Yet this course of action also contained certain dangers that, by now, are obvious. Specifically, the White House was directly warned that previous psychological operations had resulted in the loss of both military and civilian aircraft and ships. A classified “memo to holders”—prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in response to a White House inquiry about the consequences of this possible course of action with regard to North Korea—noted that past efforts had carried significant risks:
WE ASSESS THAT A ROBUST PSYOP CAMPAIGN CARRIES SOME RISK OF ESCALATION BASED ON PAST EXPERIENCE WITH SUCH MISSIONS. NORTH KOREA SEIZED A US INTELLIGENCE GATHERING VESSEL IN 1968 AND SHOT DOWN A US RECONNAISSANCE AIRCRAFT IN 1969. THE REAGAN-ERA EFFORT TO PROBE SOVIET AIR DEFENSES WAS ALSO A SIGNIFICANT FACTOR IN THE SOVIET SHOOTDOWN OF KAL 007 IN 1983, WHICH TRIGGERED THE WORST SUPERPOWER CONFRONTATION SINCE THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS.
Perhaps because of this warning, the White House decided that the psychological operations campaign was best conducted in secret, and staff took unusual measures to guard against further leaks, such as the president’s tweet. “The idea was to keep ‘Pots and Pans’ limited to a small circle,” one of Bolton’s aides explained. “Only the core staff at the White House and Mattis’s people executing it would know about the program, along with the Chinese and North Koreans, of course.” White House officials discussed whether to approach civil maritime and aviation authorities about altering air and sea routes, but decided not to do anything that might result in the public disclosure of SCATHE JIGSAW. Moreover, the Trump administration chose not to notify South Korean authorities about the full extent of the program, although the South Koreans understood generally that the additional flights through their airspace were part of a more aggressive American military posture.
“The whole point of the campaign was that it was supposed to be a secret,” one adviser explained. “If you start approaching shipping companies and airlines, then it will be in the paper the next day and Kim will be forced to respond.”
It is unclear how many senior officials knew about this program. There are references in the emails of half a dozen White House staff members, including National Security Adviser Bolton. More ambiguous references appear in emails and text messages among a larger group that mention “Ivanka’s new line of kitchenware,” which one official claimed was a tongue-in-cheek reference to SCATHE JIGSAW. The program was sizable enough, and Trump’s tweet drew enough attention, that many officials believed that word of it must have spread around the White House.
In the roughly four months that elapsed between the NSC meeting on November 18, 2019, and the BX 411 episode on March 21, 2020, the Air Force conducted a series of SCATHE JIGSAW sorties without incident. In general, the missions had the same profile, one similar to that of the Reagan-era program that inspired them. A small number of aircraft would directly approach North Korean airspace in a manner that appeared to be a bombing run against a location in North Korea that was considered high-value, usually either a military site or a leadership compound. This would force North Korean air defense units to turn on their radars and pilots to scramble to aircraft, as well as initiate a general alert that went up to the highest echelons of the North Korean command. At the last moment before entering North Korean airspace, the US aircraft would turn around and head home. The United States could, in this way, probe North Korea’s air defenses for weaknesses, while also conveying to Kim Jong Un and his lieutenants that he was vulnerable to attack.
Trump administration officials were adamant that the bomber flights in SCATHE JIGSAW were an evolution of previous missions begun under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The US Air Force had established a “continuous bomber presence” mission at Andersen Air Force Base on Guam in 2004 during the Global War on Terror. The goal was to ensure that the United States always maintained a significant number of bomber aircraft capable of conducting exercises in Asia on short notice to demonstrate that the United States remained instantly willing and able to conduct bomber strikes anywhere in the region.
In particular, Trump administration officials made frequent references to former President Obama and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. “You are blaming us,” said one official, “but Obama did it all the time. He had dozens of bomber flights.” Another claimed, “This was Hillary Clinton’s brainchild.”
In fact, the number of bomber flights around the Korean Peninsula remained relatively consistent through 2016. What changed following North Korea’s January 2013 nuclear test was the public prominence given to routine bomber exercises. After North Korea’s 2013 test, the Department of Defense developed a program to highlight ongoing training that might strengthen deterrence on the Korean Peninsula. This work fell to the Joint Information Operations Warfare Center (JIOWC) at Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio, which is responsible for assisting US military commanders around the world with developing what JIOWC called an “integrated approach to information operations.” JIOWC worked with US Forces Korea, US Pacific Command (PACOM), Air Force Global Strike Command, and US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) to develop an information operations strategy.
As a result, the United States began to publicize bomber flights following North Korean nuclear and missile tests. Pentagon officials highlighted a series of three flights involving B-1 and B-52 bombers in March 2013. Again, in 2016, the Obama administration publicized three more flights—one in January following the nuclear explosive test, and another two following the September 2016 nuclear explosion.
The number of bomber flights increased in number only after the Trump administration took office, with twelve publicly announced flights taking place in 2017. The number of flights fell during the thaw in 2018, before increasing to eighteen in 2019 as tensions returned. Moreover, the profile of these flights changed. Starting in 2017, operations were in some cases conducted at night and much farther north than US aircraft had operated in decades. (Prior to 2017, US aircraft tended to stay south of the DMZ rather than flying north into the international airspace between the Korean Peninsula and Japan.) These activities occurred within full view of North Korean radars.
Moreover, the mission profile of the bomber flights in the SCATHE JIGSAW air probes differed considerably from even the more aggressive bomber missions begun during 2017. The more aggressive flight plans reflected a sense that the United States needed to make an impression upon North Korea’s leadership. “There had been so many bomber flights already,” one administration official explained. “We wanted something new that would get [Kim Jong Un’s] attention.”
In most SCATHE JIGSAW missions, the bomber would fly toward North Korea, turning around at the last moment before entering North Korean airspace. In a smaller number of cases, bombers would fly along the edge of North Korea’s airspace, dipping in and out of radar contact. The eleventh mission, on March 6, 2020, was one of these. A US bomber from Guam flew northward over South Korea. As the bomber approached the DMZ, the pilot banked to the west, flying out over the Yellow Sea, along the very edge of North Korea’s airspace.
It was Air Busan’s bad luck that, on March 21, 2020, its crew, working to restore power to the ailing electrical systems, banked hard to avoid flying into North Korea, then followed a path out into the Yellow Sea that retraced the route flown by a US bomber less than a month before.