Post: #351

(04-25-2017 12:39 PM)CaptainChardonnay Wrote:  What is your point? Obviously they would move troops along the border to contain the war and prevent it from moving into their countries.

The idea that Russia would ever side with the USA against the DPRK, or even take a passive neutral attitude if the US actually attacked is ridiculous. Russia will defend the DPRK with its own real nuclear weapons which it has thousands of, even if it doesn't agree with the DPRK's style of government.

If you need any reminder of the closeness of these 2 countries, take a look at these:

Post: #352

I found an interesting website that provides news on North Korea.

https://nkleadershipwatch.wordpress.com/...ed-by-kpa/

Kim Jong Un examines accordions.

   

Post: #353

(04-25-2017 09:51 AM)sterling_archer Wrote:  Anybody heard of conspiracy theory that says that NK in fact completely lost Korean War and USA became ruler of NK and started to control their government. In that case NK has puppet government. But why? Apparently NK is some sort of experiment for future new world order.

Crazy sounding yes, but interesting.

If this crazy theory is ever proven true, then we need to re-evaluate the real role of US president Jimmy Carter.
He may not be as harmless as everyone thinks him to be.
Here he is getting real friendly with Kim Il-sung.

Post: #354

Even US president Bill Clinton is suspect...

Also, see that 3rd guy standing in back row behind Clinton....that's Mr Pizzagate himself - John Podesta !!!






Another one with John Podesta, Bill Clinton and Kim Jong-il

Post: #355

Those pictures of American presidents with North Korean leaders show nothing more than that North Korea wasn't always considered a threat. The real threat back then was Grenada. Step 1: Demonize, Step 2: bomb and invade. America has the best propaganda machine in the world. Nobody even comes close. Now that George Soros needs a stock market in North Korea that he can loot, North Korea is considered a threat. But Russia and China don't consider North Korea a threat and they are neighbors. Leave them alone and let them play their accordions. North Korea has done nothing to you.

   

Post: #356

In fact, we have a good post somewhere in this thread detailing all the aggressive actions North Korea has taken against the US, including capturing a ship that they still hold today.

Post: #357

(04-25-2017 02:13 PM)weambulance Wrote:  

In fact, we have a good post somewhere in this thread detailing all the aggressive actions North Korea has taken against the US, including capturing a ship that they still hold today.

When the Pueblo was seized, America was at war with Vietnam. I wonder what America would do if North Korea put a spy ship off the coast of Maine while bombing Canada, even if it was in international waters. But nobody else has the right to defend themselves. Also notice, the meetings with Carter and Clinton was after the Vietnam war.

Post: #358

You just said "they never did anything to you" and now you're trying to justify them having done something to us.

Nice one.

Post: #359

(04-25-2017 02:45 PM)weambulance Wrote:  You just said "they never did anything to you" and now you're trying to justify them having done something to us.

Nice one.

Okay, maybe you are right. Has a North Korean ever done anything to you? Give us your personal story. This is valid.

Post: #360

That is such an absurd argument, I have no means by which to appropriately show my scorn.

Post: #361

Sherman, I think we have to differentiate between state interests and public interests. Taking out the NK regime does absolutely nothing for the American people, but it may be a power play/strategic move for the US ruling class.

I personally don't give two shits how barbaric Kim Jong may be. He poses no threat to me whatsoever. But he might pose a threat to the elite, and when that happens, they restructure the media propaganda to serve their needs.

Quote:Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship…
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

- Hermann Goering

Post: #362

....




The only (non Korean) man powerful enough to sit next to (and actually touch and hug !) Kim Jong-un is ex US basketball star Dennis Rodman.


I wish these images were photoshop, but they are 100% real.
You can't make this crazy shit up if you tried.
sterling_archer's conspiracy theory about the DPRK being a US puppet state psyop is looking more likely every time I think about it.

Post: #363

Delete

Post: #364

No mystery here. North Koreans like basketball as well as accordions. When an "enemy" has been demonized, you actually need to form a conspiracy theory to explain that they like ordinary things. After all, does the devil play an accordion? This has nothing to do with North Korea. Look into your own mind and notice the powerful effects of propaganda.

   

Post: #365

How did they become "friends" in the first place, what is Rodman's interest in NK, etc...

