Japan Government warned citizens to shelter after ballistic missile launch
www3.nhk.or.jp
www3.nhk.or.jp
The news this time is that government used the J-Alert system to mass broadcast to everyone in Hokkaido to announce that, instead of coming down in the sea of Japan, it might come down on the land. NHK is reporting that it might be a new type ICBM which I guess might be the reason for the general alert this time.
If it damages something or someone? If relations between the two countries are not completely wretched, usually a bunch of arguing, and small reparations [1][2].
If they are completely wretched, or there's some other concern at play, usually nothing [3]. The victim country is free to apply whatever sanctions it sees fit.
These sorts of questions are not settled in a framework of legality, as much as they are settled in a framework of power, and willingness to escalate. Escalating against a nuclear sovereign is often a bad idea.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_954
> For the recovery efforts, the Canadian government billed the Soviet Union Can$6,041,174.70 for expenses and additional compensation for future unpredicted expenses; the USSR eventually paid Can$3 million.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655
> As part of the settlement, even though the U.S. government did not admit legal liability or formally apologize to Iran, it agreed to pay US$61.8 million on an ex gratia basis in compensation to the families of the Iranian victims
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007
> The Soviet government expressed regret over the loss of life, but offered no apology and did not respond to demands for compensation.
Initially Ukraine said it was Russia, and the story wound down when evidence pointed to Ukraine. I do not think there were any apology (but I am not sure, I know about that because a friend of mine was nearby the hit (at a safe distance, but still))
It might be wiser to:
1. Ignore specific occurrences to avoid giving the neighborhood narcissistic bully attention. Their ego uses this for oxygen.
2. Every few months, run preparedness drills for getting to strong shelters coinciding with testing the J-Alert system.
3. Only use the J-Alert system for a credible threat.
The result is what feels like daily (sometimes multiple times/day!) alerts.
My SO's grandmother is the only one who watches cable, but the whole house runs to turn off the tv or mute it asap when we hear it.
Exactly the opposite effect/behavior the alerts are supposed to have.
It's like when your boss marks everything urgent so nothing is.
Side note- so many good songs have been ruined for me by repeated pushes of commercials using the hook/catchy part of the song max volume for whatever amazon or pill garbage. Horns honking or surens blaring.
A frequent, nonspecific alert is completely worthless if it's not both credible and actionable.
As long as North Korea's regional neighbors and the United States do little more than condemning the launches, yes. We know these launches pose a risk to civilians on the ground, but little can be done to stop them short of bombing the launch sites. And bombing North Korea would be an act of war, and the consequences would be unpredictable. [1] There are rumors that CYBERCOM has been able to stop North Korean missile launches in the past with covert cyberattacks, but whether that's true or not would be classified. [2]
If the U.S. wanted to respond in kind, it could launch a missile from a ship in the Sea of Japan. The missile could be programmed to overfly Pyongyang, and crash into the Yellow Sea. Though China would probably deploy watercraft to recover the missile's debris to study its technology, if it doesn't detonate.
[1] Note that North Korea did bomb the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong back in 2010 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Yeonpyeong?uses...). Two civilians and two soldiers were killed, and a number of people were wounded, but the shelling did not trigger a conflict. North Korea also sank a South Korean warship the same year, killing 46, and it didn't cause a war (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROKS_Cheonan_sinking?useskin=v...).
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/04/world/asia/north-korea-mi...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/world/asia/north-korea-mi...
Fun fact: the US is technically still at war with Korea. The Korean war was never actually stopped...
But I do agree resuming hostilities would lead to unpredictable and undesirable outcomes.
Could you expand on this? Perhaps naively, I would expect the US & allies to be able to bomb all NK military assets and topple the inferior government easily & quickly. It wouldn't be another guerilla ground war, we just want to destroy their military capabilities.
I guess there is still the concern that China would back NK, but I can't see what China benefits from that. A war with other superpowers to protect a poor, weak, unpredictable regime?
