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Statement for the Record: Worldwide Threat Assessment
March 6, 2018
Robert Ashley, Lieutenant General, U.S. Army
Director, Defense Intelligence Agency
March 6, 2018
INTRODUCTION
Chairman McCain, Ranking Member Reed, and members of the committee, thank you for the invitation to provide the Defense Intelligence Agency’s assessment of the global security environment and to address the threats confronting the Nation.
The United States faces an increasingly complex array of challenges to its national security. The military environment has shifted from the existence of the United States as the single power able to dominate challengers and to deter aggression through conventional means to one in which foreign militaries are emerging with near-peer and, in some areas, peer capabilities. Adversaries have studied the American way of conflict and have developed, and will continue to develop, capabilities to mitigate or upend longstanding U.S. military dominance in all warfighting domains—terrestrial, maritime, air, space, and cyber—raising the complexity of the threat environment and risk to the United States. Competitor states will employ all diplomatic, economic, political, and covert mechanisms of influence and coercion available to advance their agendas. Many states will continue to view nuclear weapons as both the guarantor of regime survival and a critical capability in a conflict with a conventionally superior adversary. This threat environment highlights the need for us to operate in close collaboration with our Five Eyes partners, NATO, and other allies across the globe. This Statement for the Record is organized regionally, followed by transnational issues. Taken together, these issues reflect the complexity, diversity, and scope of today’s challenges to our national security.
The men and women of DIA lead the Intelligence Community in providing strategic, operational, and tactical Defense Intelligence. They deliver decision advantage to warfighters, defense planners, the defense acquisition community, and policymakers. I am privileged to serve with them and present their analysis to you. My hope in this hearing is to help the Nation—through the important oversight role of Congress—to better understand these global challenges and to support this committee in identifying opportunities and possible responses to these threats. On behalf of the entire Defense Intelligence Enterprise, thank you for your continued confidence. Your support is vital to us.
REGIONAL THREATS
EAST ASIA
North Korea
North Korea is a critical threat to the United States and our allies in Northeast Asia and is our hardest intelligence collection target. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has pressed his nation down a path to develop nuclear weapons and deliver them with ballistic missiles that can reach South Korea, Japan, and the United States. In pursuit of this objective, he has instituted a rapid, ambitious missile development and flight-testing program that has, over the past 2 years, brought North Korea closer than ever before to its goals. Concurrently, Pyongyang has attempted to reinvigorate its conventional military, investing in select weapon systems and in improvements to training designed to bolster the threat against South Korea.
Since 2014, North Korea has accelerated the pace of its ballistic missile testing. In 2016 and 2017, over 40 launches of short-, medium-, intermediate-, intercontinental-range, and submarine-launched systems were conducted. Although flight tests on longer range missiles in 2016 were marked by multiple failures and setbacks, 2017 saw Pyongyang making advancements. Specifically:
- North Korea flight-tested two Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in July. In their tested configuration, these missiles are capable of reaching North America. In late November, North Korea launched what it described as a new ICBM—the Hwasong-15—which also demonstrated a capability to reach the United States.
- Pyongyang flew two Hwasong-12 intermediate-range missiles over Japan last year, placing our allies at potential risk from missile debris. The second of these tests demonstrated a capability to range more than 3,700 kilometers, which can reach beyond Guam.
- The North twice flight-tested a solid-propellant medium-range missile capable of reaching Japan. Based on North Korea’s developmental submarine-launched ballistic missile, this system—the Pukguksong-2—is the North’s longest range solid-propellant missile. This advancement is significant because solid-propellant missiles can be prepared for launch more rapidly than liquid-propellant systems.
North Korea conducted a nuclear test, its sixth overall, in September. The test generated a much larger seismic signature than had previous events, and North Korea announced that this was a test of a “hydrogen bomb” for use on an ICBM. North Korea has demonstrated the capability to produce kilogram quantities of plutonium for nuclear weapons and has claimed to possess the ability to produce enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. We judge that North Korea continues to generate fissile material for nuclear weapons. Pyongyang has publicly showcased two weapon designs, claiming both as missile deliverable. We also remain concerned about North Korea’s proliferation activities in contravention of multiple UN Security Council resolutions, most recently Resolutions 2356 (June), 2371 (August), and 2375 (September).
