increased military spending required to meet FOC & FMC, while making it clear to the public that it is their objective to achieve.
(c) South Korea will need to address the possible economic risk that a decision to opt out of its current hedging strategy might entail if China were to retaliate in response. This, in turn, would discredit the claim that the obstacle to OPCON transition is the supposed opposition of the US.
