...from North Korea
If we start launching nukes in the direction of NK, how does China know it's going to stop in NK and not hit them? Do we call them up first? Then what do they say?
Is it totally out of the question that China would panic (or reason?) and counterattack? NK doesn't exist in a vacuum, and in fact NK wouldn't exist at all today had China not intervened in the last war.
NK is an ongoing humanitarian disaster right now. At the moment, everybody is standing by blaming the NK regime for not acting to resolve it. If you remove the regime, the crisis gets much worse. If you bomb the country, the crisis gets much, much worse.
When you are done bombing the snot out of NK, who will pick up the pieces? Who will be on the hook for millions of starving people? Who will be the neighbor that gets slammed by the masses of humanity in desperation?
You think China hasn't thought about all this? You think they won't automatically recognize the obvious and enormous threat to themselves? Every missile that lands in NK is a direct threat to China.
Basically if there's an ICBM flying over China and it looks like it's going to hit NK, there's no way to kill all of that horizontal velocity and significantly change its trajectory.
Also, China has a defense treaty with NK and has very publicly stated that it will honor its treaty unless NK strikes first.
Personally, I don't think nuking North Korea would even be an effective use of resources. With modern military precision bombing I'd say it's serious overkill unless you want to destroy something like an entire carrier strike group or deliberately cause loss of civilian life.
If North Korea can kill tens of thousands of people in Seoul in a few minutes with just artillery and no one wants to be responsible for that... then why do they feel the need for nukes?
The US is more than capable of launching a preemptive strike against NK without Seoul being hit nearly as hard as one would think.
The main reason they won’t isn’t the shelling of Seoul is that China won’t allow US troops on its border and neither the US, SK nor China wants to deal with the fallout of having to care for millions of uneducated by modern standards starving people that believe in unicorns.
The flood of refugees into SK would do much more damage than any possible shelling from NK which is also why neither player has pushed for critically destabilizing measures or a regime change for the past 50 years.
You don't think China has such a system and won't give a friendly call to North Korea? You'd be willing to bet the lives of South Koreans on that?
Also, as much as we like to think of North Korea as a joke nation, I'm sure there are some very smart people in the government. In fact, there may be more smarter people in government than in the United States. There are plenty of opportunities in the private sector here for a smart ambitious person. There's less private sector opportunity in North Korea, and statistically, 25 million people is bound to produce quite a few very smart people. As long as they can identify and capitalize on some of them, you can bet they are likely government resources.
So, I think it's much more likely that North Korea doesn't have early warning system technology because they've decided they don't need it, and they can focus their research elsewhere. If China gives it to you for free (for the reasons you outlined), then why waste those resources? I would be hesitant to assume any perceived shortcoming of North Korea's situation wasn't specifically sought by them. Not because they are geniuses and masters of strategy that have designed every aspect of their situation, but at least some aspect are, and complacency and underestimating your enemy have no place in war, much less a nuclear war.
You seem to not understand exactly what the situation is even if NK would get an early warning say 10min it would not even get it past the guy who answers the first phone get alone to the military in the field.
The US and Russia have invested 70 years in building infrastructure which is designed for a single contingency which is to launch a retaliatory strike within 15-20 minutes this requires an enormous investment and North Korea barely has phone lines.
This doesn’t even take into account the fact that the soldiers manning the artilary installations can barely hit anything and that they don’t have enough shells to fire their 11,000 cannons zeroed on Seoul.
North Korea’s conventional military is a joke these days and unless China puts its own soldiers into the fray it won’t be even a two sided fight.
You seriously think high level Chinese diplomats don't have very quick communication access to Kim Jong-un? Why would you think that? I think it's very likely they have phone access to multiple aids of which one is guaranteed to be very close.
> The US and Russia have invested 70 years in building infrastructure which is designed for a single contingency which is to launch a retaliatory strike within 15-20 minutes this requires an enormous investment and North Korea barely has phone lines.