Post: #366

(04-25-2017 03:29 PM)sterling_archer Wrote:  How did they become "friends" in the first place, what is Rodman's interest in NK, etc...

Kim Jong is an avid Chicago Bulls fan and is reportedly obsessed with Michael Jordan. I suspect MJ didn't want to visit the place because that would be bad PR for him, but Rodman doesn't have that problem since he is viewed as a total nutjob already.

Post: #367

(04-25-2017 01:59 AM)CaptainChardonnay Wrote:  Waiting around for them to develop a WMD is not a strategy in my opinion because they are doing it and it is only a matter of time before they have something that works. A lot of people think they aren't stupid enough to actually use it but why give them the chance. Also if they have WMD, what is stopping them from selling those weapons to US enemies around the world? They have a history of selling arms, drugs, etc to anyone willing to buy because their economy is so much in the gutter.

Perhaps airborne troops would be deployed along the north most border to keep the Chinese out and the NKs in and more troops to push South. Soldiers along the DMZ would face waves of NK soldiers rushing South.

Many troops would need to be deployed inside SK to counter the tunnels that NK has dug under the DMZ to SK. SK would mobilize all available troops while moving civilians to the Souther most point of the region out of range of conventional artillery.

Special Forces would be tasked with things like pilot rescue, capturing HVTs, and hunting down NK missiles like the their SCUDS, KN-11, Hwasong-10, Pukguksong-2, etc (just picked some random ones off wikipedia).

After the war the reunified Korea would need to pay back the US for lives lost and money spent in perpetuity.

Hopefully China and Russia are on board with the plan and don't enter the war as enemies. They would ideally realize that the US's problem with NK could also extend to them if they ever were to have a falling out and that it would be best to form a coalition with the US to take down NK or at worst stay neutral in the conflict. A deal could be made with China to remove all US military personnel from Korea after the war (not Japan however). This would benefit the Chinese as a huge trading partner that will be right along their border, same with Russia.

After the war, surviving NKs will need to be reeducated in how the world currently works. This should be done by the SKs for obvious reasons. I think NKs would be extremely helpful in the rebuilding effort.

Major things to keep in mind are:
1. The sheer size of the NK army compared to the force the US, SK, and Japan are able to deploy.

2. NK air defence, from what I read are on par with the Russian S300 system.

3. Underground bunkers, clearing them out and finding all the entrance and exits

4. The NK fighting spirit

5. The general morale of the US public.

Quote:The North Koreans spent the better part of the last war with the U.S. being heavily battered by air bombardments. They have had plenty of time since then to consider this problem and prepare.

.......


After writing this, war in NK would result in a massive loss of US lives and I am not sure if this is worth it for the United States however I want to open the dialogue to see other hypothetical perspectives because this is a topic that I'm interested in.

THANK YOU for posting a meaningful comment on this thread.

I have a few comments on what you wrote:

1. NK already has WMD... they have had one of the worlds largest stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons for decades. We used that as a (false) pretense to go to war in the past, but only because we needed some excuse to ratinalize our attempt to exert our National (or neocon) interests. So this whole nuclear thing is almost irrelevant, since they could have deployed chemical/bio weapons now for decades.

2. China WILL get involved if the regime collapses. They will not let a buffer state be taken over, so they will invade to control the refugee crisis if nothing else.

3. South Koreans have no real desire to unify with NK, that ship sailed a long time ago. They have become hyper obsessed with capitalism, and will not go through the extreme pain it would take to develop the north. Even Germany still feels this today, when E and W Germany were not nearly as different as NK an SK are today.

4. You are completely right about all the bunkers, tunnels, artillery, etc... that NK has. Any kind of conflict with them will not be pretty, and will require mobilization efforts much more than what we have there now. The US is not prepared for a war with NK, especially since we are ramping up operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and now Somalia.

5. Look at the troop buildup prior to the war in Iraq. It was clear something was going down. We have troops in a high readiness along the border, but we are not at full war footing there - our concentration is in the middle east. If I was Kim Jong Un I would be sending weapons over to Assad at the rapid rate.

6. SK won't pay anything to pay us back. They don't pay us anything now to keep our troops there. In fact I think we pay them for the privilege. After any war SK would have to spend all it's money dealing with fixing the north, we would not see a dime but we'd spend a pretty penny.