North Korea has a longstanding biological warfare (BW) capability and biotechnology infrastructure that could support a BW program. Pyongyang is a signatory to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) but has yet to declare any relevant developments and has failed to provide a BWC confidence-building measure declaration since 1990. Pyongyang may consider using biological weapons during wartime or as a clandestine attack option.
North Korea probably has a chemical warfare (CW) program with up to several thousand metric tons of chemical warfare agents and the capability to produce nerve, blister, blood, and choking agents. It is not a party to the Chemical Weapons Convention. North Korea probably could employ CW agents by modifying a variety of conventional munitions, including artillery and ballistic missiles, or by using unconventional, targeted methods.
Although resource shortages and aging equipment continue to hamper North Korea, its conventional military remains a major threat to South Korea. The Korean People’s Army (KPA) Ground Forces operate thousands of long-range artillery and rocket systems along the entire demilitarized zone. These weapons include close-range mortars, guns, and multiple rocket launcher systems trained on South Korean military forces north of Seoul; the North is bolstering this threat with longer range self-propelled guns, rockets, and close-range ballistic missiles (CRBMs) that can reach Seoul and some points south of the capital. A new CRBM that is probably close to fielding is capable of reaching Seoul and major U.S. air and ground bases farther south.
In addition, Kim Jong Un has emphasized a need for more realistic military training across the force and has overseen high-profile training events in artillery, air, and special operations forces. The training events we have observed seem largely designed for public messaging and are probably not sufficient to compensate for years of neglect in some sectors of the military. The KPA lacks the operational capability to forcibly reunify the Korean Peninsula, but North Korea’s military is capable of a full range of armed provocations and lethal, limited-objective attacks. With its large artillery and infantry force forward-deployed, the KPA can mount an attack on South Korean and U.S. forces with little or no warning.
North Korea continues intense efforts to deny us information about its capabilities and intentions. North Korea’s underground facility program is the largest in the world, and its primary function is to protect and conceal regime leaders, weapons of mass destruction (WMD), ballistic missiles, military forces, and defense industries. The military relies on thousands of underground facilities distributed throughout the country to conceal and protect key command and control (C2) nodes, forces, warfighting stores, and other significant infrastructure. North Korea has learned and adapted the use of deception in its defenses after observing U.S. conflicts in Vietnam, Kosovo, and the Middle East. North Korea exploits its mountainous terrain to fortify its military installations and will continue to improve and construct hardened bunkers and underground facilities to protect its forces.
North Korea’s nuclear and missile testing has deepened the Kim regime’s isolation. The United Nations has imposed additional sanctions on North Korea through new Security Council resolutions. The North’s relations with China are at their lowest ebb in years, and military and security cooperation remains officially suspended. Chinese leaders, in response to North Korea’s actions, have publicly committed China to supporting international efforts to strengthen sanctions. However, Beijing is attempting to balance incremental increases in pressure with avoiding actions that Chinese officials fear could destabilize North Korea and place China’s strategic buffer against the U.S. alliance system in Northeast Asia at risk.
Despite external pressure, Kim shows no interest in voluntarily walking away from his nuclear or missile programs, which he has made central to his security strategy. Additional missile launches—from short range to intercontinental range—are a near certainty, and further nuclear tests are possible as Pyongyang seeks to refine its weapon designs. In addition to further testing, North Korea has announced that it will focus on producing and deploying nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles in 2018. We also expect the Kim regime to consider launching cyberattacks, similar to the WannaCry ransomware attack conducted in mid-2017, and the possibility for limited-scale military action against South Korea remains on the table. The North Korean regime appears stable, and Kim will continue to actively manage regime elites and the populace through indoctrination, inducement, and intimidation. In the coming year, international sanctions are likely to strain foreign currency earnings by some elites and may limit availability of refined fuels nationwide. The elites and general public, accustomed to scarcity, are likely to try to cope with decreasing resources and are unlikely to challenge the regime in the near term; however, our ability to discern dissent is limited.
