[The Editors' Verdict] Optimal Utilization of Ballistic Missile Defense Systems

[Kim Jong-ha, Dean of Business and Defense Strategy Graduate School at Hannam University] Taking advantage of the international community’s turmoil caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, North Korea has once again carried out ballistic missile provocations. This marks the eighth provocation this year alone. It appears that North Korea continues missile provocations as a means to escape isolation and difficulties caused by UN Security Council sanctions, the COVID-19 pandemic, and economic policy failures. However, this will only increase the likelihood of additional sanctions, making it a counterproductive move.

Regardless of the ‘intent’ behind these provocations, it is fortunate that we have had the opportunity to identify North Korea’s so-called ‘capabilities,’ including the development and operation of ballistic missiles with various features such as new long-range artillery and zigzag flight patterns. This is because it helps in building defense systems necessary to counter ballistic missile threats from countries like China and Russia.

Currently, our military is preparing countermeasures such as developing and operating interceptor missiles and the Korean Iron Dome as part of the means to respond to North Korea’s ballistic missile threats. However, to establish an optimal defense system with high military effectiveness, further consideration is needed in several areas.

First, among North Korea’s ballistic missiles, the new short-range ballistic missiles use solid fuel instead of liquid fuel and fly at low altitudes, making them difficult to track with existing detection systems. Therefore, it is judged that North Korea will extensively utilize solid-fuel-based ballistic missiles with a range of 280 miles that allow rapid preparation and easy mobility in actual combat. Furthermore, if North Korea has already developed large solid-fuel engines and mounted them on intercontinental ballistic missiles, a more sophisticated layered defense system is required. Thus, it is necessary to expand the scale and investment in existing command and control systems, intelligence reconnaissance, and surveillance systems. This is because it is essential to detect various ballistic missile threats earlier to increase battlefield visibility and transparency.

Second, domestic defense companies, including ADD, possess a certain level of capability to independently develop ballistic missiles and interception systems (missiles, Iron Dome, etc.) domestically. However, they do not yet match the development scale and investment levels of U.S. and European defense companies. Considering the current pace of North Korea’s ballistic missile technological advancement, it is expected that soon they will acquire technical capabilities to fly at low altitudes at hypersonic speeds, making it impossible for our military’s radar to detect them from seconds after launch until just before reaching the target. To build a response system that can compensate for such vulnerabilities, it is necessary to further expand research and development scale and investment. In fact, if our military can successfully develop and operate ballistic missile interception systems, it will be able to operate a defense system with considerable autonomy, breaking away from dependence on the U.S. military.

Third, methods must be devised to optimally utilize our military’s current and future interception systems to cope with simultaneous and diverse threats such as North Korea’s new long-range artillery and various ballistic missiles. To this end, it is imperative to prioritize investment in developing reinforcement learning-based artificial intelligence ‘Threat Evaluation and Weapon Allocation’ (TEWA) and interception system algorithms. For example, when Israel’s Rafael developed the Iron Dome system, the first thing they considered was developing a series of tactical information processing algorithms that evaluate various threats based on set criteria, determine threat priorities, and allocate optimal weapons to each threat.

Lastly, our military still invests heavily in hardware-centered weapon systems development by land, sea, and air functions. Moving forward, it is necessary to gradually increase investment in developing weapon systems and software based on integrated operation of land, sea, and air forces. This is because such innovation fundamentally changes operational concepts (operational tempo, tactical completeness, etc.).

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.