By 38 North / Robert J. Peters
Securing and eliminating North Korea’s nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons could be an insurmountable challenge.
North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) pose a number of challenges, particularly how to find and secure those weapons if the regime collapses. This paper will look briefly at 1) North Korea’s nuclear, chemical and biological programs; 2) activities coalition forces might conduct in a collapse scenario; and 3) challenges posed by an operation to eliminate the North’s WMD.
The North Korean Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Weapons Programs
North Korea‘s WMD programs date back decades and are believed to have produced significant stockpiles of weapons. According to open sources, North Korea likely has upwards of 10-16 weapons today and potentially up to 100 by the end of the decade. While it is hard to know the degree of their sophistication, it is a safe assumption that they are low-yield (about 10 kilotons), non-boosted, first generation weapons. Few outside of North Korea have a sense of where the warheads and fissile material are stored, given the scarcity of intelligence information coupled with North Korea’s proclivity to develop hardened and deeply buried facilities and storage depots. This lack of understanding about the locations of nuclear weapons storage will make finding them before they can be employed or moved in a collapse scenario enormously challenging.
The same intelligence limitations apply to the North Korean chemical weapons (CW) program. While our knowledge about North Korea’s CW stockpile remains limited, it is safe to assume that the North has been producing first generation blister, choking, and nerve agents, and conceivable that they have a limited number of more advanced binary agents such as VX or GB. Moreover the North Koreans probably have CW-armed artillery shells and possibly bulk agent positioned north of the demilitarized zone (DMZ). It is also possible that such shells and bulk agent are located elsewhere in the country, which would further complicate any foreign military movements deep into North Korean territory. While it is impossible to ascertain with confidence how much CW Pyongyang has produced, a reasonable guess would put the North’s annual production capability in the low tens of thousands of metric tons of material.
We know next to nothing of the North Korean biological weapons (BW) program, but they could well be producing BW—or even keeping large stockpiles of agent, as did the Soviets. South Korean officials in recent years have speculated that North Korea could produce anthrax or smallpox but there is little evidence that these statements are anything more than speculation.
Read the full story at The Diplomat