Britain Draws Up Battle Plan for War With North Korea

Officials Plan to Deploy Large Number of Ships to Korean Peninsula

If the United States attacks North Korea, Britain is expecting to be quickly sucked into the conflict. This has UK military officials drafting plans for how they would react to the American attack.

“We have plenty of ships to send,” one of the planners told the press, and the brand new aircraft carrier the HMS Queen Elizabeth not scheduled to be brought into service until 2020, could be activated immediately, without flight trials, to be rushed to the Pacific to take part in the war.

That these plans are being developed underscores how seriously British officials see the risk of a war breaking out in Korea. With President Trump regularly threatening to “totally destroy” North Korea, British officials appear to see the threat as a real one.

Whether Britain’s Navy would be needed in the war is less clear. The US already has a massive Navy, especially compared to North Korea, and such a war is likely to almost immediately boil down to massive mortar and missile fire back and forth, including potential nuclear exchanges.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.