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MADEX 2017: LIG Nex1 Showcasing TSLM / Haeseong II Land Attack Missile for the 1st Time

At MADEX 2017, the International Maritime Defense Industry Exhibition currently held in Busan, South Korea, local company LIG Nex1 is showcasing its new Tactical Surface Launch Missile (TSLM) for the first time.

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Jura said:

according to Military.com Questions Loom as Mattis Visits South Korea: Can Diplomacy Work?

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Defense Secretary Jim Mattis thanked U.S. and Korean troops for standing watch after a visit to the Demilitarized Zone Friday, saying their presence was what gave resolve to political leaders working to get North Korea to cease its nuclear program.

“When generals and secretaries of defense and ministers of defense are done talking, it rides on your young shoulders to make this alliance work,” Mattis told the U.S. and Korean troops assembled. “And stand together with one another. And remember a lot of Koreans, a lot of Americans died together fighting, [and] that’s a legacy you carry on,” he said, according to a pool report.

Mattis, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Joseph Dunford and other top military leaders are in Seoul amid escalated threats by North Korea to detonate a second hydrogen bomb, this time potentially over the Pacific Ocean.

The U.S. has said that it will not allow North Korea to become a nuclear power, but, so far, economic sanctions from the international community and diplomatic pressure have not stopped the regime from continuing to develop more advanced ballistic missiles and conduct nuclear tests.

During two days of talks with their defense counterparts, Mattis and Dunford also worked on several South Korean missile defense issues in advance of a visit next month by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and President Donald Trump.

“We’re doing everything we can to solve this diplomatically, everything we can. But, ultimately, our diplomats have to be backed up by strong soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines,” Mattis told the troops.

Mattis also took a few questions while he was there. He was asked whether the U.S. would send additional ships to the Pacific to ease the strain on 7th Fleet.

The Navy lost guided missile destroyers McCain and Fitzgerald to collisions earlier this year. Investigations following the collisions revealed the constant tasking those 7th Fleet crews faced, which often left no time for training or critical crew certifications. Mattis said the Navy was conducting a study to determine whether additional ships or some other solution would address the strain.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson is “looking at the conditions on the western Pacific,” Mattis said. “But right now we’re still in the problem definition phase, we’ve got to really define the problem, because otherwise we’re liable to start solving it, and we solve the wrong thing,” he said.

Mattis was also asked whether the military would expand what tours qualified for accompanied status for troops sent to South Korea. He deferred to each service to make that determination.

Mattis said he favored having families in South Korea because he thought it increased the interactions and bonds Americans and Koreans have, but said “ it’s up to each service how many they can afford to bring out with all the other demands on them.”

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Jura said:

Yesterday at 3:35 PM

now Mattis to troops: US-Korea alliance ‘rides on your shoulders’
6 hours ago

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The threat of nuclear missile attack by North Korea is accelerating, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Saturday, accusing the North of illegal and unnecessary missile and nuclear programs, and pledging to repel any strike.


In remarks in Seoul with South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-moo at his side, Mattis said North Korea engages in “outlaw” behavior and that the U.S. will never accept a nuclear North.

The Pentagon chief added that regardless of what the North might try, it is overmatched by the firepower and cohesiveness of the decades-old U.S.-South Korean alliance.

“North Korea has accelerated the threat that it poses to its neighbors and the world through its illegal and unnecessary missile and nuclear weapons programs,” he said, adding that U.S.-South Korean military and diplomatic collaboration thus has taken on “a new urgency.”

“I cannot imagine a condition under which the United States would accept North Korea as a nuclear power,” Mattis said.

As he emphasized throughout his weeklong Asia trip, which included stops in Thailand and the Philippines, Mattis said diplomacy remains the preferred way to deal with the North.

“With that said,” he added, “make no mistake — any attack on the United States or our allies will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons by the North will be met with a massive military response that is effective and overwhelming.”

Mattis’ comments did not go beyond his recent statements of concern about North Korea, although he appeared to inject a stronger note about the urgency of resolving the crisis.

While he accused the North of “outlaw” behavior, he did not mention that President Donald Trump has ratcheted up his own rhetoric. In August, Trump warned the North not to make any more threats against the United States, and said that if it did, it would be met with “fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

Song, the South Korean minister, told the news conference that he and Mattis agreed to further cooperation on strengthening Seoul’s defense capabilities, including lifting warhead payload limits on South Korean conventional missiles and supporting the country’s acquisition of “most advanced military assets.” He offered no specifics and refused to answer when asked whether the discussions included nuclear-powered submarines.

Some South Korean government officials have endorsed the nation getting nuclear-powered submarines amid calls for more military strength. There’s a growing concern among the South Korean public that North Korea’s expanding nuclear weapons arsenal, which may soon include an intercontinental ballistic missile that could target the U.S. mainland, would undermine Seoul’s long alliance with Washington.

South Korea’s conservative politicians have also called for the United States to bring back tactical nuclear weapons that were withdrawn from the Korean Peninsula in the 1990s. But Mattis and Song were strongly dismissive of the idea.

“When considering national interest, it’s much better not to deploy them,” said Song, adding that the allies would have “sufficient means” to respond to a North Korean nuclear attack even without placing tactical nuclear weapons in the South. Mattis said current U.S. strategic assets are already providing nuclear deterrence and that the South Korean government has never approached him with the subject of tactical nuclear weapons.

Trump entered office declaring his commitment to solving the North Korea problem, asserting that he would succeed where his predecessors had failed. His administration has sought to increase pressure on Pyongyang through U.N. Security Council sanctions and other diplomatic efforts, but the North hasn’t budged from its goal of building a full-fledged nuclear arsenal, including missiles capable of striking the U.S. mainland.