7. Economic and Political solutions can fix this problem better. There's still a lot of ways the NK regime can feel the pain before we strike.


Now back to more NK accordian discussions...

Post: #368

(04-25-2017 01:59 AM)CaptainChardonnay Wrote:  Waiting around for them to develop a WMD is not a strategy in my opinion because they are doing it and it is only a matter of time before they have something that works. A lot of people think they aren't stupid enough to actually use it but why give them the chance. Also if they have WMD, what is stopping them from selling those weapons to US enemies around the world? They have a history of selling arms, drugs, etc to anyone willing to buy because their economy is so much in the gutter.

Perhaps airborne troops would be deployed along the north most border to keep the Chinese out and the NKs in and more troops to push South. Soldiers along the DMZ would face waves of NK soldiers rushing South.

Many troops would need to be deployed inside SK to counter the tunnels that NK has dug under the DMZ to SK. SK would mobilize all available troops while moving civilians to the Souther most point of the region out of range of conventional artillery.

Special Forces would be tasked with things like pilot rescue, capturing HVTs, and hunting down NK missiles like the their SCUDS, KN-11, Hwasong-10, Pukguksong-2, etc (just picked some random ones off wikipedia).

After the war the reunified Korea would need to pay back the US for lives lost and money spent in perpetuity.

Hopefully China and Russia are on board with the plan and don't enter the war as enemies. They would ideally realize that the US's problem with NK could also extend to them if they ever were to have a falling out and that it would be best to form a coalition with the US to take down NK or at worst stay neutral in the conflict. A deal could be made with China to remove all US military personnel from Korea after the war (not Japan however). This would benefit the Chinese as a huge trading partner that will be right along their border, same with Russia.

After the war, surviving NKs will need to be reeducated in how the world currently works. This should be done by the SKs for obvious reasons. I think NKs would be extremely helpful in the rebuilding effort.

Major things to keep in mind are:
1. The sheer size of the NK army compared to the force the US, SK, and Japan are able to deploy.

2. NK air defence, from what I read are on par with the Russian S300 system.

3. Underground bunkers, clearing them out and finding all the entrance and exits

4. The NK fighting spirit

5. The general morale of the US public.

Quote:The North Koreans spent the better part of the last war with the U.S. being heavily battered by air bombardments. They have had plenty of time since then to consider this problem and prepare.

.......


After writing this, war in NK would result in a massive loss of US lives and I am not sure if this is worth it for the United States however I want to open the dialogue to see other hypothetical perspectives because this is a topic that I'm interested in.

As to the bolded point, I was reminded of the alleged fearsome strength of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi Republican Guard ahead of the first Gulf War. I remember some idiot even suggesting the fuckers had lasers or similar. Prior to the US invasion Saddam allegedly had the fifth largest army in the world, one million men. But as the LA Times of 1990 said...

Quote:More than any other country, Iraq is a nation under arms--a society dominated to an unparalleled degree by a war machine that consumes fully a quarter of the country's oil-rich treasure and half of its able-bodied men.

Already Iraq's army is the fifth largest in the world, a million men and growing, larger in raw numbers than the U.S. Army and Marine Corps combined. Currently mobilizing still more men, U.S. analysts now believe, Baghdad soon will have boosted that force by half, handing weapons and uniforms to three of every four men between the ages of 15 and 49. And each of these soldiers is held to a standard of unquestioning loyalty to one man: Saddam Hussein.

"In many ways, Iraq is like the Soviet Union: A great hell of a big military establishment," said a U.S. official. "It's their chief industry. They produce dates and oil and weapons"--and little else, he said.

But the Goliath of the Middle East has critical weaknesses, shortcomings that U.S. military planners will seek to exploit if the current standoff in the desert should become a shooting war.

The Iraqi army is an experienced, highly disciplined and well-equipped force--capable even of a complex helicopter-borne assault like the commando raid 10 days ago that seized the emir's palace in Kuwait city long before heavy tanks arrived to secure the captured capital.

The army's loyalty to Hussein is enforced by a code that imposes death for failure, with one sadly blundering general executed by the dictator himself in the early days of the Iran-Iraq War.

And in its current posture, dug in around Kuwait, it is an army on its firmest ground, a force that by experience and doctrine is most formidable on defense.

