While
the top Pentagon brass assert their commitment to the use of
diplomacy to stop the threat of a nuclear confrontation with North
Korea, military rank and file are quietly taking steps to prepare for
the unthinkable.
As US
Secretary of Defense James Mattis and US Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson avow that the US is — according to Tillerson — "ready
to talk anytime" to end the threat of nuclear war with the
increasingly isolated People's Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK),
an uptick in mock battle drills and logistical exercises mimicking a
full scale land-based war are taking place on American soil.
Recent
large-scale training exercises, while referred to (if noted at all)
by Pentagon spokespersons as standard Defense Department operations
are increasing in size and frequency, according to the New York
Times, indicating a move to readiness — albeit more quietly — not
seen since the ramp-up to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.
Pentagon
remarks suggest that new expanded land-based invasion exercises are
simply additional and ongoing counter-terrorism training programs,
but the size and scope point to a much larger operating theater,
evidenced by a drill last month at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in
which a reported mix of 48 Apache helicopter gunships and Chinook
cargo helicopters transferred large numbers of troops and supplies in
a practice invasion while undergoing live artillery fire.
The Fort
Bragg exercise was followed in less than 48 hours by a nighttime
Nevada-based drill in which hundreds of 82nd Airborne Division
paratroopers leapt from C-17 propeller-driven cargo aircraft at low
altitudes in darkness, simulating a wide-ranging, land-based troop
invasion.
In
February, according to reports, an unnamed quantity of mainland US
Army bases will see over 1,000 reserve soldiers gain experience
setting up logistical depots designed to quickly move combat troops
and supplies toward a battlefront, according to Nytimes.com
Adding
to the expanded land-based invasion-style drills in the continental
US are moves to deploy additional Special Operations forces in South
Korea, ostensibly to bolster security at the high-profile 2018 Winter
Olympics taking place in and around mountainous Pyeongchang county,
some 80 miles from the DPRK border.
Occuring
in a climate of increasingly heated rhetoric between US President
Donald Trump and DPRK leader Kim Jong-un, a January 13 false incoming
ballistic missile emergency warning in Hawaii comes at a time when
not only military commanders, but ordinary citizens are continuously
forced to consider their options in the event of a 21st century
nuclear attack.
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