http://www.aviationweek.com/publication/awst/loggedin/AvnowStoryDisplay.do?fromChannel=awst&pubKey=awst&issueDate=2006-10-16&story=xml/awst_xml/2006/10/16/AW_10_16_2006_p32-33-01.xml&headline=Washington+Faces+Quandary+in+North+Korea

Aviation Week & Space Technology, 10/16/2006, page 32

David A. Fulghum and Amy Butler, Washington, Neelam Mathews, New Delhi

The U.S. has stymied itself politically and militarily in any response to North Korea's nuclear test by alienating its allies and involving itself in prolonged fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the result is foes emboldened to develop nuclear weapons.

So say several former top Air Force and intelligence officials. They contend the U.S. military response is muted not because it's inappropriate, but because there are not enough ground troops available to back up air strikes and a naval blockade of North Korea, they contend.

Meanwhile, the U.S. continues its efforts to validate the isolated nation's claim that it demonstrated the ability to build and detonate a plutonium-based weapon of mass destruction.

The test last week is the first time that results from a nation's announced initial nuclear test were so unclear, thereby leaving doubts about North Korea's entry into the elite nuclear club. As analysis of the Oct. 9 test continues, the Bush administration is urging China to join the chorus of nations calling for tough sanctions against Pyongyang.

U.S. Navy electronic attack aircraft capable of monitoring encrypted and hidden wireless communications, as well as Air Force RC-135 Rivet Joint aircraft, which have long-range electronic intercept and surveillance capabilities, deployed to the areas off North Korea, as did aircraft from Japan and the U.S. capable of detecting radioactive debris and gases that likely would be released by a nuclear test.

AMONG THEM ARE the remaining two WC-135W Constant Phoenix sniffer aircraft, now attached to the secretive 55th Wing at Offutt AFB, Neb. The 55th--which has under its command many of the Air Force's most exotic surveillance, electronic attack and intelligence-gathering aircraft--is part of the 8th Air Force, which is leading the service's network-centric transformation effort.

Air samples taken by those aircraft could take up to a week to analyze, says Peter Huessy, president and CEO of Geostrategic Analysis in Washington and a longtime analyst of nuclear proliferation issues and ballistic missile systems. This prolongs the waiting game as intelligence officials try to determine what did and did not take place in North Korea. Particulates from the test are expected to take several days to make their way into the air and would have to move east at altitudes where aircraft can capture samples. "Right now there's no conclusive evidence of what happened," a U.S. intelligence official says.

"There aren't any additional bombers being deployed to Guam or Navy ships setting up a blockade yet," says a former Air Force chief of staff, although some deployments are being considered. "I think North Korea has looked at the fact that [U.S. ground forces] are bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that we haven't been able to withdraw and reconstitute them. They know that the U.S. can attack their missile and nuclear test sites, but that could trigger an attack on South Korea."

Compounding any weakness in ground forces, Seoul--South Korea's capital, population center, and one of Asia's major economic engines--is within range of North Korea's artillery.

"IT'S A DIFFICULT, an awful military problem made worse by the accident of geography," say Merrill McPeak, another former Air Force chief of staff. "We looked at taking out those guns. They are tough problems even for precision munitions. They are in tunnels and on reverse slopes. They shoot and scoot back out of sight. Over a period of days we could silence them, but Seoul would be pounded and with it would evaporate the wealth of South Korea."

However, others contend that an air attack may be the only option to keep North Korea from selling fissionable material and possibly nuclear weapons to other countries. More worrisome are coalitions of state and non-state groups such as Iran and Hezbollah, a combination that proved formidable and adept with advanced technologies during the recent fighting in Lebanon and Israel.

"It might be practical, although it would be a big war, to use airpower against them effectively," says R. James Woolsey, Jr., former director of central intelligence. "I don't say it's likely or absolutely unavoidable, but I do think there's only one way to keep North Korea from not only having but selling fissionable material to terrorist groups. Only the use of force or the awakening of the Chinese government can keep this from happening. This is not a country with a modern military. It has about one squadron of relatively modern [fighter] aircraft and very flimsy air defenses."

U.S. intelligence officials say that so far, despite some "new ****iness" among North Korean border guards, there's no military buildup or concentration of forces.

The two retired generals contend that the U.S. has made several miscalculations. It overestimated the ability of the Chinese to pressure the North Koreans. It didn't calculate that Iran and North Korea would be emboldened by the U.S. being tied down militarily in Afghanistan and Iraq. Also, the U.S. didn't anticipate the depth of alarm the test would trigger in Japan, which may feel forced to expand its military capabilities--which, in turn, would worry China.

"It's a real mess," the first retired general says. "I think about what our response could be and I come up empty. Our hands are tied. If we had taken out their missile launch sites before the July tests, that might have made our point about not going ahead with the nuclear tests. But we didn't act, so now we're faced with the consequences."