China
In 2017, China’s armed forces continued implementing sweeping organizational reforms that President Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders unveiled in 2015. This reorganization is the latest phase in China’s long-term military modernization program, which the country’s leaders have characterized as essential to achieving great-power status and what Xi calls the “China Dream of national rejuvenation.” The leadership portrays a strong military as critical to advancing China’s interests and ensuring that China can defend itself and its sovereignty claims.
These military reforms seek to enhance the ability of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to conduct joint operations; improve its ability to fight short-duration, high-intensity regional conflicts at greater distances from the Chinese mainland; and strengthen the Chinese Communist Party’s control over the military. The changes instituted during the past year and codified in the 19th Party Congress reduced the size of the Central Military Commission, streamlined its control over the PLA, and propagated reform to corps-level units and below, transforming ground and air combat units with foundational improvements, including modern C2 and the abilities to conduct more effective joint operations. The PLA also is strengthening its joint operational command system and developing its new Strategic Support Force, which consolidates cyber, electronic warfare, and space capabilities.
In early 2017, China announced a 6.5-percent inflation-adjusted increase in its annual military budget, to $154.3 billion, second only to the United States and about 1.3 percent of China’s GDP. Since China omits several major categories of expenditure from its published military budget, we estimate its actual military-related spending to be over $190 billion. This budget extends more than two decades of annual defense spending increases, which we expect China to sustain for the foreseeable future.
Chinese military forces continue to develop capabilities to dissuade, deter, or defeat potential third-party intervention during a large-scale theater campaign, such as a Taiwan contingency. China’s military modernization plan includes the development of capabilities to conduct long-range attacks against adversary forces that might deploy or operate in the western Pacific Ocean. These capabilities, spanning the air, maritime, space, electromagnetic, and information domains, are most robust within the first island chain, but China is rapidly extending capabilities farther into the Pacific Ocean.
The PLA Rocket Force is bolstering its medium-range DF-21 antiship ballistic missile with the DF-26 intermediate-range ballistic missile, capable of conducting precision conventional or nuclear strikes against targets as far away as Guam. The PLA is also developing and fielding numerous advanced, long-range land-attack and antiship cruise missiles, some capable of reaching supersonic speeds, and operated from ground, air, ship, and submarine platforms. These capabilities are being augmented with two new air-launched ballistic missiles, one of which may include a nuclear payload. The PLA Air Force is fielding modern fighters and extending the range and capabilities of its bomber force. During the PLA’s 90th anniversary parade in July, the Air Force conducted high-profile public flybys of its developmental, fifth-generation J-20 stealth fighter and debuted advanced variants of fourth-generation fighters with upgraded weapons. The PLA Navy is developing into a global force, gradually extending its ability to sustain its operational reach beyond East Asia. Its latest naval platforms enable combat operations beyond the reach of China’s land-based defenses. In particular, China’s aircraft carrier and planned follow-on carriers, once operational, will extend air defense umbrellas beyond the range of coastal and shipboard missile systems and help enable task group operations at increasingly greater distances.
The ongoing modernization of the PLA’s nuclear force is focused on mobility, survivability, and effectiveness intended to ensure the viability of China’s strategic deterrent in the face of perceived advances in U.S. and, to a lesser extent, Russian offensive and defensive capabilities. China is developing a range of technologies, such as multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs), maneuvering warheads, decoys, chaff, jamming, thermal shielding, and hypersonic glide vehicles, in an attempt to counter ballistic missile defense systems. These technologies will be incorporated into China’s silo and road-mobile ICBMs while Beijing expands the force in the size and types of missiles and the number of warheads capable of striking the United States over the next 15 years. The PLA Navy’s four Jin class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines, armed with the JL-2 submarine-launched ballistic missile, provide China its first viable sea-based nuclear deterrent. The PLA Air Force is developing a strategic bomber that we expect to have a nuclear mission; when combined with Rocket Force and Navy capabilities, this bomber would complete China’s first credible nuclear “triad.”
