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Kill Chain

The ROK military has established the Kill Chain, capable of immediate “Find, Fix, Target, and Engage,” to prepare effectively for North Korean missile threats. The Kill Chain is a series of attack systems that fixes the location of a target by finding missile threats in real time, targets with the means to effectively engage to destroy, and carries out the strike.

Past methods for weaponeering (pairing weapons with targets) and weapon fire control for Close Air Support (CAS) were conducted manually by pilots on armed aircrafts or remotely by pilots, flying armed unmanned aircrafts. This manual process is slow and rarely achieves the desired lethality or collateral effects at target. The lethality effects concern the warhead's capability to damage/destroy the target whereas the collateral effects describe the volume in which the fragments (weapon, target and nearby objects) and pressure caused by the warhead detonation can maim or kill living things and/or damage/destroy objects that are not the intended target. In addition, these tools were not designed for speed or simplified operator workflows. They are used to iterate through series of "what if's" to come up with the best solution, increasing the timeline and making the tool unsuitable for time sensitive targets.

An automated system greatly reduces the kill chain time line and significantly improves the capability to control the collateral damage at the target. Current weaponeering tools (lethality and collateral) and manual weaponeering processes are replaced with a system having rapidly processed, optimization algorithms for weapon selection, terminal weapon attitude and speed selection, and weapon trajectory shaping. Additionally, the system also has rule based algorithms for weapon fuze setting and weapon terminal guidance planning. Moreover, the system may provide the weaponeer a graphical display of the selected weapon's effects on target and weapon trajectory. In some embodiments, this provides the weaponeer with enhanced situational awareness (SA) of the results of the autonomous weapons employment. In some embodiments, the weaponeer has the option to accept or reject the results or to scroll through all the weapons, in the inventory, rapidly accessing each weapon's suitability for an upcoming target engagement.

In the battlefield, a field commander locates and targets an enemy and delivers weapons to engage the enemy. There are a number of targeting processes that enable the field commander to engage enemy targets. One process is a find, fix, track, target, engage and assess (F2T2EA) process. The F2T2EA process includes the steps of finding a target, developing a fix on the target, tracking the target, engaging the target and assessing the results of engaging the target. Another process is called a decide, detect, deliver and assess (D3A) process. The D3A process includes the steps of deciding the targets to be attacked, detecting where the targets are located, delivering effects to the targets and assessing the effects of the engagement. The F2T2EA and the D3A processes are characterized as serial processes because the steps in each process are performed one step at a time.

The ROK military is trying to strengthen its surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities and strike capability, which are the core functions of the Kill Chain. To enhance the surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, the ROK military plans to introduce the Global Hawk, which is a high-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle for reconnaissance, and procure reconnaissance satellites as a mid- to long-term plan.

In particular, the ROK military will gradually expand its military information and surveillance capabilities. It also plans to acquire the capability to promptly strike fixed and mobile facilities related to nuclear weapons and missiles throughout all domains of North Korea from the ground, sea and air. To achieve this, it will enhance the accuracy, range, and power of existing ground-to-ground missiles. By acquiring long-range air-to-surface missiles, medium-range air-to-surface missiles, Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) and laser-guided bombs, fighters will be able to carry out long-distance precision strikes. Also, the ROK military will improve the performance of its submarine-to-surface and ship-to-surface missiles, and develop tactical ship-to-surface missiles to reinforce its sea-based strike capability.

The Reuters news agencyreported 06 June 2018 that US military officials were exploring whether they can use AI to help predict the launch of a nuclear missile. Officials hope that, with the help of computer programs, they will be able to follow and target mobile launchers in North Korea and other places. The US military now had several projects to explore how to develop AI systems to protect the country against a possible nuclear missile strike. If the research is successful, such computer systems would be able to ‘think’ for themselves, reproducing intelligent human behavior. AI programs could study huge amounts of information, including satellite imagery, faster than human beings and find signs of preparations for a missile launch. If the government believed there would be an attack, it would have more time to try to destroy the missiles before they were launched. “We should be doing everything in our power to find that missile before they launch it and make it increasingly harder to get it off (the ground),” one of the officials said. The U.S. government is worried about the North’s development of mobile missiles that can be easily hidden. In 2017 the National Geospatial-intelligence Agency (NGA). said it used AI to look at 12 million images.