North Korea and the new Cold War are the central focus of the 60 Minutes Full Episodes video. The video explores the imminent threat posed by North Korea’s development of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that could potentially reach the United States with a thermonuclear warhead. The ICBM, named the Hwasong-14, has been a cause for concern for the US military leadership, with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs calling it the greatest threat facing the country. The video takes viewers inside the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) near Dayton, Ohio, where analysts monitor and track the North Korean threat.
The video also discusses the challenges and complexities of defending against a potential North Korean attack, including the development of re-entry vehicles capable of withstanding the extreme heat and forces encountered upon re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere.
The video sheds light on the advanced technology and capabilities of North Korea’s missile program, including mobile launchers and the nuclear-capable Russian Scud missile. It also delves into the simulation and analysis conducted to assess the performance and potential defense strategies against a missile attack from North Korea.
Overall, the video provides a comprehensive overview of the growing threat from North Korea and the challenges faced in protecting against it, highlighting the urgent need for strategic defense measures.
Watch the video by 60 Minutes
After years of threatening to burn the United States in a Sea of Fire North Korea is on the verge of having an intercontinental ballistic missile an ICBM capable of hitting the American Homeland with a thermonuclear Warhead the missile is called the Hong which translates to Mar Mars the Roman God of
War as you will hear tonight North Korea’s brass young dictator Kim Jong-un is not there yet and will need several more tests before he has a weapon he can count on still the chairman of the Joint Chiefs calls it the greatest threat facing the us today defense secretary
James mats went to the DMZ two days ago and vowed to stand with South Korea against the north tracking that threat and helping to come up with defenses against it is the job of the national Air and Space Intelligence Center nask for short located near Dayton Ohio if
You’ve never heard of nask that’s because television news cameras have never been inside its Operation Center until now on any given day at nask more than 100 photo interpreters Engineers rocket scientists and intelligence analysts are pouring through reams of data collected every time North Korea launches a missile last summer says nasic Commander
Colonel Shawn Lin the North Korean threat went to a whole new level they demonstrated the ability that they could reach the continent United States the lower 48 yes there were two tests one on July 4th and again on July 28th both were launched at a
Very high angle so they did not go far out to sea but once nask crunched the numbers there was no doubt had one of those missiles been fired on a standard trajectory it could have reached California and Beyond math is our secret weapon so so there’s lots of things that
Go into an ICBM or other types of weapon systems that simply even if we don’t have the pieces of the puzzle we can do the math and figure out what’s missing well this is the actual uh code that we develop this is a computer simulation of North Korea’s ICBM produced by Jeremy Su
And his team of analysts so can you take me through what this would look like on a flight yes this is the God of War North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile the first stage of the system is there to get it off the ground get initial motion uh but then it will drop
That stage after the Hong 14’s engines have centered into space all that is left is the re-entry vehicle a warhead would be inside as gravity pulls it back to Earth you’re at the mercy of of the atmosphere at that point you’re slamming into it at many thousands of miles per
Hour uh so that will have tremendous forces imparted on the the re-entry vehicle and what kind of temperatures are we talking about many thousands of degrees North Korea cannot attack the US with a nuclear weapon until it develops a re-entry vehicle that can stand that kind of heat this is the setup before
The test Griffith is head of the team which monitors the North Korean missile program for the UN Security Council he says these pictures released by The regime last year were an attempt to prove it had already succeeded a re-entry vehicle was subjected to a rocket engine blast is that a realistic
Test we assessed that it wasn’t sufficiently realistic to be credible because the the rocket engine does not create enough heat correct the heat um produced by the rocket engine is not sufficient to mimic what this would experience re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere North Korea released a picture of the scorched re-entry vehicle
In this one of its 33-year-old leader Kim Jong-un being shown how little had been burned away the idea of this narrative is to prove that yet another requirement of the nuclear and ballistic missile program has been achieved Kim Jong-un seems to be everywhere does it strike you as unusual that you would
Have a head of state inspecting a re-entry vehicle yeah the the whole thing is inconceivable and out of like some bad uh science fiction film the man is intimately connected with the whole program and this is very deliberate uh and very unusual almost all of North Korea’s
Missiles from long range down to short range are carried on mobile launchers this is a short range scut developed by Russia in the 1950s and sold to countries all over the world This one belongs to the missile and space Intelligence Center in Huntsville Alabama this is a uh Russian scud B