That's because our system has checks and balances and a heirarchy. Kim Jong-un likely has direct phone access to the cammanders in the field, and through secured lines. That's the first thing you do, and that doesn't take a genius to figure out.
> This doesn’t even take into account the fact that the soldiers manning the artilary installations can barely hit anything and that they don’t have enough shells to fire their 11,000 cannons zeroed on Seoul.
They don't have to aim. Everything is likely already dialed in. There's only one target to retaliate towards no matter who attacks (since it's not going to be China). They could literally have a single qualified person go through and dial in the settings for every piece of artillery and every rocket launcher system, and just have trusted personnel to initiate the attack.
> North Korea’s conventional military is a joke these days and unless China puts its own soldiers into the fray it won’t be even a two sided fight.
It's not about being able to put up a fight, it's about making it too costly to start the fight.
In the end, even if the North Korean response comes after first strike (and a first strike likely wouldn't eliminate their offensive capability, according to retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales[1]), a lot of South Korean lives will be lost.
1: http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2017/04/19/north-koreas-sim...
IIRC POTUS can order a nuclear strike by himself. No checks and balances.
The "two man rule" is basically two men check the authenticity of the order (IIRC it is encrypted Twitter-length message) and or turn the keys to "vote" launch. Each launch crew in two silos (4 people) need to vote to launch to actually launch.
There's not a lot of information on the order of succession and the two-man rule on the Internet. ;(
I'd think if everyone above is dead or unreachable the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the Secretary of Education can start nuclear war all by themselves too. No checks or balances either.
By the time it would take China to detect a US attack, figure out what to do, deliver a message to the NK leadership and that message can be relayed to the field there won’t be many canons left.
I think you don’t realize how long does it take for orders to go through, even a close air support request can easily take 30 min or more to push through a single chain of command.
An NK doesn’t even have direct communications with most of their fielded forces.
And as far the the zeroed cannons go it really ain’t that simple, 80% of their shells missed a bloody island that was also zeroed and were not talking about missing a target on the island we’re talking about missing an island several kilometers in size.
Here's the last paragraph: North Korean anti-aircraft weapons “are not all that impressive,” Scales said, “but there’s lots of them.” Could the North Korea guns be taken down? “Sure, over time,” he said. “But by the time we do that, the damage they’d inflict on Seoul would just be staggering.” They go into the reasons for that earlier.
I was a bit incredulous when I referenced someone that k rw that they were talking about and it was ignored. I'm even more so now when I'm actually being called out for bringing some expert information to this pissing contest.
Don't hear what I'm not saying: I think you are ignorant of some of the facts, not incapable of understanding. I see now that my initial comment was overly petulant and could have been more constructively worded. I will post some links I find helpful when I get out. But should you gave the time there are some enlightening docs on documentaryheaven.com (their site is a huge mess) about Best Korea. Be well.
And none as direct ancestors to this comment. If you follow this directly up thread up you'll find I'm the only one to have sourced any reference beyond the very top level comment, which was an Amazon link to a book. Even if we expand to branches from tzs second level comment, there's almost no references.
> I recommend the New Yorker article first.
I did find what I assume is the New Yorker article you mentioned in a sub-thread that starts out talking about Qaddafi, but it just seems to bolster my point:
Six years into Kim Jong Un’s reign, some analysts in Seoul argue that senior Party officials can overrule or direct him, but U.S. intelligence believes that Kim is in sole command. ... That left Jong Un, who had received a degree in physics from Kim Il Sung University, had trained as an artillery officer, and was active in security and political work.
So an intelligent person that is well versed in the challenges and threats artillery faces? Are we to assume he ignores the obvious weaknesses that he should know of (since he's trained in their aspects) then?
The Obama Administration studied the potential costs and benefits of a preventive war intended to destroy North Korea’s nuclear weapons. Its conclusion, according to Rice, in the Times, was that it would be “lunacy,” resulting in “hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of casualties.” ... If Kim used his stockpiles of sarin gas and biological weapons, the toll would reach the millions. U.S. and South Korean forces could eventually overwhelm the North Korean military, but, by any measure, the conflict would yield one of the worst mass killings in the modern age.
