North Korea’s expanding nuclear arsenal is changing more than just the amount of destruction Pyongyang could inflict. This may be altering the North Korean leadership’s way of calculating how it could use nuclear weapons in a limited conflict while not necessarily triggering regime change. North Korea is developing a larger and more diversified nuclear inventory, tactical nuclear warheads, solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRV), cruise missiles, and hypersonic weapons systems. Moreover, North Korea’s September 2022 nuclear law established the conditions under which nuclear weapons may be used preemptively. 

These developments would become particularly perilous when paired with uncertainty regarding how the United States would respond to North Korea’s limited use of nuclear weapons and a simultaneous dual contingency involving China and North Korea. Consequently, the central challenge facing South Korea extends beyond deterring an all-out nuclear attack. It must also ensure Pyongyang does not conclude that limited nuclear use is controllable, survivable, or politically successful. 

A larger nuclear inventory affords greater operational flexibility to North Korea. While a small nuclear stockpile would have to be preserved for regime survival and strategic retaliation, a much larger arsenal would enable Pyongyang to allocate a subset of warheads to American targets, others to Japan, and still others to South Korean military targets. North Korea could reach the tipping point when Kim Jong-un believes he possesses sufficient nuclear capacity to use them for tactical purposes while preserving a survivable nuclear reserve to deter further escalation. 

To achieve doctrinal legitimacy for early use of nuclear weapons, North Korea’s 2022 nuclear doctrine authorizes the use of nuclear weapons not only in response to a nuclear attack but also when the leadership, nuclear command structure, or valuable strategic targets are threatened. Pyongyang could argue that a South Korean attack against its missile bases, command centers, and underground facilities is an attempt to neutralize North Korea’s nuclear deterrent. In that case, a tactical nuclear strike could be portrayed as a defensive measure to halt allied operations and terminate Western aggression. 

This creates a dangerous interaction with South Korea’s Three-Axis System. The Kill Chain is intended to destroy North Korean launchers and command facilities before missiles are fired. Korean Air and Missile Defense (KAMD) is intended to intercept the remaining missiles, and Korea Massive Punishment and Retaliation (KMPR) is intended to pose a threat to the North Korean leadership. From Pyongyang’s perspective, these strikes may be interpreted as an integrated operation aimed at destroying North Korea’s nuclear forces and decapitating its leadership. Ironically, increased South Korean preemptive-strike capability may result in  greater North Korea’s incentive to disperse authority, shorten decision times, and launch its forces before they could be destroyed. 

North Korea’s lessons learned from the Russo-Ukrainian war could make this posture even more dangerous. Russia has repeatedly combined or integrated drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles with other measures. North Korea could apply similar methods on the Korean Peninsula. Beginning with cyberattacks and GPS jamming, followed by reconnaissance drones toward missile-defense batteries, airfields, ports, and command centers. An additional wave could include decoys, one-way attack drones, low-altitude cruise missiles, ballistic missiles including KN-23 and KN-24, and hypersonic systems. 

Nuclear-tipped missiles could be mixed with conventionally armed weapons to generate attack uncertainty like a “haystack attack.” South Korean operators might not be able to discern which incoming objects are decoys, which carry conventional warheads, and which are armed with nuclear warheads. As a result, Seoul would be compelled to consume their stock of interceptors against numerous targets. North Korea does not need hundreds of drones to neutralize the KAMD. It would instead need drones that could damage radar, communications vehicles, generators, reloading systems, or command hubs long enough for ballistic missiles to penetrate successfully. 

The Atlantic Council’s Guardian Tiger tabletop exercises explicitly revealed this problem. In one scenario, North Korea employed a low-yield nuclear weapon against ROK Navy facilities. In response, the United States chose to conduct strong conventional strike operations instead of opting for nuclear retaliation, partially because of concerns about escalation with China. 