Senior intelligence analyst Steve Hancock says the scud can be launched straight off the back of but it’s mobile and even to this day it’s a very challenging uh aspect of the missile Force for us to deal with a moving Target is harder to hit yes sir it’s harder to find as well Hancock
Says a well-trained crew can raise aim and fire or scud in 18 minutes do they use these exact same procedures if they’re launching a longer range missile yes uh they’re going to be very similar and is is the uh the launch time still 18 minutes so the bigger the missile
Gets it’s probably going to get to be a little bit slower but we don’t know the exact launch times for all of the systems inside the missile and space Intelligence Center there’s another scut laid out like a corpse on an autopsy table these are graphite Rudders that
Sit in the exhaust of the missile and are used to steer the missile Marie we agreed not to use her last name is a missile engineer whose job is to know as much about the scud as the people who built it this is the instrument section where the guidance equipment um sits so
There’s a lot of complex equipment in here is that part made of what it looks like is made of plywood yeah it is plywood it saves a lot of weight putting that wood in there instead of metal plywood just doesn’t sound like rocket science it it you know it it doesn’t
Feel that way to us as westerners they don’t invest resources where it’s not necessary it only has a range of 186 Mi but it would reach its Target in about 5 minutes so then we get up to the real series part of this missile which is
What we call the payload the payload is everything including the Warhead that sits inside this cavity um it can carry about 1,000 kgam or 2200 lb payload but here’s the feature that sets this scut apart this was designed to be a nuclear trainer and you can tell because the
Thickness of the AOS shell here is is more than what it would be for a standard high explosive Warhead a nuclear trainer this missile is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead this missile as designed by Russia was intended to carry a nuclear warhead a nuclear capable
Weapon with a uh a 5minute flight time doesn’t give you much time to react doesn’t give you much does it last March North Korea launched a salvo of force guds simultaneously in what it said was a drill to attack US military bases well what’s the purpose
Of firing a salvo of missiles well so Salvo is intended to overwhelm your defenses senior weapons analyst Scott McDonald took us into the computer simulation Center and what goes on in this room to show how missiles like those would perform in flight so as the videos from North Korea end when they go
Into the clouds we’re able to represent the entire Flight of the missile uh by putting this into a digital representation this looks a lot like a cartoon or a video game but this is really a lot different there’s a lot of hard science and math that goes behind
This at this point the only defense would be to shoot them down which is why these computer simul ation go into so much detail so this is reverse engineering exactly that’s that’s what would happen as it was re-entering correct so it’s showing a kind of a tumbling motion and
You can see the pressure waves coming off of that missile that’s the aerodynamic forces that are acting on that missile and that’s how we understand how it’s going to fly the scud can reach Targets in South Korea where 28,500 American troops are based another North Korean missile called the noong
Has a greater enough range to hit Japan where 54,000 American servicemen are stationed it’s a scaled up scud missile Mark Clark is director of the military and space Intelligence Center Japan and South Korea and all the Americans living there are already in range of nuclear capable missiles they’re certainly in
Range of scud and noong class missiles absolutely how many scud and noong class missiles do the North Koreans have hundreds hundred hundreds yes Clark would not discuss classified intelligence about North Korea but he did tell us this we have insights today that we didn’t have a few years ago such
As I’m I’m hesitant to go into sources and methods except to say there are opportunities we’ve had to observe and learn about the ballistic missile threats there in February 2016 the US and its allies got their hands on another missile this time a long range one part
Of a rocket North Korea used to launch a satellite into orbit the satellite never really functioned it wasn’t a serious satellite but it was a serious rocket the un’s Hugh Griffith says the rocket was really a test vehicle for an intercontinental ballistic missile and a
Large part of it fell into the sea the South Korean Navy uh got to this location and when debris fell from the sky they were able to recover some of that debris and invited us to inspect it so you physically got your hands on some of the components that had been used yes
We were very lucky we were able to photograph the debris take it apart and uh run checks on the serial numbers of uh quite a variety of components in the past 2 years North Korea has conducted more than 40 test launches virtually every one of them personally approved and supervised by
Kim Jung Un but what he’s shown is that he has a tolerance for failure Tom Boyd senior intelligence analyst for ballistic missiles at the air and space Intelligence Center certainly means that as a compliment if you are not willing to fail in the ballistic missile or space launch vehicle missile business
