Strike on North Korea

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Mr Quatro

Think about how a conventional war would be over in three days ... all NK strategic targets eliminated on first strike ... No NK air force or navy left when the NK army runs out of supplies and the war is over.

No nuclear fallout ... rocket man dead or missing in action. White flag is flown as the entire world slams America for doing such a vile and terrible thing to a poor nation like NK.

Excellent!

Now back to reality.

The US has no chance of finding all of the DPRKs nuclear missiles, it took days of hunting back in the 1990s to get Saddams scuds and that was in the relatively flat terrain of Iraq. North Korea has mountains and tunnels everywhere. They have spent sixty years fortifying their country.
As for hitting 'Rocket Man', you mean like how the US immediately managed to hit and kill Saddam Hussein on the first day of the invasion of Iraq? You know, that important mission where they killed him at Dora Farms where he hadn't been in five years.
So, the US launches an attack, or perhaps even before it does, North Korea launches...not just one missile, not some artillery shells...but its entire nuclear arsenal. There's two scenarios, the best scenario is that they just hit South Korea, Guam and Japan, in an attempt to destroy as many airfield and military bases as possible. The worst scenario is that they go all out and target cities in South Korea, Japan and the US mainland. The latter is more likely than many would think since we've been telling Kim Jong-un for several months that we're going to kill him as early as possible in our attack...so why should he sit around and wait to be killed when he can kill as many Americans as possible on the way down?
Of course, the nuclear missiles are just part of the fun, mixed in with them will be all kinds of chemical and biological weaponry, which will rain down on Seoul and Tokyo, perhaps even American cities too. Kim Jong-un has seen the Invasion of Iraq, he's seen the invasion of Afghanistan, he knows that the US has a major advantage in air power...so why do you think that he's going to sit back and let the US smash him into the dirt like a good little boy? He knows the best way to beat the US airforce is to launch everything before the US airforce can reach it. Which means if he even gets a itch on the back of his head that a US decapitation strike is coming in, he launches. If his radar system malfunctions and tells him that a US cruise missile is heading for Pyongyang, he launches. The North Korean missile system will not be set up to fail safe, it will be set up to fail deadly. Even if by some miracle we do kill Kim Jong-un in the first few minutes of the attack, the loss of communications will prompt the missile forces to launch. Have you ever heard about how the Royal Navy SSBN force detects that a nuclear war has begun? It listens to hear communications from headquarters...if it can't get headquarters then it listens for the BBC Radio service, if it can't get that then it's assumed that London is now an atomic crater and the captain opens the envelope of last resort.
Chances are that the DPRK has a similar system, so killing Kim Jong-un and/or destroying the DPRK communications network will basically tell the missile commanders to fire.
At this point it's basically a dice game as to whether the missile interceptors will get them all, but with an estimated 1,000+ ballistic missiles within North Korea, some will get through. At that point you just pray that whatever comes through just as a conventional warhead.

So, at this point Seoul is in ruins, Japan is on fire, there's a reasonable chance that a couple of US cities are on fire and hundreds of thousands have just died. Now it's time to actually start the war with North Korea.
Remember Japan in World War II? Japan was quite an open society compared to North Korea. Go and read up on Operation Downfall.

Done? Ok, you'll note that the US military is still using Purple Heart medals which were made for Operation Downfall. The estimate by the US military for casualties during the invasion of Japan was greater than every single casualty suffered by the US in war since 1945. A DoD report from a while ago estimated 200,000 to 300,000 US and ROK casualties within the first 90 days, and that was before nuclear weapons got factored into the equation.

Do you really think that a populace which has been brainwashed for sixty years is just going to fold? Especially if you've just taken out their leader. It would have been a bit like killing the Japanese Emperor before you bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Do you think that the North Korean military has not noted the weakness of American forces to asymmetric warfare which has been waged against it by insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq?

Think about it seriously for a moment, and think about the conflicts since 2001, and now think about a force that has chemical, biological and nuclear weaponry conducting insurgent style attacks against US forces. Think of the death toll.

Sure, the Allied forces would win, there's no question that the US would win a war with North Korea, but at the end of it there's probably going to be a lot of caskets with American flags on them landing in US airbases. As well as the big clear-up operations in whatever cities have had their centers destroyed. Oh, and the Asian economy would probably collapse, which means that the global economy would go with it. Oh...and if the US hits North Korea first, then there's always the possibility that China will step in, in fact, there's that possibility anyway if the US decides to invade North Korea. So that would be fun.

So yeah, easy stuff, should be over by Christmas.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Platapus

Lemme guess: And we will be greeted as liberators

now where have I heard that before.

Some lessons are just never learnt. Still...at least this one actually does have WMD.

[Reece]

Originally Posted by Mr Quatro

Think about how a conventional war would be over in three days ... all NK strategic targets eliminated on first strike ... No NK air force or navy left when the NK army runs out of supplies and the war is over.