"We don't have options," McPeak agrees. "We can't take out the interesting targets without the risk that it will escalate to a ground conflict of some kind. North Korea's strength is short-range, close-contact combat action on the ground. The South Korean forces are good and can defend themselves, but the geography is so terrible that we would be pushed some distance down the peninsula. We're in a [military/diplomatic] trap. We have to get out carefully so we don't do more damage. Restoring our international position is the first step."

ADM. WILLIAM FALLON, chief of all U.S. military forces in the Pacific, says the North Koreans would be hard pressed to sustain a military push into South Korea. Although the North could inflict many casualties with artillery, he says their military lacks resources for an extended fight. "They've got a lot of work to do," to manage a major offensive against the south, he says.

The only diplomatic option, says Huessy, is to invoke tough sanctions to squeeze out the resources available to the North Korean government. Huessy says China, North Korea's closest trading ally, needs to "either get real or not get real," by deciding whether to step up sanctions or back off. There's no middle ground at this point, he says. China says it backs sanctions, but not military action.

What appears to be slowing and shaping the response of the U.S. and other countries is the ambiguity of the North Korean test. Early in the week, it still wasn't apparent that it was even a nuclear test. Seismic data indicated a 3.8-4.2 Richter-scale reading, which equates to detonation of one kiloton or less of conventional explosives. Russian politicians, apparently anticipating a larger test, originally announced it as a 5-15-kiloton blast.

U.S. intelligence officials say the yield may have been as low as an equivalent 200-300 tons of conventional explosives. Since the North Koreans had indicated a 4-kiloton test, "although they won't admit it, it didn't work the way they thought; so they may test again," a Pentagon-based official says. However, whether the North Koreans will continue the fast pace of the July missile firings and the first weapons test, "we have no clear insight."

Analysts see three likely explanations for the small explosion. It was a conventional test modeling a nuclear explosion. It was the test of a small nuclear device designed to trigger a larger hydrogen bomb. Or it was a test of a flawed device that failed to compress a few kilograms of plutonium at a rate fast or symmetrical enough to produce the planned nuclear explosion. Analysts variously estimate that North Korea has enough plutonium for 8-13 nuclear devices. They also are still examining seismic evidence.

"There' a difference between an earthquake and an explosion," says Jeffrey Richelson, a senior fellow at the National Security Archives at George Washington University. Other analysts say there also is a distinguishable difference in the rise time of conventional and nuclear blasts. "The seismic signals look different," he says. However, "it's hard to distinguish the differences in explosions at low levels. Other countries that acknowledged detonating nuclear devices had a larger and unambiguous first test. The North Korean leadership wouldn't want it to be ambiguous; so, they might want to conduct a second test."

There are other clues to be sifted through.

"If [the device] was not buried deeply, there could be radioactive gas vents," says John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org. Also, "the rise times [of the seismic signals] associated with a nuclear explosion are different." Scientists have determined that an increase in rise time is commonly observed in underground nuclear tests. However, physical phenomena, including the speed at which shock waves move, are affected by the geology and usually require about 1-kiloton yield.

"Also, if the blast is not too deep, there could be a subsidence crater," he says. "We didn't have any trouble seeing [evidence] of the Indian test. It would be readily apparent in commercial imagery. You won't see that with a conventional test."

However, even a nuclear explosion may or may not produce a crater. A vertical shaft test probably would leave tell-tale signs on the surface. However, a blast in a horizontal shaft dug under a mountain of very hard Jurassic granite would not. That last is the geology of the suspected site near the city of Kilju in northeast North Korea. South Korean intelligence officials identified an explosion as taking place at Hwaderi, near Kilju, at 10:36 a.m. local time on Oct. 9.

Some analysts have suggested that among the tests conducted in Pakistan in 1998, at least one was carried out on behalf of Pyongyang. Pakistan is known to have passed nuclear data to Libya and Iran, as well as to North Korea. Huessy says officials from Iran attended the recent nuclear test and likely also attended the salvo of ballistic missile tests this summer in North Korea.

Pakistan's foreign ministry said the test could spark a proliferation chain reaction. "This will be a destabilizing development for the region," said ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam in an Islamabad news conference. However, she disavowed any linkage to Pakistani nuclear technology that was passed to North Korea by the founder of Pakistan's nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan. "The North Korean program is plutonium-based and Pakistan's is mainly uranium-based."

IN INDIA, THERE IS a rising concern that North Korea's test may endanger passage of the U.S-India civil nuclear deal.

Brahma Chellaney, a defense strategist for India's Center for Policy Research, says the test would further complicate the already troubled U.S-India nuclear deal and additionally alienate its constituency in Washington, which had been warning that the deal with India could fall afoul of the international nonproliferation regime.

"The deal will now face greater difficulties in clearing hurdles both on Capitol Hill and in the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers' Group," say Chellaney. "Critics have got a fresh handle to warn against applying different standards to the proliferation cases."

The U.S. Senate recessed last month without voting on the India-U.S nuclear cooperation bill. If the India legislation is not finished before a fresh U.S. Congress takes office early next year, all procedural formalities completed so far become invalid and the entire process will have to be initiated anew.

However, both governments hope that the Senate could take up this bill around Nov. 13, when its brief "lame duck" session begins.