You’re in the wrong business it’s almost inevitable these are highly complex systems uh and and failures are pretty much inevitable so 2016 saw a lot of failures I can’t recall the exact number uh but but he did have significant failures and not so many this year he’s having much much
Better success this year so it just looks like they figured something out yes I I think they have learned uh from from their failur what North Korea figured out is a high thrust engine seen here in a ground test and a high performance fuel to power it would you
Say that engine and that fuel is responsible for their recent successes they seem to be getting good performance uh yes the Pentagon says it’s confident its missile defense system 42 interceptors based in Alaska and California can shoot down a North Korean ICBM although the test record shows only
A 55% success rate last May it shot down this mocked North Korean missile which was designed from Models developed by the air and space Intelligence Center despite that most recent success icbms are what Boyd calls a challenging Target they’ve been referred to as the Ultimate Weapon they get to the Target very
Quickly uh an ICBM has a re-entry velocity on the order of four to 5 miles per second so there’s very little time to react so how long before North Korea can really threaten the American Homeland with an ICBM probably several more flight tests uh but ultimately if they want to have confidence
That the system works as intended they have to flight test it uh and prove that that re-entry vehicle can survive realistic re-entry conditions so that really is then the Moment of Truth when they launch if they launch a ballistic missile out over the Pacific Ocean at a range approximating what it
Would take to reach the United States that would give them higher confidence that the system really works as they wanted to at the rate North Korea is testing us intelligence estimates that could happen as early as next year in Thursday’s press conference president Trump would not say how the
United States will respond to the actions of North Korea’s dictator over the last week Kim Jong-un tested a new type of missile then his estranged brother was poisoned in a Malaysian Airport South Korea’s spy agency believes Kim ordered the hit Kim has nuclear weapons and has promised to test an intercontinental ballistic missile
Such a weapon could eventually carry a nuclear warhead and threaten American cities that possibility and the missiles he has aimed at South Korea are so dangerous us defense secretary James Mattis went to Soul on his first foreign trip we went just days later and saw how tense the situation has become we got
Two important perspectives we spoke to the commander of the 28,000 American troops there as well as the highest ranking North Korean to defect in decades he told us the missiles and murders are part of Kim’s raging obsession with the survival of his regime I’ve been uh in C for uh six months and
To be honest you know I was never you know public until we went for an evening out in Soul with Tay Yong ho he was North Korea’s Deputy Ambassador in London before he defected in August so first time on the subway yes that’s right it a defection by someone of his
Rank is extremely rare where do we stand this was the first time he had walked about in public just just off camera six bodyguards watched his every move as we made our way down one of the busiest shopping streets in Asia North Korea has assassinated defectors in Soul in order
To prevent more possible defections from North Korea I think Kim zong may do anything kill you of course why not the man who could order an assassination is Kim Jong-un the dictator is the third member of the Kim family to rule North Korea they have controlled the impoverished country with
An ironclad fist for 70 years this was last week’s missile test Kim devotes a quarter of his country’s economy to weapons like this and his million man army despite widespread food shortages Kim Jung strongly believes that once he possesses ICBM then he can easily uh scare off uh
America right now how dangerous is North Korea to the stability of South Korea and uh as a threat to the United States Kim zong un’s uh capability to wre har not only to America but also South Korea and the world should not be underestimated during his 5 years in
Power Kim Jong-un has expanded North Korea’s nuclear Arsenal despite International sanctions that have brought his country’s economy to its knees electricity is scarce from space North Korea is a black hole that’s it wedged between The Shining lights of South Korea and China to the north Tay said he was living a comfortable life
Here at the North Korean Embassy in London before he fled with his wife and two grown sons the safety is guaranteed by the government his job in London was to spread North Korean propaganda and report back on his colleagues you all live together Under One Roof yes so you
Could keep an eye on each other keep an eye on each other controlling each other and even spying on each other but said he lost all faith in the regime when Kim Jong-un killed his own uncle in 2013 and executed dozens of perceived enemies including diplomats I have seen tape of
You giving speeches yes in London you’re very convincing you you you seem to be a True Believer yourself uh if I uh show any sign of hesitation then I would be you know to I would be sent to prison camps so my whole family’s life will be jeopardized T said
There was one big obstacle to his defection all North Korean diplomats are forced to leave one of their children back in pyang as a hostage see as a hostage yes when my children grw up his break came when that policy unexpectedly changed and tae’s oldest son was allowed to join the
Family in London they all agreed to defect he would not give us the details of his escape and who helped but we know he was kept in a safe house by South Korean intelligence agents and questioned for more than 3 months he said it was too dangerous for us to