No nuclear fallout ... rocket man dead or missing in action. White flag is flown as the entire world slams America for doing such a vile and terrible thing to a poor nation like NK.

Ah that was a nice dream, you can wake up now!

[Onkel Neal]

Man, people tootle merrily along while a maniac dictator guides his crazy town regime on a nuclear ICBM building crusade, loudly promising to use them on the US, but wet their pants when the US pushes back.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Onkel Neal

Man, people tootle merrily along while a maniac dictator guides his crazy town regime on a nuclear ICBM building crusade, loudly promising to use them on the US, but wet their pants when the US pushes back.

What can I say, it's disconcerting when a superpower with a vast nuclear arsenal uses the same kind of language as a 'maniac dictator' with his 'crazy town regime'.

[Onkel Neal]

Yes, but again, no distress over the NK building nuclear weapons.

If you read the text, it's obvious what Trump is saying is pretty well understood to be the consequences of NK lighting off a nuke on the US or our allies, they will be destroyed.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Onkel Neal

If you read the text, it's obvious what he is saying is pretty well understood. If NK lights off a nuke on the US or our allies, they will be destroyed.

Pretty sure that much is a given. Of course, if they think they're going to be destroyed anyway. Regime change and all that fancy stuff.

Would sure be nice if Washington could decide if it's going to bomb North Korea or not, all this talk about not letting North Korea have a nuclear arsenal is a bit moot considering it already has one. Likewise, putting North Korea under constant military pressure is just asking for trouble. Neal, you know Operation Able Archer 1983, you know what almost happened. You know about Stanislaw Petrov. You really think the North Korean system is better than the Soviet system of the 1980s?

[Onkel Neal]

I heard a piece about Stanislaw Petrov on NPR on the way home today. He died about 4 months ago, it said. Alas. Good thing the man had strong nerves and common sense or we would all be glowing now.

Yes, NK has nukes but I'm hoping they don't have the delivery system perfected. But if nothing is done.... I guess we will have to see how reliable their systems are. I have always thought it is simply a matter of time and luck before a nuke is used somewhere in the world. Allowing nutjobs like NK to have them just makes it worse. Imagine in 5 years and the people in NK rise up like the Romanians did, and lil Kim is facing capture and execution. It's not hard to imagine he may decide to push the button, what the hell, I'll take them out with me.

It's a shame the US, China, and Russia cannot agree to stop this madness, remove the regime, and liberate the people of NK.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Onkel Neal

I heard a piece about Stanislaw Petrov on NPR on the way home today. He died about 4 months ago, it said. Alas. Good thing the man had strong nerves and common sense or we would all be glowing now.

Agreed. We can only hope that North Korea has such men too.

Yes, NK has nukes but I'm hoping they don't have the delivery system perfected.

The data is beginning to add up that they either have or will have very, very soon. Of course, the only way we'll know for sure is when they fire a nuclear missile into the Pacific and detonate it...which I suspect that they might do at some point since we seem unable to believe that they could have a working delivery system. They do pay close attention to US media (the poor sods) and they note the doubts that pundits put on their program, and then arrange their next test to demonstrate that they can do what we think they can't.

But if nothing is done.... I guess we will have to see how reliable their systems are. I have always thought it is simply a matter of time and luck before a nuke is used somewhere in the world.

I agree, it would have been nice if we could have postponed the nuclear exchange a bit longer though. Perhaps we'll get lucky, if the rhetoric can be de-escalated then perhaps we can pull through this. Tillerson seems to know what he's doing, but the Donald then promptly undermines his efforts.

Allowing nutjobs like NK to have them just makes it worse. Imagine in 5 years and the people in NK rise up like the Romanians did, and lil Kim is facing capture and execution. It's not hard to imagine he may decide to push the button, what the hell, I'll take them out with me.

One of the reasons why...and I hate to say it, but with North Korea it may well be 'better the devil you know'. Trying to cause his regime to collapse is probably just asking for him to push the button on the way down. As disgusting as the North Korean regime is...we may well have to find a way to live with it, perhaps even support it through food aid...just to avoid that potentially lethal scenario. I don't like it, and no-one should, but I like the thought of mushroom clouds over Asia even less.

It's a shame the US, China, and Russia cannot agree to stop this madness, remove the regime, and liberate the people of NK.

If only it were that simple. Leaving aside the geo-political fallout from that for a moment, any attempt to remove the regime will result in nuclear launches. I would not be surprised if there are one or two Hwasong-12s or 10s pointed at Beijing. North Korea and China are not on good terms right now, and Kim would have no qualms in nuking the nation that betrayed him.
Then there's the liberation of the people of NK, that in itself is an incredibly difficult task. Leaving aside the war itself, which I've already touched on, you've got millions...well...probably a few million less after the war, but nevertheless a large population of people who will require the biggest humanitarian aid mission since the Syrian civil war...heck, probably since the Second World War, most of them will probably try to flee into South Korea or China, which will strain the resources of either nation to breaking point as they try to house hundreds of thousands of refugees. Then there's the difficult economics of trying to glue two nations together. Look at Germany, it's been nearly thirty years since the wall came down and yet you can see the outlines of the old GDR in a social and economic map, North Korea will be a thousand times more difficult than that.

