Meet the Americans on the Front Line If North Korea Goes to War
byCorky Siemaszko
If North Korea goes to war, they will be on the front line.
Some 37,500 soldiers, sailors, airmen and
Marines are on the ground as part of United States Forces Korea (USFK)
and it will be up to them to help the South Koreans defend their country
if the North Koreans attack.
U.S. Military in South Korea: 'Ready to Fight Tonight'3:08
Established in 1957 after the bloody,
three-year Korean War ended in a stalemate, the USFK has a mission to
"defend the Republic of Korea (ROK) to maintain stability in Northeast
Asia" and it's commanded by Army Gen. Vincent Brooks.
"As I have observed the men and women of this
command, it is obvious that we have the right people, in the right
place, and trained as a strong team," Brooks said on the site.
The son of one Army general and the brother of
another, Brooks became a familiar face to many Americans during the
Iraq War, when he was the Army's deputy director of operations and
frequently gave media briefings.
The first African-American to become Cadet
First Captain at West Point, Brooks also saw action in Afghanistan and
Kosovo, earning — among his two dozen or so medals — a couple Bronze
Stars.
North Korea has been threatening to go through with a nuclear weapons test and
has vowed to launch a "merciless retaliatory strike" if President Trump
goes ahead and launches a preemptive strike to show Pyongyang he means
business.
NBC News reported earlier that the U.S. has
bombers ready to attack North Korea from Guam if necessary, and the USS
Carl Vinson aircraft carrier has been diverted to the Korean Peninsula.
America has also positioned a pair of destroyers capable of launching
Tomahawk missiles into the communist country at a moment's notice.
North Korea is not believed to have an intercontinental missile
capable to hitting the U.S. with a nuclear weapon, but the Korean
People's Army is more than a million strong with some 600,000 reserves
and dwarfs that of South Korea, which is half the size.
The flashpoint for any conflict would be the
Demilitarized Zone of DMZ, a 160-mile long and 2.5-mile wide strip of
land that stretches across the Korean Peninsula along the 38th parallel
and separates North Korea from South Korea. It is one of the most
heavily militarized pieces of real estate in the world.
Should Kim Jong Un send his soldiers over the
DMZ, they would be met by an American military machine with a lethal
arsenal of conventional weapons, according to GlobalSecurity.org.
It consists of, among other things:
140 M1A1 tanks
170 Bradley armored vehicles
30 150mm self-propelled howitzers
30 MRLs (multiple rocket launchers)
A wide range of surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles
70 AH-64 helicopters
USFK also has at its command 100 aircraft,
including 70 F-16 fighter planes, 20 A-10 anti-tank attack planes, U-2
reconnaissance aircraft and transport aircraft capable of launching
"all-weather attacks."
In January, as tensions with North Korea were
rising, the Pentagon announced it was deploying 24 Apache attack
helicopters to the Suwon Air Base, which is about 70 miles south of
Seoul, the capital of South Korea.
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