Also, Iraq--by Third World standards at least--has developed a formidable munitions industry, developing even such relatively sophisticated military hardware as ballistic missiles, airborne radar and chemical and nuclear weapons.

There are weaknesses, however.

The Iraqi senior staff is riddled with incompetents chosen not for military prowess but for allegiance to Hussein, according to American analysts.

Only about a third of the huge army's soldiers are experienced, front-line combat troops.

And despite the skill of its veteran field commanders in holding defensive ground, they are considered less impressive when called on to attack, potentially inept at maneuvering large numbers of troops and tanks when confronted with the unexpected.

Iraq's air force is large but weak, its air defenses primitive by Western standards, its navy virtually non-existent.

The bottom line, according to a U.S. government analyst who has spent years studying the Iraqi military: "Israel would kick the heck out of them. We would kick the heck out of them."

That confidence goes to the presumed ability of U.S. forces to repel an Iraqi attack. No one, however, is speaking of trying to dislodge the 150,000-member Iraqi force now dug into fortified positions in southern Kuwait. The U.S. force, even if it grows to the projected 100,000 troops and even with America's vastly superior air and naval power, is unlikely to prevail in such a struggle without massive losses of men and equipment.

I have to say most of this does sound pretty familar and is probably fairly apposite to North Korea's position. And remember that assessment was made in 1990, before the US invaded.

Desert Shield under Bush I lasted literally 100 hours and was essentially a mass bombing campaign. Saddam's troops burned the Kuwait oil wells and then ran like hell.

Bush II's invasion of Iraq lasted two months and amounted to 21 days of actual combat operations. 172 coalition troops were killed, as against thirty thousand Iraqi troops. The ease with which the Iraqis were beaten was embarrassing. They even tried to surrender to US drones.

And remember that Saddam had fought a few wars in his time, in particular against Iran. North Korea literally has not actually fought anyone in an all-out conventional war since the armistice was signed. It keeps its hand in with pissy little Special Forces attempts to assassinate the South Korean President and occasionally making small amphibious landings on South Korean territory, but if it has any generals who actually fought a UN trooper back in the fifties they'd likely be in their nineties by now.

They don't have any significant fuel oil, they have 1980s-tech weaponry, their troops are mostly malnourished slave labour apart from a small "elite" (I use that because the Iraqi Republican Guard was supposedly "elite" too) and that weaponry seems more focused on suppressing North Korean coup attempts than South Korean invasions: one of the few new aircraft it's purchased since the 1980s were Su-25 Frogfoots, similar to the glorious old A-10 Thunderbolt*, focused on ground assault, likely to get its ass blown out of the sky by even a force composed of F-15s and F-16s -- which suggests they're more interested in gunning down their own civilians with no anti-air defences.

Yes, there's a lot of artillery and they could do a lot of damage to Seoul and surrounds in a short space of time, maybe even manage to finally squeeze a nuke into a missile and point it somewhere roughly in the direction of Inchon or Pusan. Essentially they'd blow a big wad in the space of about a week and then the country would be a USAF playground until China or Russia gets involved, following which it all bogs down into an Iraqi quagmire. But conventionally there's no way North Korea survives on its own for more than about 2 months. Throwing waves of poorly-trained troops at a technologically superior enemy only works if you're (a) fighting a guerrilla war and/or (b) defending Stalingrad.

Kim is basically the first and last line of North Korean defence because he, like his old man, is solid at bluffing. Guaranteed he will not launch nukes because it invites the US and the UN to call his bluff, and he's not holding more than a pair: a nuke and a conventional artillery strike on Seoul. The reason there are carriers stooging around North Korea is because Trump is playing Dirty Harry in The Enforcer: he has a massive fucking gun pointed at the crim holding a gun to a hostage. Harry simply says "Go ahead. Make my day." That is, shoot the hostage and give me moral authority to blow your ass to kingdom come. No different here: Trump is daring Kim to launch a nuke at a US carrier or at South Korea and thus free him to order the boomers waiting patiently offshore to launch. The fact Kim is still threatening nukes rather than launching them demonstrates he knows exactly what the score is.

* One of my fond memories of childhood is building a roughly 1:75 scale plastic model of the Fairchild. I fucked up a lot and left glistening snail trails of hardened model glue over one wing, and the weapon racks looked like they'd been put together and then loaded by Ray Charles, but it was the biggest plane in my collection and I loved it for all its light-grey twin-turbine awesomeness.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #369

^ Another great comment.