North Korea has few enough nukes that first strike to take them out is possible. But would likely require using nukes. China, and much of the world, would not be happy. Acceptable if war has broken out, not to start a war.
Also helpful to collect intelligence.
Sending missiles toward Japan directly hurts the economy of Japan and its political stability (which in returns, has positive effects that the competitors of Japan can reap).
And that’s one of those “fun” facts we learn in school that as I grow older I increasingly question the veracity or usefulness of saying it. It’s unclear whether Korea and the DPRK are even at war with each other in any usefully understood manner; just that they view each other as illegitimate sovereigns occupying their territory in an official manner, much like China and the PRC.
Checks and balances: A formal declaration of war requires a higher level of political support and public debate, providing more opportunity for scrutiny and oversight.
Indefinite conflicts: AUMFs often lack clear objectives or timelines, which can lead to prolonged and open-ended military engagements.
Legal ambiguity: AUMFs can create legal ambiguity, as they may not explicitly invoke the laws of war, which govern the conduct of armed forces and the treatment of civilians, prisoners of war, and non-combatants.
There really isn't a ballistic trajectory that wouldn't land in PRC or SKR waters, unless it's a (relatively) low flying cruise missile that overflys SKR waters and circles back to land inJapanese waters in east sea which is much more escalatory than lofting a high flying ballistic over air space. Practically there isn't a viable "proportional" response, especially if failure = ordnance lands in PRC or RU territory.
EDIT: NHK is now saying this as well via the original link
Edit:
Looks like it just flew overhead and landed in the sea.
Related question- what's the status of shooting down missiles in flight with lasers? Is that still a generation or two away?
The US had a test platform [0] that showed that the concept of an airborne laser ABM system was viable. However they concluded that we need an order of magnitude increase in the power of airborne lasers in order for it to have enough range to actually be useful.
The reality is that we don't really have any hard numbers for how effective various missile defense systems are. Any test results from them are classified because you don't want your opponent knowing ahead of time how effective your defenses actually are. Even for automated turrets like CIWS don't have any hard numbers on their shootdown rate.
It would take in the ballpark of $10 billion worth of anti-missile systems to shoot down $100 million worth of unarmed ballistic missiles if both sides know what their doing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_Korean_missile_t... (*old* ICBM tests, not today's one)
- There's no extant technology to shoot them down;
- They're not in Japanese airspace or territory (does not extend to orbital altitude);
- If they were to crash in Japan by mistake, there's no benefit in shooting at them, because they'd be untargeted debris with no warheads. An anti-missile missile is just additional debris with extra steps.
Here is the answer. Every system has some percentage of misses, especially during mass attacks.
Iron Dome is not really relevant, I think, it's designed against small, short-range, mortar-like projectiles. For ballistic rockets or cruise missiles you need systems like Patriot, right.
Threats like this are why Japan and South Korea are the only countries outside the US to field it.
Alternates would be THAAD and the GBI, but believe those are more specific to the US Army and Missile Defense Agency's needs. The latter is also still under serious development.
is unfortunately a misconception
Foolish thinking, but I was hoping as a species we were past petty wars.
Everyone was like a well sized job running in k8s or nomad :) - because the goverment was like that. It's much easier to compertmenalize such people...
Now we are not "jobs" or "tasks" or "peons", we are people. So there was oppression, but it was hidden. People would joke, but then people might tell other people to the "secret service police".
As a kid, I had pretty good childhood! But still not sure if I had to be an adult during that period how I would've felt.
Or were they so segmented or different that competition was not a thing?
For example, we had the CORECOM store (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corecom) - which was really a place for all truck drivers, air-pilots or whoever had to work outside of Bulgaria, especially outside the Eastern Block to come back and exchange their """filthy""" currency with products that you can't get anywhere else.
It was really hard to get a Kinder Surpsise Egg for example (only to be found at the Corecom). Even if you had the bulgarian levas, it was not possibly (easily) to exchange these for dollars in order to buy them. You had to know the people that might've brought some from outside (Then again, this is from my memory as a kid).
