Milley also dedicated time to making sure that the U.S. military understood the risks and was prepared for a possible conflict with North Korea. Inside the Pentagon, he warned that any conflict with Pyongyang would lead to massive loss of life and catastrophic damage. At the same time, he pushed the Pentagon to rethink how such a war might be fought and to improve the readiness of the entire joint force to carry out an attack on North Korea if ordered, said a senior Army official. Most of the Army's plans for a war on the peninsula were predicated on North Korean aggression rather than American offensive action to blunt a growing North Korean threat.