Meet his family now I’ve been talking to you for a couple of days now and you come from a secretive place yes but I think you still have lots of Secrets sure yes how do we know that what he is telling us is the truth and not just
Self-serving you know when a Defector makes a decision to jump ship he is doing it at a at a huge cost his co-workers relatives in-laws will be purged or killed Chung Min Lee was South Korea’s Ambassador for National Security until last year he said looks here can
Be deceiving the risk of War today is exceptionally High I think most Americans right now would see this as a hold over from the Cold War mhm but it seems to be quite hot that’s right when you’re here this is the only place on the entire planet where you
Have nearly a million forces on both sides standing ready to fight a war in basically a nanc and who is there right in the middle of this it’s basically the US forces if there is war this is where the big fight will take place Lee helped shape Soul’s policy toward North Korea
He went with us to panmun the village in the 2 and A2 mile wide demilitarized zone that separates North and South Korea as we got closer Soul sprawl gave way to military checkpoints the agreement that suspended the Korean war was signed here but there’s still no peace
Treaty The War Began when the Communist North invaded in 1950 34,000 Americans were killed in what amounted to a stalemate so this is the longest war on paper since World War II so we are still technically in a state of War today both sides still stare each other down that’s
North Korea right there that building just 100 yards away we were told to avoid sudden movements that could be interpreted as threatening it wasn’t long before North Korean soldiers took an interest in all the activity so we went inside a negotiation Hut that straddles the Border what is right
Behind right behind the door is basically from there on this this is since this is North Korea once you go out that’s it we have no jurisdiction on that side of of the door so if I were to walk out that door that seems I’m in the hands of
North Korea that’s true let’s stay on this side let’s stay on this side it was all surreal this part of the DMZ closest to Soul had the feel of a cold war theme park complete with a fake Village on the North Kore inside built to impress the
South and in case you missed the point loudspeakers blared propaganda Marshall songs praising Kim jungong a few miles away Taurus crowded an observation deck snapping photos with troops cardboard cutouts and the real [Applause] ones what the visitors could not see on the other side of those mountains are
10,000 artillery pieces the North Korean military has aimed at Soul all of which could reach the 28 million people in and around the South Korean capital us War planners estimate 500,000 people could be killed in a second Korean war is there any other metropolitan area on Earth this vulnerable uh certainly nothing that
Approaches soul in terms of the the size the the density of the population there’s nothing like it US Air Force General James SLI flew with us over the city it’s just 30 m from the DMZ we landed at Osan Airbase where Korean Airmen and their American colleagues monitor all activity north of
The DMZ for security they shut off the giant video displays right before we came in this facility is among the first to detect North Korean missile launches you’re like on a war footing all the time here that’s right this is truly one of those places where the best way to
Prevent a war is being ready for a war the North’s latest missile test used a new type of solid fuel engine and was fired from a mobile launcher making it quick to deploy and difficult for us satellites to detect in real time with the development of ballistic missiles
With the development of nuclear weapons things here have a have a a tension that you can feel in the air as you as you move around uh places like this we wanted to talk to the general who leads US forces in Korea and would command
Korean troops in the event of a war he asked to meet us at guardpost 4 it’s a citadel on critical High Ground at the end of a road lined with landmines we were the first American news crew allowed in this was no cold war theme part body
Armor was required and artillery was on standby in the event we came under Fire hello General how are you very nice to meet you General Vincent Brooks has commanded US forces fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan I don’t think people at home know how tense this line is what it
Takes to go from the condition we’re in at this this moment to hostilities again is literally the matter of a decision on North Korea side to say fire and on top of this we have the missile capability that’s been developed over 120 missiles fired just in the time of Kim Jong-un
Alone so now they’re talking about icbms that might be able to reach the west coast of the United States how do you stop them from taking that next step North Korea is responsible for the direction that the region is going it is responsible for the conditions of instability that
Are starting to arise it’s has to take responsibility for that and stop his country is poor his people are starving what is it that he wants survival Kim Jong-un is now recognized as a global threat us intelligence estimates he has at least 10 nuclear weapons if the US decided it had no
Choice but to launch a preemptive strike on an ICBM test site it could trigger the unthinkable if North Korea uses nuclear weapons it will be met with an effective and overwhelming response and they can take it take it to the bank we make that same point to our our allies