Strategists in the PLA regard the ability to use space-based systems—and to deny them to adversaries—as central to enabling modern warfare. As a result, the PLA continues to strengthen its military space capabilities despite its public stance against the weaponization of space. Beijing has invested in space system improvements, with an emphasis on intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems, satellite communications, satellite navigation, meteorology, and human spaceflight and interplanetary exploration. China also continues to develop a variety of counterspace capabilities designed to limit or prevent an adversary’s use of space-based assets during crisis or conflict. Space and counterspace capabilities, like missile forces, advanced air and sea power, and cyber capabilities, are critical for China to fight and win modern military engagements.
China has long identified the protection of its sovereignty and territorial integrity as a “core interest” and is leveraging its growing power to assert sovereignty claims over features in the East and South China Seas and the China-India border region. Despite a tribunal’s ruling in 2016 that China’s “nine-dash line” is not a lawful maritime claim, China is using coercive tactics, such as employing law enforcement vessels and its maritime militia, to enforce maritime claims and advance its interests in ways that are calculated to fall below the threshold of provoking conflict. In the East China Sea, China persists in its use of maritime law enforcement ships and aircraft to patrol near the Senkaku Islands and challenge Japan’s claim. In the South China Sea, China sustained construction at its Spratly Islands military outposts in 2017 and employed diplomatic and economic pressure to persuade the Philippines to curtail construction activity and coerce Vietnam to abandon drilling operations.
China’s expanding global footprint and international interests are reflected in its Belt and Road Initiative of economic, commercial, and infrastructure projects in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. Beijing’s military modernization program is expanding in concert with this initiative to include investments and infrastructure to support a range of missions beyond China’s periphery, including power projection, sea lane security, counterpiracy, peacekeeping, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. China’s most recent white papers and doctrinal writings emphasize the requirement for a PLA able to secure expanding Chinese national interests overseas, including a growing emphasis on the importance of the maritime domain, offensive air operations, long-distance mobility operations, space operations, and cyberoperations. In August, following more than a year of construction, China officially opened a military base in Djibouti and deployed a company of marines and equipment to the facility. China probably will seek to establish additional military logistics facilities in countries with which it has longstanding, friendly relationships and similar strategic interests.
Looking forward, sustained year-over-year spending increases will enable the PLA to realize its goals for military modernization and reform. An increasingly lethal joint force will be capable of holding U.S. and allied forces at risk at greater distances from the Chinese mainland, and the PLA will use new bases and military logistics facilities to extend its operational reach well beyond East Asia. A modern, effective nuclear deterrent and substantial investment in advanced cyber, electronic warfare, and space capabilities will bolster China’s ability to fight and win modern military engagement across multiple military domains.
EURASIA
RUSSIA
Russia views the United States as the primary threat to its national security and geopolitical ambitions and is developing a modern military designed to defeat all potential threats to the Russian homeland and accomplish its larger foreign policy objectives. The Kremlin’s objectives include establishing a sphere of influence over the states of the former Soviet Union, preventing further eastward expansion of NATO, and ensuring that no major international issues are resolved without Russia’s input or at its expense. The Kremlin views a powerful, survivable strategic nuclear force as the foundation of Russia’s national security and sees modernized general purpose and nonstrategic nuclear forces as critical for meeting conventional military threats. At the same time, Russia increasingly considers the information sphere as a new domain for modern military conflict. Moscow is honing its cyber capabilities and its ability to spread disinformation in order to advance its own agenda, sow future discord in the West, undermine faith in democratic norms and processes, and discredit Western institutions.
Russia’s desire to be recognized as a great power requires a modern, proficient military, and Moscow has devoted significant attention and resources toward improving its military equipment and command capabilities. The Kremlin continues to place top priority on modernizing Russian strategic nuclear forces, seeking to replace Soviet-era legacy systems, maintain rough nuclear parity with the United States, and improve the survivability of Russia’s nuclear weapons and critical national leadership facilities in the event of a precision strike or nuclear attack. New systems under development include a heavy, liquid-propellant ICBM and mobile ICBMs that are designed to challenge missile defense and enhance survivability. In addition, the Kremlin claims that a new class of hypersonic glide vehicle under development will allow Russian strategic missiles to penetrate missile defense systems. Moscow is improving its strategic naval forces by building and deploying the Dolgorukiy class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine with the SS-N-32 Bulava submarine-launched ballistic missile. Russia is also refurbishing its long-range strategic bombers to carry the newest air-launched cruise missiles, the AS-23a conventional variant and the AS-23b nuclear variant. These missiles are the follow-on system to the AS-15, the main armament of Russia’s Tu-95 and Tu-160 bombers.