So the same source you called out as worth reading that might inform my opinion mirror what I've been stating all along. Attacking North Korea would result in massive casualties in South Korea. There is no current strategy that would result in us wiping out the offensive capability of North Korea before they can cause massive damage.
> My chief issue with your comments is, as I stated before, your general implications and assertions, particularly in regards to China and Best Korean competency.
So, my implications and assertions that a nation that views its defense a existential priority won't put the bare minimum of 1910's level technology in place to make sure they have secure land lines run to important military locations? This is a country with artillery that is literally "dug in", as in they've placed the entire thing below ground with large hanger doors that can be closed to shield the artillery for defense, and opened for attack.
NK has an estimated 12,000 pieces of tube artillery, and another 2,300 multiple launch rocket systems.[1] That we would be capable of knocking all these out, or that they don't have specific orders on exactly how to proceed should the command structure deteriorate that would result in them commencing attack requires more explanation than "we'll take out the cannons quickly" which is the argument most the responses have put forth, and as I've references previously from educated sources, that is not the case.
I'll just note that I'm still citing references, my own and ones you pointed out, which still support my argument. If you can't cite something yourself, perhaps you should examine your own beliefs, and why there's no evidence to be found for them.
1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/10/02/why-th...
---
IIRC from a recent article regarding potential DPRK artillery salvo on Seoul the civilian casualties are in the tens of thousands.
South Korea kind of like Israel have bomb shelters everywhere. So DPRK only has a very limited number of salvos before people realize what's happening and seek cover (also counter-battery fire).
IMHO South Korea should have moved their capital a long time ago. They had 50+ years.
Lets say for some miracle you're right, and the plan works. The fallout is going somewhere - China, South Korea, Japan, and the far east of Russia. That's a lot of unhappy people right there, before the rest of the world realises just what tiny hands has done and the US truly becomes the evil empire.
You're assuming Trump won't tweet our launch orders..
People are used to being able to pick the phone and call someone that doesn’t work everywhere.
North Korea doesn't have to do any hitting. If the US nukes the North, the South will take the fallout full in the face.
People also overestimate the amount of fallout from modern nuclear weapons, it won't be a picnic site anytime soon but it's not going to turn into a Fall out game either.
Nuking the DMZ isn't going to happen unless it's to stop a flood of 200 million zombies, but nuking Pyongyang isn't going to have drastic effects on SK due to fallout or radiation worse case people would have to drink bottled water for a few weeks.
If those people include the South Koreans, you still have a problem. Some estimates I’ve heard say more Americans were killed by heart attacks caused by the increase in blood pressure caused by the fear of terrorism after 9/11 than by actual terrorism. Likewise, if just 10% of Seoul flees in fear of radiation, I’d expect many dead just from the running-away part.
A strike would not originate from North Dakota -- it would come from stealth bombers right on top of their artillery forces and command and control infrastructure, as well as from nearby boomers (ctf134) launching at a pace of a dozen warheads per minute, per boat, throwing mk-4/5's with recently upgraded fuzing systems.
When the LEP is complete, they will be GPS guided and accurate enough to destroy hardened targets from kinetic energy alone.
If the DPRK threat continues to escalate, and the US were concerned enough, F-35's could be upgraded with B61-12 harnesses, adding a nuclear stealth armada with pinpoint-accurate weapons to the arsenal. US fbm's are also not equipped to close to capacity due to arms control agreements. During initial flight testing, maneuvers consistent with deployment of 14 warheads were observed, meaning an fbm could deploy 336 warheads.
And South Koreans: Seoul is just 60km (35 miles) from the border, about as far as Palo Alto from SF. Even if the nukes don't affect South Korea, the DPRK has the border lined with arms (conventional, but effective enough).
That's unless your scientists have found a way to control nuclear fallout so that it stays within national borders.
So...Russia?