These risks could be amplified during a Taiwan conflict with American military assets heavily deployed in the Taiwan Strait. Under such circumstances, North Korea could use mobilization, missile attacks, or tactical nuclear blackmail either to coerce the United States into dispersing its assets or to restrict Seoul’s support for Taiwan operations. Meanwhile, China might disapprove of North Korea’s use of nuclear weapons but still intervene to forestall regime collapse.  

South Korea should respond by denying North Korea confidence in such a strategy. In that regard, the following six recommendations are worth pursuing, either individually or collectively. 

First, the Three-Axis System should be operated as a continuously functioning, integrated architecture instead of three mutually separated stages. Intelligence, cyber operations, electronic warfare, missile defense, long-range strikes, civil defense, continuity of government functions, and nuclear consultation with the United States should be aligned through prearranged response options. 

Second, every base that hosts a major missile-defense system should be equipped with its own independent, low-cost counter-drone defense layer. This should include passive sensors, short-range radars, jammers, programmable airburst guns, low-cost missiles, decoys, protected power generation, and rapid recovery teams. 

Third, South Korea should also increase the depth of its interceptor magazine. Reload vehicles, storage and production facilities, and communications networks should be dispersed and protected. 

Fourth, the Kill Chain should concentrate less on searching for every mobile launcher and focus more on destroying the broader launch ecosystem, including tunnel entrances, command nodes, reloading points, transportation support, communications relays, and choke points. 

Fifth, Washington and Seoul also need a classified bilateral plan concerning North Korea’s limited nuclear use. This should regulate viable responses to a demonstrative nuclear explosion, an attack on military bases, and the use of nuclear weapons during a Taiwan contingency. 

Finally, South Korea should also prove that a single nuclear strike cannot paralyze the country. Thus, dispersed aircraft, alternative ports, hardened command posts, emergency runway repair, redundant communications hubs, and diverse measures for the continuity of government functions are at the core of a deterrence through resilience strategy. 

In all, North Korea’s nuclear threshold will rise only when Kim Jong-un concludes that limited nuclear options are not viable on the Korean Peninsula. Seoul should convince Pyongyang that a single nuclear attack would not fragment alliances, secure China’s protection, or end the war on North Korea’s terms, but would instead expose the North Korean regime to uncontrollable escalation and destruction. 

Dr. Ju Hyung Kim is President of the Security Management Institute, a defense think tank affiliated with the South Korean National Assembly. He researches East Asian security, military strategy, and alliance management and has published widely in international defense and foreign-policy outlets. Views expressed in this article are the author’s own. 

North Korea’s Emerging Limited Nuclear-Use Strategy was originally published on Global Security Review.

The ongoing conflict involving Iran, the United States, and Israel has produced one of the most significant case studies in the evolution of contemporary warfare. Iran, a state that lacks a competitive air force and possesses limited naval power, has demonstrated that ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and unmanned aerial systems can offset some conventional disadvantages and impose serious costs on technologically superior adversaries. This development is not confined to the battlefield. It represents a doctrinal shift with lasting implications for American deterrence strategy, allied defense planning, and the long-term viability of current U.S. force structures. Understanding what Iran has and has not achieved is essential for making sound policy going forward.

The Cost-Exchange Problem 

At the operational level, Iran’s most consequential contribution has been exposing a structural vulnerability in layered air defense: the cost-exchange dilemma. Systems such as Patriot, THAAD, and Iron Dome were engineered to intercept high-value ballistic and cruise missile threats. When deployed against coordinated waves of low-cost drones and short-range missiles, these systems are forced to expend interceptors valued at hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars per shot against threats that cost a fraction of that amount. The arithmetic is unsustainable at scale. As analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies have noted, saturation attacks can exhaust defensive inventories faster than replenishment is possible, creating windows of vulnerability that adversaries are quick to exploit. For the United States, this is not merely a technical problem, it is a strategic one that requires urgent attention in both procurement and doctrine.