The Iraq comparison could be very applicable. I don't doubt for a second that NK army is a shadow of its prime 40 years ago. I read somewhere that NK pilots get something like 16 hours of flight training PER YEAR in their old junkets.

Mostly concur, but there are other cards you're missing, which is NK refugees and NK regime collapse. SK does not want to deal with a failed state. They don't want to be on the hook for billions to rebuild NK or deal with millions of refugees. They would much rather prefer the status quo.

China in particular, does not want this either, nor any major military action just south of its border. I suspect they would also invade to create a buffer zone under the guise of caring for refugees. US and China toe to toe is no bueno.

NK would not last 2 months, completely agree. SK has built up so much wealth, population, and infrastructure along the border that even a single arty salvo would disrupt their economy bigly, and I think they are happy to placate Fatty Kim in place of that.

Once you start seeing US military /DOD families leave Seoul Area, then somethings up.

Post: #370

My comment's basically limited to the straight conventional confrontation between the US and North Korea. On that measure, my game report would essentially be: a three-pointer in the first five minutes for North Korea and an assraping by the US for the remainder of the game. The US's military machine is simply unmatched across the entire world. The only reason anyone even comes close to winning against it is because it fights virtually all of its wars with one arm tied behind its back. Or even with fucking blindfolds on.

As to what the consequences of such a confrontation would be, that's another matter entirely. World War Two, especially now in the era of nukes, is looking like a distinct outlier of a conflict, a sociopolitical miracle when you judge the stability that was built right after its end.

I'm convinced by the posting in thread that reunification of the Koreas would be much, much more complex and fraught with problems than it might first appear. As I said way back, one of Russia's objections to the original UN intervention on the Korean peninsula was the argument that North and South Korea were one country, i.e. the UN wasn't supposed to intervene in civil wars. That argument seems to have been completely blown away now: seventy years of separation, capitalism on one side, permanent war footing on the other, have now created two countries where there was only one.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #371

I am not sure Iraq would be a good comparison to NK. Their SAMs are a lot of advance than what Iraq had and were recently a hot topic with Syria because Russia deployed similar units there. The reason Iraq got steam rolled so quickly was because of complete air superiority and ability to advance virtually unopposed to an enemy that was already defeated in DS1. Also from what I understand Saddam's forces were greatly destroyed after the Iran-Iraq conflict that lasted 7 years and killed this many of his troops, not to mention demoralize them and destroy equipment.

Quote:105,000–375,000 killed[34][36][37][38][39]
250,000–500,000 (other estimates)[40]
400,000 WIA[38]
70,000 POW[27][38]

Economic loss of $561 billion[26][36]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War

30 thousand troops is a lot less than the reported 1 million regular forces that NK has. Even if we were to use the ratio of 172 US soldiers to 30 thousand Iraqi soldiers, that would mean 5733 US soldiers compared to 1M NK soldiers.

This doesn't take into consideration their other 7M reserve soldiers (the rest of the NK population), who have been taught since birth that the US will come burn their villages, stomp their babies and rape their women.

Using a conservative number of 5M strong NK fighting force that would mean a little under than 30 000 US soldiers lost. Again this is considering that NK fights with the same ferocity as a Iraq soldier in DS2, weak, demoralized and without air support.

No matter how advance the technology, the forces fighting the NKs will need to kill the enemy and take ground on a NK mountainous terrain mixed in with thousands of underground tunnels and bunkers (unlike an Iraqi desert). A AK47 will kill just as a million dollar tomawak, they both do the same job.

Quote:Most of North Korea is a series of medium-sized mountain ranges and large hills, separated by deep, narrow valleys.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_North_Korea

The NK SAMs would at least initially deny airspace and allow their own MIG 29 and Su 25s and other aircraft to operate (no matter how small their airforce is). One must also consider that NK hasn't been in combat in over 50 years meaning they've also had all this time to stockpile and dig in. This whole 50 years they have considered the US the ultimate enemy and are taught that since birth. I don't think they would just go AWOL. They probably wouldn't even be able to go AWOL since they'd get shot for that. It's either fight or get shot by their own.