If Trump sticks to his pledge to stop the North from being able to threaten the U.S. with a nuclear attack, something will have to give — either a negotiated tempering of the North’s ambitions or a U.S. acceptance of the North as a nuclear power.

The other alternative would be U.S. military action to attempt to neutralize or eliminate the North’s nuclear assets - a move fraught with risk for South Korea, Japan and the United States.

Mattis touched off unease in South Korea last month when he told reporters at the Pentagon that the United States has military options for North Korea that doesn’t put Seoul at risk. At Saturday’s briefing, Mattis didn’t offer a direct answer to what those options are or how and when they would be used.

“Our military options as I mentioned are designed to buttress the diplomats’ efforts to maintain a deterrence stance and denuclearize the Korean Peninsula,” he said. While the allies are committed to deterring North Korea, they also need “many different military options that would realistically reduce that threat as low as possible,” Mattis said.

“And yes, we do have those options,” he said.

The North says it needs nuclear weapons to counter what it believes is a U.S. effort to strangle its economy and overthrow the Kim government.

This was Mattis’s second visit to South Korea since taking office in January. He made a point of going to Seoul and Tokyo on his first overseas trip in February, saying he wanted to emphasis the importance he places on strengthening alliances and partnerships.

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Jura said:

Yesterday at 5:57 PM

today
Mattis: North Korea engages in 'outlaw' behavior
4 hours ago

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In the United States, citizens are hanging to the edge of their seats for updates on a tense and closely-followed situation with North Korea.

But life is still moving as usual in the Pacific. Local students and military dependents are boarding busses for school every morning. Service members are taking leave and travelling with their families around the region. And many troops stationed there say the panic level is considerably higher in the U.S. than it is across the Pacific.

“If you walk around the streets of Seoul you wouldn’t think for a second anyone is nervous of war,” Capt. Phil Hilaire, a U.S. Army operations officer stationed in Seoul, told Military Times on Wednesday.

Secretary of Defense Gen. Jim Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford joined military leaders in Seoul for two days of talks, and on Friday visited the Demilitarized Zone.

One Okinawa-based Marine who has lived on the island before said he doesn’t feel more of a threat now than he did on his past rotations. It’s an ebb and flow of tension, he says. But he isn’t scared to let his children travel around the region or send his son to play sports games in Seoul, he said.

Hilaire, who has been stationed in Seoul since February said, “People are a lot more worried in the States than they are here.”

“I’ve had several friends reach out to me while I’ve been out here inquiring how I’m doing and whether I’m safe,” he said in a message to Military Times. “Meanwhile nobody out here is as nervous of a war breaking out.”

Military leaders in Okinawa insist even with increasing rhetoric, mission and orders have not changed.

“From our perspective in the MEU it has not changed,” Col. Tye Wallace, commanding officer of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, said in a late-September interview at III MEF headquarters at Camp Courtney, Okinawa.

“Our job is to be a crisis response force at all times — whatever that crisis might be. We always train for the most dangerous, and we have the flexibility to change.”

If North Korea were to invade South Korea, the Marine Corps’ 31st MEU would likely be among the first American units called in.

“We will go where they ask us to go,” Wallace said. “We are one of the fastest elements that could embark and move and be where they need us to go.”

Col. David E. Jones, deputy commander of Marine Corps Installations Pacific, said in a late September interview on Okinawa: “I would say there‘s always anxiousness. Do I feel nervous? No, I don’t. People go on with their daily lives. All of our allies in the region and leadership have stated this is a diplomatic solution we’re looking for.”

President Donald Trump has previously said the United States would “totally destroy” North Korea if necessary to protect itself and its allies from Pyongyang’s nuclear threats.

On Oct. 7, Trump said “only one thing will work” in dealing with North Korea after previous administrations‘ diplomatic efforts failed. Trump did clarify his comments, but many people believed he was suggesting that military action under consideration.

The North Korean nuclear threat is not new, Kang In-sun, Washington bureau chief for South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo, told a group of reporters and analysts at a D.C.-based Korea Economic Institute panel on Oct. 16.

She said when asked by an American friend if her family in Seoul had plans to move south to avoid potential military threats: “No, I have never thought about it.”

Kang feels more alarm and worry when reading U.S. news and living in Washington, D.C., she said, than in South Korea.

But President Donald Trump’s July “fire and fury” comments in August are something South Koreans are taking very seriously, she said. The rhetoric is something the South Koreans haven’t seen from a U.S. president before, and it is giving fuel to North Korea, she said.

Before Trump’s July comments, Kang asked friends in South Korea if they were prepared for a military strike.

“At the time, they just laughed,” she said. “Are you kidding? We are OK. We have experienced these kind of things hundreds of times.”

“But this time they are worried,” she said, noting that she still doesn’t think war is imminent. “If something happens, where do we hide ourselves? …. If that’s a nuclear attack, then what should we do?”

U.S. troops understand the seriousness of a North Korean threat, and say they are watchful and ready. On Okinawa, III Marine Expeditionary Force’s motto is “fight tonight,” and it has been and will continue to be prepared for anything, Marines there say.

Mattis has hammered to Marines that Korea is a top priority.

But so far, a North Korean threat is not stopping most troops in the Pacific from taking leave, traveling or enjoying life.

Navy Yeoman Second Class (YN2) Samantha Rosemond is attached to Commander Fleet Activities Okinawa in Japan.

“Alert and prepared. Those are the words that will always stand strong here,” she said in an email Oct. 13. “We are aware of the situation that is currently at hand but nonetheless we still enjoy Okinawa to the fullest.”

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Jura said:

continuation of the post right above:
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Deino said:

What's the latest artist impression of this enlarged configuration?

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