The development of the Golden Dome missile defense architecture and expanded investment in directed energy and electronic warfare systems reflect growing official awareness that current interception models are not cost-competitive. These are necessary steps. However, technology alone cannot resolve a dilemma that is fundamentally about the economics of offense versus defense. Adversaries will adapt their tactics faster than procurement cycles can respond unless the U.S. also changes the strategic logic driving their calculations.

Attrition Without Decision: The Limits of the Iranian Model

The Iranian approach has imposed genuine costs on its adversaries, but it has not produced decisive military outcomes. This distinction is critical. Iran’s missile and drone campaigns have disrupted logistics, strained defensive inventories, and created operational uncertainty. They have not, however, defeated U.S. or Israeli military power, seized or held territory, or forced a negotiated settlement on Iranian terms. The model is one of strategic attrition, not strategic victory. Survivability and persistence are not equivalent to effectiveness, and the broader narrative of a drone revolution rendering conventional military power obsolete requires significant qualification.

The claim that air superiority is no longer a necessary condition for strategic effectiveness also warrants scrutiny. Air superiority remains essential for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; for close air support of ground operations; and for denying adversaries freedom of movement. What Iran’s campaign demonstrates is that a state without air superiority can still impose costs and delay adversary operations—not that air power has been rendered irrelevant. The bar for what air superiority can guarantee has been raised. Its strategic value, however, has not disappeared. Policymakers and analysts should resist the temptation to draw sweeping conclusions from a conflict that remains ongoing and whose full operational record is still emerging.

Implications for American Deterrence

The proliferation of precision strike capabilities across state and non-state actors undermines the assumption that technological overmatch alone is sufficient to deter conflict. When adversaries can field asymmetric capabilities that challenge U.S. and allied defenses at an acceptable cost to themselves, deterrence by denial becomes increasingly difficult to guarantee. The U.S. must prioritize cost-effective interception technologies, particularly directed energy weapons, that can neutralize mass drone and missile attacks without depleting high-value interceptor stocks. This is a resource allocation problem as much as it is an engineering one, and it demands serious engagement at the budgetary and strategic planning levels.

The Iranian model is also exportable, and this may prove to be its most consequential long-term dimension. States with limited defense budgets that are aligned with China or Russia can observe the operational lessons from this conflict and apply them in their own regional contexts. The proliferation of domestically produced or externally transferred missile and drone capabilities across the Middle East, South Asia, and the Indo-Pacific represents a compounding deterrence challenge. American extended deterrence commitments to allies in these regions will become harder to sustain if the cost-exchange problem is not structurally resolved. As Defense News reported, the proliferation of drone technology is already forcing militaries worldwide to reconsider their approach to air and missile defense.

There is also a crisis stability dimension that deserves serious attention. Rapid, sustained missile and drone strikes compress decision-making timelines and increase pressure for early, and potentially disproportionate, responses. In a multipolar environment where multiple actors possess similar strike capabilities, the risk of miscalculation is elevated. The U.S. should pursue updated arms control frameworks and diplomatic mechanisms to manage the proliferation of these systems alongside its technical and procurement investments. Deterrence cannot be reduced to hardware alone.

Conclusion

Iran’s missile and drone campaign has not rewritten the principles of warfare, but it has exposed critical assumptions underpinning American deterrence in ways that cannot be ignored. Distributed, low-cost, high-impact systems are now accessible to a wider range of actors and the gap between offensive capability and defensive cost is widening. The United States requires a

deterrence posture that integrates cost-effective defense, credible offensive options, active non-proliferation diplomacy, and sustained alliance management. Meeting this challenge demands strategic adaptation across doctrine, procurement, and diplomacy, not simply an incremental increase in interceptor production.

Dr. Tahir Mahmood Azad is currently a research scholar at the Department of Politics & International Relations, the University of Reading, UK. Views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Iran’s Missile-Drone Campaign and Its Implications for the United States’ Deterrence was originally published on Global Security Review.