If you watch some of the videos I posted, their highways actually have large blocks that will be pushed onto the highway incase of a war to limit troop advancement. It's not that they have no combat experience. The way to see it is as they have been preparing for a war with the US for the past 50 years and have been stockpiling supplies in the just for this event. I think they would have obviously thought of things such as ammunition, food and fuel.

Quote:The KN-06 is a long-range SAM that bears resemblance to the Russian S-300 and Chinese FT-2000.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KN-06

Quote:The S-400 is the most advanced anti-aircraft defense system in Russia.

https://www.rt.com/news/361586-russia-s3...ied-syria/

http://www.janes.com/article/64377/russi...0-to-syria

Edit, it really depends on how many KN06 systems and MANPADs they have (which I think at least for MANPADs would be a shit ton). The more SAMs they have, the more SK will be bombarded because the US won't be able to take them out with aircraft. You also mentioned a guerrilla war. There will be a guerrilla war fought in the South. There are tunnels from NK directly under the DMZ to the South. In a time of war these tunnels will be used to sneak in NK hit and run teams and spys to wreck havoc on the South side also.

http://www.news.com.au/world/asia/inside...b02076bf3f

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Tunn...Aggression

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Dem...on_tunnels

Relevant

Post: #372

Spending 50 years preparing for war and not fighting any is sort of like being a 50 year old virgin. Also appropriate since North Korea basically blows its wad in 30 seconds in a real shooting war.

North Korea is also decimated: from a nationwide famine in the 1990s. It still hasn't recovered from that. Even their "Military First" policy didn't get the army fed. The extent to which it's still starving lies somewhere between the 2016 academic analysis that it's "like other developing [i.e. third world] countries", reports of malnutrition and food shortages, and the more extreme report that cannibalism has set in in some areas. Meat only gets eaten on public holidays. Maybe we'll finally figure out whether an army of vegans is superior to an army of omnivores.

I appreciate what you say about air defences. To which the answer is: Tomahawks and MOABs to start with, if not stealth bomber deployments, for the SAMs. US jamming or hacking North Korean defence systems, as they seem to have done on the last "Phut" for li'l Kim.

Dealing with MANPADs, it's simpler: B-52 bombing flights at well above MANPAD altitudes. In Vietnam they were called Arc Light strikes. As John Reed describes it:

https://johntreed.com/blogs/john-t-reed-...2s-to-iraq

Quote:The Air Force sent B-52s to Iraq. If they do Arc Light strikes with them—a plane load of 2,000 pound bombs—expect IS to leave Syria and Iraq. We hit Hanoi with them during Vietnam and the POWs said the guards at the Hanoi Hilton were totally freaked out by it. It is hard to overstate the physical and psychological effect of B-52 strikes on the targeted enemy. IS members will not feel jihad is fun anymore. They will also thereafter prefer the old ball and chain to 72 virgins.

I experienced one of those in Vietnam. We saw nothing and heard nothing of the explosions, but all of our buildings shook violently and loudly about once every two seconds. “WTF?” we thought and asked each other.

We later heard it was an Arc Light strike about 20 miles away. They can drop from 50,000 feet, about 15,000 feet higher than civilian airliners. You can barely see them or hear them coming. All the people at the target know is where they were standing suddenly turned into unspeakable hell without warning. Instant PTSD for the survivors.

When I flew around Vietnam in Hueys and Loaches, the whole countryside seemed full of round swimming pools. The soil is white sand and the B-52 craters were the size of houses. They get a lot of rain there so the craters soon fill up with water. As with a suburban swimming pool, the combination of a white-sided pool and water is an azure pool.

Here is an article about the psychological effect on the enemy:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/565005/posts Please make sure you read that article. If you don’t you miss a fantastic description of the profound, transcendent power of one of these attacks.

...

[Ted] Cruz said we should “carpet bomb” them. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpet_bombing) That is sort of illegal because of a 1977 international agreement. Also, bombing patterns generally need to match the shape of the target. Carpet bombing matches the shape of sections of a city or suburb. It was used in WW II on cities and on the Germans in the hedgerows in the St. Lo area to achieve the breakout from the Normandy beachhead.

Here is a call-out box from that Wikipedia article:

“The B-52s were restricted to bombing suspected Communist bases in relatively uninhabited sections, because their potency approached that of a tactical nuclear weapon. A formation of six B-52s, dropping their bombs from 30,000 feet, could "take out"... almost everything within a "box" approximately five-eights mile wide by two miles long. Whenever Arc Light struck ... in the vicinity of Saigon, the city woke from the tremor.”

