Missiles of North Korea

I walked into an NK submarine from 20 years ago. I was not impressed. It had a regular old VCR sitting on a regular shelf like in a motorhome. And construction that would make a Victorian pipefitter blush. It ran aground during routine operations which is not so surprising given the utter lack of precision instruments evident. I would be surprised if in the past 20 years they went from that to a usable nuclear missile platform.

You can see photos from someone else here: http://www.catracing.org/hendrb/out-and-about-in-korea-tongi...

The artwork is fantastic

They have you covered: https://missilethreat.csis.org/missile/

The summary is simple; they have missiles that can hit anywhere in the world at any time.

There you go!

It's not like security staff would cheat in their assessments, impairing their proficiency [0]

0: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-ai...

Does NK as a country have any goals? I think it is more just the few at the top just want to stay at the top, and play whatever games they deem necessary in order to do so.

> What is NK's goal?

To preserve its sovereignty, and preserve the inflow of foreign aid that the regime uses to prop itself up by preventing the starvation and likely resulting chaos that'd occur if forced to try to support its population from its own ill-managed resources.

I'm sure at least someone close to Kim knows that to actually nuke an American city would invite massive retaliation. But seeming plausibly crazy enough to do it anyway is a good way to make an otherwise absurdly insignificant little country seem like one that needs to be reckoned with. They're banking on the idea that the US will go far out of its way to avoid even the remote possibility of even a minor nuclear strike, and thus far it's worked out for them.

They know if you're going to obliterate their country anyway, they have a little present for you. And you know it too. That's how nuclear weapons work.

Probably immunizing themselves against invasion.

The North Koreans have no hope of beating the South in a conventional conflict. Strategically, they're in the same situation as Pakistan, which acquired nuclear weapons as a guarantee against an attack from India.

The Norks have also gotten a lot of mileage from their blackmail/bullying behavior over the years. They may be calculating other countries will be willing to make concessions to keep the crazy guy with nukes quiet.

Maybe something along the lines of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory

You understand the nukes are for show right. That sort of land mass would be completely decimated by whoever they decided to use those against. Like utterly and totally destroyed. What US worries about it N. Korea giving it to other countries against their interests, countries that they wish to keep under their thumb like Iran.

What do you mean to imply? Do you refer to a specific incident in 1958? Or, do you blame US military aggression for the North's current nuclear program? Perhaps if North Korea hadn't invaded the South in 1948, there would be no need for a militarized border and heavy US defensive presence.

Rather than a vanguard invasion force, I've read that the 28,500 US military personnel in Korea today exist as a sort of political tripwire. There aren't enough of them to hold the line, let alone successfully invade the North, but their deaths in the event of a conflict would commit the US to the fight.

> The Korean War (25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) began when North Korea invaded South Korea

First paragraph of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War

Only one, but then again they have a mostly backwards economy and military with essentially no force projection power.

> who will 'liberate' North Korea and how

A 2011 article from The Atlantic concerning Pakistan's nukes [1] offers clues as to how North Korea's arsenal might be rendered safe:

"This 'disablement campaign,' as one former senior Special Operations planner calls it, would be the most taxing, most dangerous of any special mission that JSOC could find itself tasked with—orders of magnitude more difficult and expansive than Abbottabad.

...

JSOC would take the lead, however, accompanied by civilian experts, and has been training for such an operation for years. JSOC forces are trained to breach the inner perimeters of nuclear installations, and then to find, secure, evacuate—or, if that’s not possible, to 'render safe'—any live weapons. At the Nevada National Security Site, northwest of Las Vegas, Delta Force and SEAL Team Six squadrons practice “Deep Underground Shelter” penetrations, using extremely sensitive radiological detection devices that can pick up trace amounts of nuclear material and help Special Operations locate the precise spot where the fissile material is stored. JSOC has also built mock Pashtun villages, complete with hidden mock nuclear-storage depots, at a training facility on the East Coast, so SEALs and Delta Force operatives can practice there.

At the same time American military and intelligence forces have been training in the U.S for such a disablement campaign, they have also been quietly pre-positioning the necessary equipment in the region. In the event of a coup, U.S. forces would rush into the country, crossing borders, rappelling down from helicopters, and parachuting out of airplanes, so they could begin securing known or suspected nuclear-storage sites. According to the former senior Special Operations planner, JSOC units’ first tasks might be to disable tactical nuclear weapons—because those are more easily mated, and easier to move around, than long-range missiles.

In a larger disablement campaign, the U.S. would likely mobilize the Army’s 20th Support Command, whose Nuclear Disablement Teams would accompany Special Operations detachments or Marine companies into the country. These teams are trained to engage in what the military delicately calls “sensitive site exploitation operations on nuclear sites”—meaning that they can destroy a nuclear weapon without setting it off. Generally, a mated nuclear warhead can be deactivated when its trigger mechanism is disabled—and so both the Army teams and JSOC units train extensively on the types of trigger mechanisms that Pakistani weapons are thought to use. According to some scenarios developed by American war planners, after as many weapons as possible were disabled and as much fissile material as possible was secured, U.S. troops would evacuate quickly—because the final stage of the plan involves precision missile strikes on nuclear bunkers, using special 'hard and deeply buried target' munitions."

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/12/the-ally...

NK couldn't and can't be liberated because it has tens of thousands of artillery pointing toward Seoul, a city of 10M+.

It's not in anyone's interest to do so. No valuable natural resources to strip. Too much integration cost for South Korea. China finds a buffer state useful. US gets an excuse to keep troops and millitary equipment stationed in China's backdoor.