And partners like the Republic of Korea like Japan effective and overwhelming response effective and overwhelming response wipe North Korea off the map whatever overwhelms you that warning rang in our ears as we returned to soul and met one last time with Defector tayang ho we asked about his brother and
Sister still in North Korea what do you think has happened to them they will be sent to prison camps that is what I’m absolutely sure does that weigh on you of course yes I cannot uh get rid of that kind kind of uh nightmare every night of uh seeing my brother and sister
In prison camps Taye told us he believes he can help topple the North Korean regime by encouraging other defections and speaking out during the campaign president Trump called Kim Jong-un a maniac his language has been much more careful since the latest missile test one of the key questions of this
Presidential campaign is who has the health and temperament to become the next commander and chief and assume the unthinkable power to use nuclear weapons the Cold War as we knew it may be over but both the US and Russia still keep enough nuclear weapons on alert to end
Civilization and now a new cold war is brewing with both sides developing more sophisticated and more accurate weapons tonight we’re going to show you what this new Cold War looks like from inside the US strategic command stratcom as it’s called trains every day for the possibility of nuclear war and takes
Extraordinary Measures to make sure one person and one person only the president of the United States can give the order to launch a nuclear weapon 130 1 2 0 1 0t 84 USS Kentucky rising to the surface off the coast of Hawaii nearly two football fields long it is the deadliest
Engine of Destruction in the American Arsenal able to carry almost 200 nuclear warheads on top the missiles loaded beneath those hatches Commander Brian freck is the captain the WarHeads that can be carried on my missiles are extremely powerful and compare them to to the bomb that leveled Hiroshima much
More powerful than than that much more powerful than Hiroshima up to 30 times more powerful and on any given day a number of these submarines are hiding somewhere in the world’s oceans ready to respond to a launch order from the president when you’re out here are other countries looking for you I always
Operate under that assumption that someone is looking for me has anybody ever found you no not even close you sure yes I am 60 Minutes found the Kentucky but only because we had arranged a Rendevous to go aboard if this uh boat were a country you’d be a nuclear
Power that’s true yes sir does that ever give you pause to have all that power under your command it’s a lot of responsibility but um with that responsibility comes um a lot of training and uh practice die die all been cycled all been shut operating
At a depth of 160 ft the kuy’s crew practiced the procedures needed to launch its missiles set condition 1sq for training this is the captain this is an exercise set condition 1sq for training con weapons act SP up all missiles chief of the watch stand on the general alarm the general alarm right
Sir I have permission to fire we before that trigger can be squeezed multiple Keys including one that unlocks the miss tubes which take up approximately 1/3 of the ship have to be brought out from different safes no one person can make a launch happen so I have keys in my
Possession um other members of the crew have keys in their possession one key is carried to the captain by two Sailors who both must hold it Captain the launch is authorized and here’s the thing you need to know about the safe where that key is kept no one on board has the
Combination we get that combination with the launch order that is my way of kn knowing that the president has ordered the launch is when the combination he gives me opens that safe the president literally gives you the combination to the safe that the key is in yes you have
Permission to fire two weapons you have permission to fire I sir weapons con you have permission to fire the Kentucky and other nuclear missile submarines along with intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear bombers on De are under the command of Admiral Cecil Haney your nuclear forces are capable of executing
All signed missions head of the US strategic command Haney is the most powerful military officer you’ve never heard of in command not just of the nation’s nuclear forces but its space satellites and cyber weapons as well there are no significant solar activity causing impacts to satellite operations or Communications his morning briefing
At strategic command headquarters in Omaha Nebraska is classified Above Top Secret thank you I appreciate the update that clock marked pus short for president of the United States tells Haney what time zone President Obama is in in case he has to reach the commander-in-chief in a hurry so who in
The United States government has the authority to order the use of nuclear weapons only the president of the United States has that Authority does Congress have to approve no Congress does not have to approve so these really are the president’s own weapons it’s our nation’s weapons with the president’s Authority yes
Attention on deck Haney took us to his Global operations center a top secret facility three stories underground if a missile were launched against the United States the warning would be received here and that clock would start ticking down Colonel Barbara bues was the Watch Commander I see this
Sign up here red impact blue impact time so red impact would be an enemy missile that is correct and you would have a time we would have a time to impact and blue impact would be any uh us counter attack Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Gillan would pull out the options for a retaliatory