Neil Sheehan, war correspondent, writing before the mass attacks to heavily populated cities including North Vietnam's capital.

And all of that, again, is assuming the US armed forces fighting with one big arm tied behind its back: nuclear weapons. Should Kim launch a nuke, the Second Korean War would be over in about half an hour and with only about 12 shots fired from the US: those being the unloading of one boomer's missile tubes. After all, it's Donald Trump who has been seriously asking the question "But why can't I use nukes?" He doesn't even have to ground detonate them: the EMP effect alone knocks out North Korea's SAM systems and most of its ability to coordinate any sort of organised resistance.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #373

When I say preparing for war I man stocking up ammunition, fuel and food.

The UN offered NK food for the famine. NK could have very much taken the food but not given it to it's own people as to not lose face. As was covered in the video I just posted. Who knows if they have a bunch of rice stocked up in tunnels scattered around the country.

As for air defence.

NK operates the Buk missile system and a s300 domestic variant. Both of these are mobile launchers and cannot just be bombed by a tomahawk. In DS1, special forces units had to go around and actively search out SCUD missiles to destroy them. Tomahawks need a target and if we don't know where the targets are then shooting them would be ineffective especially considering the environment is mountains with tunnels. High priority targets would be SAMs and artillery however they need to be designated first.

Quote:The Buk—which NATO designates as the SA-17 Grizzly—is designed to engage targets at ranges of 28 miles and altitudes of more than 82,000ft according to its manufacturer.

Quote:Weapons like the S-300 and S-400 form the top tier of Russian surface-to-air missile systems and are designed to protect strategically important areas. The S-300PMU-1 has a range of about 120 miles and can engage targets as high as 100,000ft.

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buz...wins-13905

The MOAB cannot be dropped initially during the conflict but as the NK anti air defence is destroyed then yes it can be dropped. The MOAB is dropped by the C130 which cannot be used initially in the conflict.

Quote:Service ceiling: 33,000 ft (10,060 m) empty;[86] 23,000 ft (7,077 m) with 42,000 pounds (19,090 kilograms) payload

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_C-130_Hercules

Quote:Same with the b52. Service ceiling: 50,000 ft (15,000 m

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-5...tofortress

The only possibilities would be the F22, F117, and B2 however it is uncertain if the KN-06 could take them out.

Another aspect you brought up would be yes, the US would be fighting with it's arm behind it's back (like it does in every war). The NK would not be expected to follow any kind of war convention.

I'm starting to think however that nuking them outright might be the best course of action to save American military lives, if this were to play out, however this would just freak the whole world out.

Again, the numbers I posted above of around 30k US casualties would be if they don't have any air defence, and on par with Saddam's forces.

Post: #374

@CaptainChardonnay

Great comment (yet again). We also forget that if we went "balls out" on NK, they could easily use chemical weapons, perhaps brought in through the tunnels, in SK cities or US garrisons where right now there are US families.

Perhaps we would respond with Nukes, but then that leads me to another question I feel is being left out by both you and Paracelsus.

What about China?

Are we to believe they would be fine with all out war and bombardment of NK? At what point would they start feeling uncomfortable and decide to intervene? They have the luxury of not having NK defenses oriented towards them, so they could at least get in much easier.

I think they have more skin in this game than we do, and will move in to create some sort of proto-buffer state.

Right now, even with all our troops/assets in SK, we are not ready for serious conflict. If we get involved there, it WILL require mass mobilization, at least akin to Gulf War 1, and we WILL be there for a while, diverting precious assets away from the Middle East, where once again we are getting stretched quite thin.

And one other thing that is being ignored: cost

We get next to nothing back from this. The recent fiascos in the middle east can at least somewhat be rationalized by supporting the petro dollar and saudi/sunni influence. We will get NOTHING from NK, because the cost of occupatoin/reconstruction would outway anything we could get from there, and anyway SK or probably china would occupy and extract all the goodies to begin with.

Then again, we seem to have no problem spending trillions here and there, so I could be wrong.

Post: #375

I have to agree with Paracelsus. NK likely has absolutely no idea what they're really in for and this will be nothing like previous wars or encounters.