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Comment by colechristensen | Hacker News Reader

I don't think anyone seriously doubts the possibility that DPRK will some day have missiles which could threaten the US west coast, they're certainly trying.

What we seem to have here is a failsafe, and the right decision. The key word there is "fail", because that's what it looks like. Some internal line of communication or process broken to the extent that somebody somewhere put out an order to ground planes. (or possibly a deliberate live readiness test) You want to fail safe, the cost of briefly inconveniencing aviation is incomparable to the cost of screwing up defenses in the case of a real attack. Failing like this also gets a lot of attention which will motivate people to fix whatever the issues were that lead to it.

I'd just think of it as a test case highlighting a bug. I don't know what great harm could come from it.

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DPRK certainly has strategic ICBM's that currently threaten the West Coast. Hwasong-14/KN20 tested in 2017 could do it, and more recent developments are adding payload (so you can mirv) and a bit more range to hit the rest of the US. Once you have enough payloads to overwhelm THAAD, which isn't too difficult considering the ~$1B/interceptor price tag, it's pretty clear that given reasonable numbers of existing DPRK capabilities, they could successfully certainly land a nuke in Anchorage, Seattle, perhaps LA. They're actually moving their focus from strategic missiles to tactical nuclear missiles now (despite ongoing strategic development). KJU has been discussing his desires for large numbers of tactical nuclear weapons as part of the DPRK strategy, and they're making lots of progress in that direction.

This makes sense to me at first blush - DPRK’s primary defensive strategy seems to be “if you attack us, we’ll obliterate South Korea”.

Why try to seriously threaten the US mainland, when it’s significantly easier to hold millions of US-allied civilians hostage?

You're thinking in terms of US-centered politics.

North Korean politics are game-of-thrones style medieval kings and queens. Kim Jong un is the supreme-ruler of North Korea. At a relatively young age of 38-years-old, he barely commands respect of his political apparatus.

Kim Jong-un has killed his brother and uncle in a dramatic show of force to consolidate power. It seems like he's decided that annoying the USA is now to his own political gain.

Kim Jong-un's primary motivation is to perpetuate his myth and legend, to continue to prove to his people that he's a god-given King who deserves to rule over the nation. Much like his father. But any of Kim Jong Un's political rivals can capture the "mandate of heaven" if they prove themselves worthy on the public stage.

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From the perspective of "proving that god / the heavens are on Kim Jong Un's side", pissing off the USA unnecessarily does a good job at that.

And even without the factional struggles and insane personality cults, the DPRK's position is that the US is the real enemy preventing unification with their southern neighbour. For both ideological and strategic reasons, any country wants the capacity be able to threaten their real enemy, not just their immediate neighbour, especially if that neighbour is - according to their political theory - a kindred nation under the yoke of the hated enemy.

Missile threats to the US probably irritate their tacit Chinese allies less than missile threats on the Korean peninsula too...

Because some day the supreme leader will be in a bad mood and finally decide to push that button.

Because "if you attack us, we'll obliterate San Francisco" is much better insurance policy. And SK has been pursuing missiles for NK decapitation strike for past few years with US blessing. So it's also message for US to keep SK on leash and that US ultimately is culpable for SK behavior.

> Why try to seriously threaten the US mainland, when it’s significantly easier to hold millions of US-allied civilians hostage?

Because if South Korea falls out of US favor for whatever reason (revolution, coup, geo-politics, Trump Jr. becoming god-king-for-life with an allergy to Korean food), the current defensive strategy stops working.

If you want to know how much help an allied civilian can expect in the long run, you could always ask the Kurds in Syria. You'll be betrayed whenever it is politically expedient.

Having ICBMs is much more effective defensive strategy, because it works against any non-insane adversary, in any set of circumstances.

I’m not even sure there was a fixable problem; this seems to be something where you want the grounding order near-automatic on a path that doesn't have too much review in the loop and even a cancellation after quick review on a less instant, more certain 9f correctness path. If it is a real attack, delay can be critical, if it's not after the grounding order goes out, a slight delay in cancellation doesn't make a big difference.

Reading into the scant evidence, this would seem to be a call NORAD would make, didn’t in this circumstance, and somebody between the decision maker at NORAD and the person who sends the message to air traffic control made the call because they didn’t have full information, couldn’t get the right information in time, or didn’t have full knowledge of the protocol and got nervous.

> Failing like this also gets a lot of attention which will motivate people to fix whatever the issues were that lead to it.

That's a really fantastic point! What may initially be perceived as government incompetence is _really_ just a self correcting negative social feedback loop! Thanks for the unique perspective on this, have you worked in any of these agencies?

Haha, yeah, that is not at all what happens in a moment like this. Instead, as we are seeing right now, the playbook is to deny, to obfuscate and to delay.

I’m just wondering what our air travel has to do with a missile attack. Maybe a concern that our anti-missle defense would hit a aircraft?

Even if anti missile defense isn’t the reason I still see good reason. You should gain as much control as you can before the event. Putting people on the ground helps put us in control. We may have to send up fighter planes and whatever else and we don’t need to worry about maneuvering around passenger planes.

I view it like a flat tire. If you have a slow leak, you’re mostly in control and can get it refilled and monitor it. If you know the tire is losing air at medium speed, you can navigate to a safer space and potentially to a place to fix the issue. The worst case is a blowout while driving 70+ MPH on a highway with no shoulder while you’re only halfway paying attention to the road. All situations are about how your control is limited and maximizing your actions to get a safe & disruption free remedy. If you’re driving high speed and your low pressure light comes on, you’d be wise to at least pull over and inspect the issue. Not a perfect analogy but you get the gist.

Eh, while one would assume that there are many defense systems which nobody knows about, in the event of an actual attack lots of things would be going into the air in a very short timeframe. Best to do everything to reduce complexity of the situation, you wouldn’t want to see a civilian aircraft get misidentified or an in air collision or some other mistake.

Or that an airplane failing to squawk is shot down because everyone thought the country is under attack, and the airplane had a malfunctioning radio. Similar to the KAL007 situation, a civilian plane shot down by Soviet air defense during a tense moment (also involving a missile test).

Assume Los Angeles International Airport was suddenly unusable due to an attack. How many airplanes in flight would suddenly need to find a replacement place to land with limited fuel available?

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