Nuclear Strike my responsibility as the stratcom Nuclear Strike adviser is uh to be the expert on nuclear decision handbook and the alert status of all US nuclear forces the nuclear decision handbook also known as the Black Book black book so is there a copy of the
Black book down here there is it’s in the safe down here sir an identical copy of the black book is in that briefcase which follows the president wherever he goes so he’s never away from the options that’s correct and would they tell him what kinds of weapons you would use what
Targets you would hit they would be that specific yes would they give him an estimate of uh casualties yeah we would have to give the president answers to a lot of different questions that’s one that I would expect to get ad M Haney would go to a room called the battle deck where
He would talk directly to the president and is this the phone you would use uh this is one of the phones I might use chairman of the joint Chief of Staff Secretary of Defense I don’t see the man who uh controls looking for the president I am I can speak to the
President directly from this microphone and in a in a crisis how long does it take to get the president on the lot not very long if Russia launched a missile from a submarine off the coast of the United States it would take only minutes to reach its Target so how long in fact
Does the president have to make a decision he has minutes seven eight nine depending on details but but we less than 10 minutes former Secretary of Defense William Perry was a key architect of nuclear weapons during the Cold War with the Soviet Union if the weapons can be launched within minutes
Does that mean we’re still in the same old hair trigger yes standoff that we were during the Cold War that’s right we are and we still have launch on warning the same policy we have then we still have the same her trick response so what’s changed since the Cold War if
We’re still on this this hair trigger alert fundamentally nothing has changed but the numbers of weapons are much lower now than during the Cold War the number of weapons are sufficient to destroy obliterate all the civilization Still Still it doesn’t take that many we still have more than a thousand nuclear
Weapons on alert ready to go it doesn’t take a thousand to destroy civilization at the end of the Cold War both sides pledged to point their missiles at the open ocean but it would take just minutes to change back to real targets that provides a small hedge
Against an accidental War triggered by a false alarm of the kind Perry experienced in 1979 when a watch officer mistakenly inserted a training tape into a computer so it looked like 200 icbms were on the way from the Soviet Union to the United States happily we got that situation
Figured out before we had to go to the president but had we not he would have received a call at 3:00 in the morning and said sir you have seven or eight minutes to decide whether to launch this before these missiles land on our ICBM silos and what was the fail safe there
What what stopped it from going to the president um what stopped it was a astute General who sensed something was wrong if you’ve had one serious case in 45 years that would seem like a pretty good record yeah it only takes one it only takes one strategic command is building a new
$1.2 billion headquarters but it won’t be anymore able to survive a nuclear blast than the underground Command Center in the current headquarters that clock counting down the time to missile impact would also tell Admiral Haney how long he had to get out of there alive safe Escape time that you see indicated is
The time left remaining for Admiral Haney as the commander of us.com to exit the battle deck to be able to make it to his Commander support aircraft to be able to board that aircraft and continue to provide uh his advice to the president of the United States as his senior nuclear
Adviser on the torac at trcom air Crews drill to take off from this Airborne command post fast enough to escape incoming nuclear weapons if Admiral Haney’s headquarters were destroyed and he didn’t make it out in time president is talking to his it would be up to rear Admiral Andy Lennon to assume command
And make sure the president and only the president could still give the order to launch new we’re in voice Communications with the president talking to the president personally yes sir so that way we are ensuring that we’re getting the president’s intent how do you know it’s the president we have some uh very
Complex and secure procedures to authenticate the president and to be sure that we’re really talking to the president of the United States so he can’t just tell you this is the president speaking he can but we will authenticate to verify that it is the president speaking once the president is
Giving you that order what do you do then we would communicate that order to our strategic forces our intercontinental ballistic missiles our bombers or our submarines keep s the general arm s the general arm I sir the order would be received on board the Kentucky and the crew would go through
Launch procedures they have practiced hundreds of times before last year the Kentucky actually fired an unarmed missile in a test flight which lit up the California sky and caused a brief UFO scare had it carried a real Warhead this is our meteorological effects officer steuart Miller a young Air Force Captain
Aboard the Airborne command post would begin charting the unthinkable my main role is is gathering information on nuclear detonations worldwide and then applying meteorological data to them uh specifically whens to figure out um if there’s Fallout depending on the attributes of the detonation where the fallout’s going um how many people might
