No armed escort for spy planes off North Korea
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SEOUL, South Korea — U.S. spy planes will soon resume surveillance flights off North Korea, U.S. military sources say.
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser
Such flights were halted since an aerial interception of a U.S. Air Force RC-135 by MiGs from the communist state 10 days ago.
F-117 ground crew members walk past six of the stealth fighters on an overnight rest stop at Hickam Air Force Base. The warplanes have left for South Korea to participate in joint military exercises held there every year.
Sources said the renewed flights will go without armed fighter escort because officials worry that the presence of fighters would increase the risk of hostilities with North Korea.
"We do not want to do anything provocative. We do not want an international incident," said a top military officer. "We are not going to stop doing it. But we will do it with circumspection."
Other developments yesterday kept tensions high:
- A senior official in Washington said North Korea's uranium enrichment program, which could allow the country to build nuclear weapons, is further along than previously believed.
- Japanese intelligence sources were quoted as saying North Korea is planning to test a medium-range missile within days. Such a missile would have the capability of reaching Japan.
- The United States continued to move forces to participate in the annually scheduled war games. About 5,000 additional troops are arriving for the exercise, according to a spokesman for U.S. Forces Korea.
- Six F-117A Stealth fighters were expected tomorrow at the U.S. air base in Kunsan, South Korea, after a stop at Hickam Air Force Base this week.
- The aircraft carrier Carl Vinson is expected to arrive in the South Korean port of Pusan later this week, while U.S. forces stage a simulated landing on South Korea's east coast.
James Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday that production of highly enriched uranium is "probably a matter of months, not years," behind North Korea's efforts to produce plutonium from spent nuclear fuel rods, which it plans to do within six months.
"The enriched uranium issue, some have assumed, is somewhere off in the fog of the distant future," he said. "It is not."
Kyodo News via Associated Press
North Korea stunned the Bush administration in October by revealing that it had been secretly producing highly enriched uranium.
U.S. fighter jets lined the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson before a takeoff-and-landing exercise yesterday in the waters near Okinawa in southern Japan. The carrier was dispatched from Hawai'i as a precautionary move to discourage North Korea from military action, replacing the USS Kitty Hawk, which has been on a Gulf mission since January. Japanese news media watched the exercise on the Vinson.
In recent months, North Korea has taken a series of steps escalating the dispute with the United States — restarting a small nuclear reactor, test-firing short-range missiles and threatening to test-fire a ballistic missile.
There have been no flights of U.S. reconnaissance planes since March 2, when four North Korean jet fighters flew near an Air Force RC-135S carrying a crew of 17. One of the North Korean jets came within 50 feet of the plane, according to the Pentagon, which said the RC-135 was 150 miles from North Korea over international waters.
U.S. officials have since been engaged in what sources described as an intense debate over how to respond to the incident.
Although some officials said no surveillance flights had been scheduled in the 10 days since March 2, other sources said U.S. officials wanted more frequent flights to monitor any North Korean moves to test-launch missiles but had held back during the deliberations.
U.S. military aircraft have routinely monitored North Korea for decades, but flights with special surveillance equipment were stepped up as tensions grew over North Korea's nuclear program.
Immediately after the March 2 incident, U.S. officials strongly asserted that American forces would exercise "the right" to conduct surveillance. In fact, however, the flights were grounded while the Pentagon and Bush administration officials wrangled over what to do.
Some argued for a strong show of force by sending the spy planes aloft accompanied by fighter jets, according to sources. The advanced U.S. fighter planes "could shoot the MiGs down, no question," said one analyst familiar with the debate.
But others argued that such an incident could start a war. A military official noted that the United States has long been "very, very hesitant" to arm and escort reconnaissance flights, reinforcing the argument that the flights are innocent and non-provocative.
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Arguments for a more cautious approach eventually prevailed.
"I would probably say the threat of going to war with North Korea is quite low," Adm. Thomas Fargo said.
"It is pretty restrained for a red-meat Defense Department," noted one analyst in Seoul.
The Pentagon has taken care that the spy plane pilots will not be surprised if MiGs do appear, as the pilots were on March 2. Advanced detection systems will be trained on the area to detect the approach of any North Korean aircraft.
"You can do that with Aegis, you can do that with AWACS, you can do that with a U-2," said a military source, describing three of the long-range reconnaissance systems available to the military.
Monitoring could be done by ships accompanying the Carl Vinson. The carrier's battle group includes destroyers with Aegis radar.
If North Korean planes were found to be approaching, it is unclear what the U.S. reaction would be. Military sources said the least confrontational course would be to order the spy plane to leave the area.
"You could just fly east" — away from North Korea — said the senior military officer. Another source, who is not in the military, said the Pentagon was considering keeping fighter planes in the air but at a "remote" distance from which they could be called in if necessary.
"One thing is sure: You wouldn't be giving a pilot the authority to fire away at will," this source said.
Pentagon officials have said they believe that a MiG pilot in the March 2 incident motioned for the reconnaissance aircraft to follow him and land in North Korea. It was "a deliberate attempt to force our aircraft down," Davis said. The RC-135S pilot ignored the gesture.
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In Seoul yesterday, the U.S. ambassador tried to reassure South Korean businessmen that the movement of the F-117s was not provocative.
"It takes place every year about this time," Ambassador Thomas Hubbard said.
"There is nothing new in this," Ambassador Thomas Hubbard told a group of nervous businessmen at a luncheon sponsored by the American Chamber of Commerce in Seoul. "It takes place every year about this time and involves bringing in some forces from elsewhere, including the United States."
In recent days, North Korea's KCNA news agency has made increasingly shrill denunciations of the war games.
"The U.S. claims that the exercises are annual events which have nothing to do with the nuclear issue," the agency said yesterday. "This is nothing but a broad hoax to mislead the public opinion and cover up its sinister military purpose."
The top U.S. commanders for the Pacific told the House Armed Services Committee in Washington that they see no signs of North Korea preparing for an invasion of the South. However, Adm. Thomas Fargo, head of the Hawai'i-based U.S. Pacific Command, and Gen. Leon Laporte, commander of U.S. forces in South Korea, said they expected small-scale confrontations to continue.
"I would probably say the threat of going to war with North Korea is quite low," Fargo said.
The greater threat, Laporte and others said, is that miscalculation or poor communications could turn a minor provocation into a major clash with the isolated and unpredictable government of Kim Jong Il.
Kelly said he could not rule out an acceleration of North Korean military activity while the United States is preoccupied with Iraq.
"North Korea is hard at work sending us signals, and we can't exclude that they will do others," Kelly said.
But the commanders said they had no doubt that the United States could prevail in simultaneous conflicts in Iraq and North Korea.
The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times contributed to this report.