It's a task that could be accomplished, but it would require co-ordination that I don't think has ever been displayed by countries before, as well as a massive humanitarian aid budget that I don't think any nation could afford.

[Mr Quatro]

Originally Posted by Onkel Neal

It's a shame the US, China, and Russia cannot agree to stop this madness, remove the regime, and liberate the people of NK.

It is a shame and in hindsight if they fail to do anything they will get the blame.

It's almost like they are watching a chess match with limited moves left available.

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Mr Quatro

It's almost like they are watching a chess match with limited moves left available.

Originally Posted by me

Since KimmyBBY cannot be insane and keep his head in a country like N. Korea his actions continue to impress me that he is the mineshaft canary for China to test Western RIMPAC resolve by any means especially as the illegal expansion into Tibet and the South China Sea are still #1 on China's longterm economic expansion agenda. Our distracted immediate focus on N. Korea thus serves China's long-term interests. Continued US presence on the Korean peninsula is distinctly antithetical to that geopolitical interest, much as Cuba, and egotistical Castro, was the patsy in the 60's missile crises test of the Monroe Doctrine.

Little Kim is acting in China's interests; not vice versa-even if China does not actually 'control' their 'client puppet' who is a third generation hereditary megalomaniac. Like Germany after WWI he is poor, geographically hemmed in, and no place to go Lebensraum-wise. He is an international thief and murderer (his half brother & illicit wire transfer of bitcoin and currency)...we should brook no further aggression based on the lessons already learned in the '40's and move to eradicate the problem permanently. Essentially this is Harry Truman's unfinished police action, an unstable armistice now in need of completion. Trump talks big (at the UN) but has he got the stomach for it??!

[Platapus]

We have almost no control over how KJU acts, but we still have control over how we act.

The most important thing is for the US not to exasperate or escalate this situation. Unfortunately, this means putting a check on our pride and emotions. Just a reminder that we have Trump as PotUS.

We HAVE to be the mature party here. We can not sink to KJU's level.

No one knows what will happen. Perhaps KJU will do something suicidal. I hope not. But it is critical that we don't do anything that can push KJU into doing something stupid.

Matching crazy with crazy is not going to end well.

[blackswan40]

the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 that was three years before I was born but
JFK and Nikita Khrushchev were both Statesmen that time the Russians blinked first and backed down.
Will KJU do the same or will he up the anti by launching another missile over Japan or firing one nearer to USA
What would Russia or China do if the test Missiles were flying over their Countries would they be sat on the fence so to speak I think not

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by me

Little Kim is acting in China's interests; not vice versa-even if China does not actually 'control' their 'client puppet' who is a third generation hereditary megalomaniac.

Originally Posted by platypus

Matching crazy with crazy is not going to end well.

Originally Posted by blackswan40

would Russia or China do if the test Missiles were flying over their Countries would they be sat on the fence so to speak I think not

http://www.thedailybeast.com/what-happens-if-trump-totally-destroys-north-korea-the-real-fighting-begins

The North Koreans are indoctrinated to hate Americans, almost all males have military training, and they will have guns. Moreover, the population has been raised on a myth glorifying “partisan warfare.” So what could be more dangerous? As South Korean and American forces move north, the Chinese would probably move south.
China’s military would also want to find nuclear weapons, stocks of chemical and biological agents, and ballistic missiles. Beijing, however, covets something even more important to China: paper. The Chinese would need to secure North Korean archives, which will likely show their complicity in the Kim family’s weapons programs and its horrific crimes. This means China almost certainly would try to secure the capital of Pyongyang and weapons sites before South Korean and American forces did so.
South Korean and American military officers and diplomats have, for decades, tried to discuss with their Chinese counterparts what happens when, for whatever reason, the Kim regime can no longer rule. Maxwell points out that “this can hardly be called coordination.”
Why not? “These engagements,” he said, “are generally one-way with no reciprocal sharing from the Chinese side.” Therefore, Beijing, at least at this time, does not seem to be particularly interested in attempts to “minimize misunderstanding and miscalculation.”
It is often said that Chinese officials do not participate in these discussions for fear of offending their North Korean allies. Another reason, however, may be that Chinese military officers do not want to reveal their plans because they want to control the northern portion of the Korean Peninsula. [Continued US presence on the Korean peninsula is distinctly antithetical to that geopolitical interest...This is about China, not its patsy North Korea. ]

Imho: the military annihilation of N Korea will lead to a major sino-American confrontation which the Chinese desperately wish to avoid; preferring a long range time-consuming path to Asiatic geopolitical dominance.

[vienna]

Gen. John Kelly, who is tasked with somehow trying to mitigate the damage done by Trump, reacting to Trump's speech at the UN:






General Kelly, we feel your pain and you have our sympathies...





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