Mischaracterizing a Notional Deployment of THAAD in South Korea

Last Friday, Sukjoon Yoon, a senior fellow at the Korea Institute for Maritime Strategy, published an opinion piece in The Diplomat regarding the potential implications of a hypothetical U.S. deployment of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) systems to South Korea upon relations between Seoul and Beijing. I fully appreciate the political sensitivity of the issue to the South Korean government and have no comments on that aspect. The article was quite enlightening with respect to South Korean political and strategic considerations.

I take issue, though, with how some of THAAD’s capabilities were described and what the Commander of U.S. Forces Korea was alleged to have said about its notional deployment. First, there’s this:

Jane’s Defence Weekly reported in April 2013 that the first THAAD was installed in Guam that month; it is intended to provide early intercept capability for North Korean missiles during their boost or ascent phase.

I can’t find the Jane’s article being cited, but I’d be extremely surprised if it claimed that THAAD units placed in Guam would be able to perform boost or ascent phase intercepts against North Korean ballistic missiles. As noted above, the ‘T’ in THAAD stands for Terminal. It is designed to perform last-ditch, inner-layer intercepts against inbound reentry vehicles or non-separating ballistic missiles. Its coverage footprint is the immediate area surrounding a defended target. I can’t begin to imagine how close you’d have to place a THAAD launcher to a threat ballistic missile launcher in order to perform a boost or ascent phase engagement, and that’s assuming such an engagement was even kinematically possible.

Next there’s this:

Military leaders in Beijing will have noted General Curtis Scaparrotti’s infamous remarks during his keynote speech at a defense-related forum held in Seoul on June 3, 2014. Scaparrotti recommended the deployment of THAAD to South Korea as a superior option to KAMD, citing THAAD’s capability to engage all classes of ballistic missiles and in all phases of their trajectories.

It surprised me greatly to see that a U.S. General allegedly publicly denigrated an ally’s developmental system. Since the General’s speech as posted on his command’s site doesn’t even reference THAAD or KAMD, I have to assume the discussion of the topic came during the question period. So I checked the English-language Korea Herald article used as the linked citation in the above selection. Nowhere did that article attribute such a statement to General Scaparrotti. Instead, the General merely asserted that he had recommended to his leadership that THAAD deployment should be considered—while also adding the caveat that any such deployment would be subject to a bilateral agreement between the U.S. and South Korean governments. This is echoed in English-language reporting by the South Korean press here and here, and by American press here and here. If there’s reporting to support the claim made against the General, it’s definitely not prominently published in English.

Then there’s this:

What has particularly disturbed the Chinese military is the prospect of the U.S. linking individual sensors, interceptors, and communications assets dispersed all around the Asia-Pacific region into a comprehensive and integrated BMD system to interdict Chinese ballistic missiles in the boost and ascent phases of their trajectories. This would allow THAAD to penetrate and severely compromise China’s air defense zone.

Again, THAAD is a terminal phase system. It has no utility outside of BMD missions. How could it even conceivably “penetrate and severely compromise China’s air defense zone?” The only way any notional South Korea-deployed THAAD units could even conceivably be employed against Chinese missiles is if China had already launched missiles at targets in South Korea.

There’s one other set of technical points in the article I want to comment on:

Moreover, THAAD’s range will extend beyond the Korean Peninsula. The coverage provided by the existing sea-based Aegis system will be greatly extended by the planned deployment of AN/TPY-2 radars. These track inbound short- and medium-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs and MRBMs) with a high-resolution X-band (8-12.4 GHz) phased-array sensor system providing a 120-degree azimuth field out to 1,000∼3,000km, effectively covering the whole of mainland China.

Since it’s clear that the THAAD interceptor could not reach much beyond the Korean Peninsula, the implication of the above is that the system’s greater value to overall U.S. theater BMD would be the AN/TPY-2’s use as a cueing sensor to support remote engagements by other assets. I don’t disagree with that. But the article should have noted that the U.S. would have no monopoly on radars that monitor some volume above or otherwise the approaches to other sovereign countries in East Asia out to several thousand kilometers downrange. The Chinese Over the Horizon-Backscatter (OTH-B) system for maritime surveillance is a primary example. Or, since we’re dealing in hypotheticals, consider the radar coverage if China procures S-400 from Russia. Now that would have real effects on other countries’ air defense zones.

So while I found the author’s political-strategic analyses of the South Korean THAAD question quite interesting, I just don’t see any basis for several of his military-technological arguments…or his assertions regarding General Scaparrotti’s comments.
 

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not reflect the official positions of Systems Planning and Analysis, and to the author’s knowledge do not reflect the policies or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense, any U.S. armed service, or any other U.S. Government agency.