Russia developed a ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM) that the United States has declared is in violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. Despite Russia’s ongoing development of other treaty-compliant missiles with intermediate ranges, Moscow probably believes that the new GLCM provides sufficient advantages that make it worth the risk of violating the INF Treaty. Russian officials have previously complained that the treaty prohibits Russia, but not some of its neighbors, from developing and possessing ground-launched missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers.
According to New START Treaty statements on 5 February 2018, Russia declared 1,444 warheads on 527 deployed ICBMs, SLBMs, and heavy bombers. Russia has an active stockpile of up to 2,000 nonstrategic nuclear weapons. These include air-to-surface missiles, short-range ballistic missiles, gravity bombs, and depth charges for medium-range bombers, tactical bombers, and naval aviation; antiship, antisubmarine, and antiaircraft missiles; and torpedoes for surface ships and submarines. Russia may also have warheads for surface-to-air and other aerospace defense missile systems.
Russia is a state party to the Chemical Weapons Convention and had completed destruction of its nearly 40,000-ton declared chemical weapons stockpile as of 27 September. Russia maintains a robust commercial chemical industry that is capable of producing chemical warfare agent precursors. The country’s industrial base, coupled with knowledge from the historical chemical weapons program, suggests that Moscow has the capability to produce chemical weapons.
Moscow has concluded that gaining and maintaining supremacy in space will have a decisive impact on the outcome of future conflicts and is developing counterspace systems to hold U.S. space assets at risk. Russia will continue to pursue the development of a full range of ground-, air-, or space-based antisatellite weapons as a means to reduce U.S. military effectiveness and control the escalation of conflict if deterrence fails.
Russia’s forcewide conventional modernization continued in 2017, driven by improving import-substitution efforts designed to eliminate military-related imports from NATO countries and Ukraine. State deliveries to the Aerospace Forces have included new Su-34 strike fighters, Su-35 fighters, and modernized Tu-160 and Tu-22M3 bombers. Naval forces are expanding with launches of multirole corvettes and frigates that provide air defense and strike capabilities, along with nuclear- and diesel-powered missile submarines. The Ground Forces have received modernized T-72B3 tanks and BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicles, while development of the T-14 Armata tank, Kurganets and Bumerang armored vehicles, and Koalitsiya self-propelled howitzer have continued.
Moscow will continue to conduct large-scale regional military exercises as the capstone event of its annual military training cycle. Last year, Moscow held ZAPAD 2017 in northwestern Russia and Belarus, arousing concerns in states along Russia’s borders. The exercise tested and demonstrated the readiness of the participating forces to respond to a sudden attack, and it rehearsed a rapid transition from peacetime to a wartime footing focusing on logistics, command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance and the preparation of the state and society for wartime mobilization. Moscow will hold a similar exercise, VOSTOK 2018, in the Pacific theater in September.
Russian intelligence services, including Russian military intelligence (GRU), have been increasingly involved in carrying out cyberoperations abroad, as we have seen in the United States, in efforts to sway the 2017 French presidential election, and in attacks against Ukraine’s power grid. The Kremlin is further developing these capabilities and its capacity to carry out information warfare, or what it calls “information confrontation.” Moscow views control over the information sphere as crucial to influencing, confusing, and demoralizing an adversary, and the weaponization of information is a key element in Russian strategy. Russia employs a full range of capabilities, including pro-Kremlin media outlets and websites, bots and trolls on social media, search engine manipulation, and paid journalists in foreign media, to sway Western attitudes toward Russia and in favor of Russian governmental objectives.
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