Be affected who might be affected um things of that nature so you basically come up with a a casualty estimate of essentially yes that’s that’s one of the things that that I can provide you must have looked at some pretty depressing scenarios we kind of do yeah um
Yes have you ever had the conversation with yourself well what if the President issued an order to use nuclear weapons and I didn’t agree with it would I carry out that order the president expects me as his combatant Commander to provide him the best military advice I have so
He would expect me to voice my opinion you would get you would have a voice but if you disagreed with the decision I’m a military man and we follow the orders of our commander-in-chief NATO which just marked its 70th anniversary is widely considered the gold standard of military alliances
Binding countries on both sides of the Atlantic in common cause against Russian aggression but president Trump complains that other members of The Alliance don’t pay their fair share of what it cost to defend Europe against the intimidation tactics of Vladimir Putin the president has told a he doesn’t see the point of
The alliance and has even mentioned withdrawing from NATO despite those misgivings the US and its NATO allies have been steadily increasing the frequency and size of their military exercises last fall NATO held the largest one yet in Norway one of the countries president Trump has singled out for failing to spend enough on
Defense you might not think of Norway which has a tiny military as a vital NATO Ally but we found a country that is on the front lines with Russia and serves as NATO’s eyes and ears in the high North Norway’s f-16s are on 15minute alert 24/7 every time Russian military aircraft are
Detected these Pilots scramble to intercept them videos they bring back show nuclear capable Russian bombers as they fly up and down the Norwegian Coast most most of the encounters are routine but sometimes says Lieutenant General run yakobson Norway’s Joint Force Commander they’re anything but exactly what we have seen lately is um
Aggressive flying uh and simulated attacks against um uh Norwegian exercises simulated attacks yeah how do you know it’s a simulated attack an air man knows what an attack looks like so they go to the point at which they would release their weapons exactly yakobson tracked those simulated attacks from his Command Center buried
Deep inside a mountain after the Cold War ended a nuclear prooof bunker seemed positively old-fashioned until lately when Russia became more threatening this is illustration of an a Russian attack formation simulated attack that was flown in May 2017 not far north of of this position
And the Red Dot is the target the Red Dot is the Target that doesn’t look like the act of a friendly country no that’s not something you should do to your neighbor Norway shares a 120 M border with its neighbor Russia it is some of the most remote rugged and beautiful
Landscape in all of Europe Captain Karina vdog guards the northern sector with 120 soldiers they are along the border all the time 24/7 I have people along the border so I have four uh observation posts that are manned at all time throughout the whole year are your soldiers armed yeah do
They ever have to use their weapons no but we have to be prepared we went to the most remote of those outposts in the high north of the Norwegian Mainland one unit was just finished finishing its 3 weeks on Watch and a new one coming
In to get there you have to Lug your gear up a long steep staircase part of which is covered over to defend against the Arctic winter the observation post is manned year round and once you get to the top you can see why it’s worth the trouble these Norwegian soldiers are able to
Look deep into Russia and far out to sea making this a key piece of terrain for the NATO alliance that’s Russia over there and this is where the border with Norway ends it’s NATO’s northernmost flank and you don’t need to be a military expert to know you
Can never leave your flank exposed that includes the barren sea out there those are the home operating Waters of Russia’s Northern Fleet and are kept under constant surveillance by the US and Norway this map shows what lies just over the horizon on that thumb of land
Called the cola peninsula it is the home of Russia’s Northern Fleet Naval bases airfields and nuclear weapon storage sites which represent that country’s single greatest concentration of military power especially submarines they have a very capable submarine force and we’ve seen an increase in submarine activity over the
Last few years that causes me pause Ed James Fogo the commander of US Naval forces in Europe is particularly concerned about this submarine the severodvinsk nuclear powered and armed with land attack cruise missiles with a range greater than 1,000 miles the srain is a brand new class of submarine and
It’s uh very capable it’s very quiet so that’s uh the most important thing I think in submarine warfare when you say quiet you’re saying harder to detect harder to track yeah that’s what I’m saying does that sub come down into the Atlantic suffice it to say that the Russians have increased uh their
Presence in uh all bodies of water around Europe and in the Atlantic have you ever lost the seredin I’d rather not comment on submarine operations uh to that specific level of detail Fogo won’t comment but Pentagon officials told 60 Minutes that last summer the seod Vince slipped into the Atlantic Ocean and for
Weeks evaded all attempts to find it in peacetime losing a Russian sub in the Atlantic is embarrassing in a crisis it could be a disaster think about uh the global infastructure that rests on the bottom of the ocean you’re talking about the undersea cables that’s correct those Fiber Optic Cables carry