So PEZ, Kinder Surprise Eggs, or anything listed (and much more) on the wikipedia page above was DEAR to all of us kids. I do remember the day where I went to the local bakery (some years after the communist regime went down) for normal bulgarian pastry (these are still yummy), and saw so many kinder surprise eggs available for anyone to buy with levas. It was no longer that great :) lol.
Ok, here is a weird one - empty cans from coke, pepsi were prized collections. We would use these empty cans to put our pencils or just to demonstrate we got something from the west. The (free) Neckermann magazine was "required" in every home - you got to glimpse into furniture, clothing, and just to stroll through the enourmous volume of the latest (this year, last year - doesn't matter).
I also vividly remember when the french magazine store opened, and I've got PIF Hercule comics (without knowing french), and some of the greates PC games magazines (great graphics).
So hard to tell. Probably people had preferences - there were several, if not dozen types of Russian-made and other cars: Lada, Zaz, Moskvich - surely some prefer one vs the other. But this joke was not so far off:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I9AdLnjP0M
You had to wait sometimes years to get your car, refridgerator, etc.
anyway :) - I guess TLDR was - WE WERE OBLIVIOUS - We had some "fake" glimpse into what the western world was, without really knowing what it was (it was also distorted through our own media).
But again, as a kid - I had such good time!
I love learning about different experiences than my own, especially if they're specific to a time/world that doesn't really exist anymore. Know the past to better prepare for the future, etc. :)
The link to CORECOM (and other countries' equivalents) was fascinating! I'd never heard of them, but assume literally everyone from eastern parts of Europe would instantly recognize them.
I read through "Why?!" and somewhat wrapped my head around it -- necessity for hard foreign currency for trade purposes demanded it -- but it still seems incredibly destabilizing, if one were trying to run a communist country. At the end of the day, I guess economy >> politics, though.
The "fake" glimpse / distortion point is also fascinating. I always thought of that as a Japanese thing in more modern times -- broad cultural awareness of very specific foreign things, but with a different meaning, that would be confusing to the actual origin country's citizens.
And as you said, at the end of the day, a kid with a toy is a kid with a toy. :)
Some things are universal. Every kid wants to have the popular/rare thing and show it off. And assuming there's food/shelter/family, whether it's a Coke can or the most luxurious Western consumer good doesn't really matter. I try and remind myself to me more childlike when it comes to happiness.
Thanks again for sharing!
And PS: Computer game magazines were the same for US kids. Until the late-90s, computers fast enough to run good games well were still pretty expensive, so most kids window shopped via game magazines. Or later, the demo CD-ROMs that occasionally came with them.
A 2020 survey by Harvard researchers showed similar results. [2]
People living in autocracies are far less dissatisfied with their systems of government as democracy minded Westerners like myself might assume.
[1] https://www.ipsos.com/en/global-happiness-six-points-last-ye...
[2] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-sur...
World Happiness Report 2023 has China at rank 64.
The Ipsos one asked respondents:
"Taking all things together, would you say you are: very happy, rather happy, not very happy, not happy at all?"
The World Happiness Report asks the respondents:
"think of a ladder, with the best possible life for them being a 10 and the worst possible life being a 0. They are then asked to rate their own current lives on that 0 to 10 scale."
Unsurprisingly, the two offers very different conclusions.
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1350&dat=19700804&id=... ("Mexcians find errant rocket", 1970)
https://wsmrmuseum.com/2021/11/10/in-1970-an-athena-missile-... ("In 1970, An Athena Missile Went Deep Into Mexico")
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_bombing_of_the_C...
Whether anyone accepted the accident angle would depend on how willing various major powers were wanting to get involved in the incident.
But 9/11 would not be a good analogy, as it was not carried out by a nation. Which is why it took a month for the US to declare an illegal war on Afghanistan rather than immediately being able to declare a legal war in self defense.