The Missile Defense Agency’s director praised Korean War veterans last week for the “indelible mark” they left in that country and addressed the continued tension on the Korean peninsula today, 71 years after the end of the war.
“During the decades since the Korean War and to this very day, our nation and our fighting forces have stood strong with the Republic of Korea to keep peace and stability in that region, and it becomes more and more important every day,” Air Force Lt. Gen. Heath Collins said Thursday at the 18th annual luncheon to honor Korean War veterans.
“Today, the peninsula remains sharply divided between freedom and economic prosperity to the south, tyranny, oppression and poverty to the north. And, while the Korean War did not end in a formally declared victory, in truth you achieved a genuine victory for the people of South Korea.”
He said South Koreans have the freedoms of speech, press and worship, and the economy has achieved remarkable growth in recent decades.
More than 20 Korean War veterans attended the event at The Summit hosted by the Legacy 4 Korean War Veterans Foundation.
“Our nation and our allies in the Indo-Pacific region are secure and stand together because of what you accomplished. We build on the foundation that you set. You made your indelible mark and left your legacy.”
Collins said the tension between North and South Korea “is still real and, with the rise of an aggressive China and Russia, the temperature in the Korean area is also on the rise.
“The Korean peninsula continues to represent in many ways a fault line for the United States, a place where an eruption in hostilities threatens to destabilize and embroil the entire Indo Pacific region and North America in conflict, a conflict that could introduce the use of nuclear weapons and expand to involve China and Russia.”
The MDA’s global mission is developing, testing, fielding and sustaining integrated, layered missile defense capabilities to defend the U.S. and its deployed forces and allies against missile attacks.
“We go to work every day knowing that North Korea remains an existential threat to South Korea, to Japan and to other interests in the region as well as a continued threat to Americans in Guam, Hawaii and also to the continental United States.”
Collins said North Korea continues to build the capability to hold U.S. and allied forces at risk, using missiles capable of carrying conventional, nuclear, chemical and biological payloads. It is developing new capabilities such as hypersonic weapons and advanced ballistic missiles and diversifying its launch platforms, he said.
“All of these developments represent severe challenges to any missile defense system,” and the MDA is “ready to take on these new challenges,” he said.
“Our nation has made missile defense a reality,” Collins said, noting that in the Israeli campaign two months ago, hundreds of inbound missiles and one-way UAVs were intercepted by a combination of layered and coalition international missile defense systems.
“It works, it saves lives, and it enables winning.”
The nation’s missile defense system is an integrated, complex system and because the threat is changing, “we must be ready to go after less predictable maneuvering and hypersonic glide vehicle threats and not just ballistic missiles,” he said.
“We’re also working urgently to improve our homeland defense as North Korea has continued to pursue and advance a more complicated intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the United States of America.” The Ground-based Midcourse Defense system has protected the homeland from rogue state ballistic missile attacks for 20 years.
“Today, we are improving the reliability of those interceptors and we’re also procuring a new interceptor called next generation interceptor that will continue to counter the North Korean advanced threats for the decades to come,” Collins said.
“The bottom line is that we’re working closely with the warfighters, and we remain strong in our mission of building defenses to meet the evolving and proliferating missile threat.”
Retired Col. Shane DeBusk, the event’s master of ceremony, spotlighted two veterans: John Brashears, who served in the Korean War, World War II and Vietnam War, and will celebrate his 100th birthday in October; and Paul Reeves, a veteran of the Korean and Vietnam wars whose younger brother, Richard Reeves, was killed in action in the Korean War.
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