99.4% of the data exchanged over the Internet by the US and its allies and trading partners depending on your point of view they are either the backbone or the Achilles heel of the world economy have Russian submarines gotten close to those undersea cables I’m not at Liberty to
Talk about uh any of that that’s because tracking Russian submarines is a top secret day in Day Out game of hide and seek but the Norwegian military allowed 60 Minutes aboard one of its Maritime Patrol planes to see what sub hunting looks like the pilot co-pilot and engineer are
Up front while the crew in the back scans the Norwegian sea with radar and high-powered cameras flying at less than 300 ft they can clearly make out anything on the surface including passing cargo ships for what’s under the water they drop patterns of sonab buys which send out sound
Waves that will bounce off a submerged submarine major Leaf otter Holm the plane’s tactical coordinator has been flying these missions since the 1980s and it is very important to collect on remote locations how big an area is it that you have to cover the area operation for this kind of aircraft is
Six times larger than the area of land in Norway so it’s a quite quite big so how frequently do you encounter the Russians out here we cter them uh regularly when we go further east further east lies the headquarters of the northern Fleet and Norwegian Patrol planes frequently spot Russian
Submarines while they’re still on the surface but the most valuable intelligence is collected by a ship one you’ve never heard of there it is down there in the harbor the crown jewel of Norway’s Fleet that’s Norway’s newest Spy ship the mariata it’s at Sea nearly 300 days
A year monitoring the northern Fleet but just happened to be in Port the day we arrived here in Kines the town closest to the Russian border the mariata flies to the Norwegian flag but much of its EAS dropping equipment comes from the US its mission is to collect Intelligence
On the operations of Russia’s Northern Fleet which Lieutenant General yakson says is arming itself with a new generation of precision guided weapons and testing them in the waters off Norway are you able to monitor those yeah because most of the testing of new equipment is done up north of the cola
Peninsula and we are present there uh every day with our Maritime Patrol aircrafts and our vessels at Sea that daily Hall of intelligence all of which is directly relayed to the US and NATO didn’t stop president Trump from sending this letter of complaint Norway he wrote
Is the only NATO Ally sharing a border with Russia that lacks a credible plan to spend 2% of his gross domestic product on defense well I think that he he has a Fair Point in in pointing out that we need to step up AA Ericson Sida is Norway’s foreign minister the first
Woman to hold the job now so these are all your predecessors they are they are and they’re all men and they’re all men you’re the first woman yeah before that she was defense minister in 2014 when all the members of NATO pledged to increase their military spending to 2%
Of their GDP so have you met that pledge no we haven’t met it yet but we are moving in the right direction and we are doing uh a lot of big Investments the biggest of those Investments is the americanmade F-35 a stealth fighter designed to evade state-of-the-art air defenses it will dramatically increase
Operational capabilities both in high North and Beyond Norway is buying 52 of them at a cost of 89 million each it’s a very expensive airplane well and it also functions well and it has has capabilities that we need our F-16 has served us well but they are starting to
Get old those f-16s are going on 40 years old and were never designed to be stealthy until they are replaced by the F-35 Lieutenant General yakobson told us Norway’s Air Force will be no match for Russia’s modern air defenses meaning um today um if we had a
Conflict we would not be able to fly in the northernmost part of Norway so your air force today couldn’t operate in the very high North no uh not in in serious crisis last fall NATO practiced what it would do in a serious crisis bringing in 50,000 Troops 250 aircraft and 65 ships all under the command of Admiral Fogo this is one of the largest NATO exercises since the Cold War called Trident juncture it was a war game designed to repulse an invasion of Norway by an unnamed country whose identity was a mystery to no
One and the message to Russia is the message to Russia or anybody else that may want to challenge the alliances think twice you don’t want to mess with us it was the first time in nearly 30 years the US had set a carrier strike group the USS hares Truman and his
Escorts above the Arctic Circle a long way from the Persian Gulf and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan did you feel that NATO just wasn’t paying attention to uh to Norway what we saw was that NATO over many years had been engaged heavily for instance in Afghanistan and and that’s a very
Important Mission but we also saw that some of the um I would say core areas of of NATO the territorial defense maybe had um not had the same attention over years well now you have an American aircraft carrier yeah operating off your Coast M I think it is a very good way of
Showing that we have to practice in peace time to be able to operate if the crisis occurs Norway will never have a military that can take on its much larger and more powerful neighbor but the pilots who fly these f-16s call themselves The Guardians of the north they can’t stop the
Russians but they are the first to spot nothing
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