North Korea tests ‘breakthrough’ solid-fuel ICBM | Hacker News Reader

North Korea tests ‘breakthrough’ solid-fuel ICBM

aljazeera.com

22 pointsperihelions27 comments

Regardless of what people think about N Korea, this situation is getting more dangerous all the time.

Just to give a sense of the atmosphere on the peninsula, at the end of January, a poll came out where 76% of South Koreans supported getting their own nuclear weapons.

If I was in south Korea I would really be looking at Ukraine as an example of getting attacked by a nuclear armed adversary. Whether it really applies to their situation or not, if I was there the message I would get is that they will send me guns but no one's going to land any troops

If NK invades SK, I hope my country (the US) will land troops to assist SK (and I always thought that that was my government's plan).

I'll drive to the countryside and dig a fallout shelter: citizenship entails obligations, and I'm not a pussy.

Easy for you to say safe in your shelter! How about going to the front lines or sending your sons?

I'm 62 with no combat training or experience, so the US Army wouldn't take me even if I begged them to.

I have no sons. I do care about the sons of other Americans, but the only American troops being landed would have volunteered for military service.

(Also, I certainly wouldn't consider myself safe even after my successfully making the fallout shelter: particularly, it could easily be fatal for me if large numbers of my fellow citizens who were caught unprepared find my fallout shelter.)

It's pretty easy to advocate for another Vietnam/Afghanistan when you don't have any skin in the game, and you have the means to go out into the country and bury your head in the sand.

Everyone in my country has skin in the game in case of a nuclear attack on my country, which is the possibility I was commenting on.

> so the US Army wouldn't take me even if I begged them to.

They definitely would if you happened to be a clinical psychologist.

> I have no sons. I do care about the sons of other Americans, but the only American troops being landed would have volunteered for military service.

We drafted people for the first Korean War. Why do you think we won't have to do the same for the 2nd?

UKR vs RUS has shown just how quickly modern weapons annihilate troop levels.

This time, but not last time, the US military has decades of experience operating without conscription.

Changes in technology and in the methods (e.g., combined arms) used by the US military make untrained conscripts less useful to the US military than they were in the 1950s.

One exception that that general rule is that untrained conscripts remain approximately as useful as they used to be in occupying captured enemy territory, e.g., the occupations of Germany and Japan after WWII. The US would probably not try to conquer and occupy NK after an attack by NK, however (partly because such an occupation would require much higher troop levels than "merely" destroying NK's capacity to wage offensive war, and conscription would be very unpopular among US voters; partly because just like in the first Korean war, China really wouldn't like it). The US would probably restrict its objectives to repelling the invader from SK while destroying as much of NK's capacity to mount a new invasion as practical.

> I always thought that that was my government's plan

It was when NK wasn't a nuclear threat. Plans change fundamentally when that attribute changes. If Russia wasn't armed with nukes, it wouldn't have invaded Ukraine, because it would lose every conventional war against Western forces that might help Ukraine. But due to nuclear weapons, Russia knows it has nothing to fear and can act in any way it likes. If Ukraine had been armed with nukes, Russia wouldn't have invaded either, because it would've eventually meant certain destruction for Russia (and the world, but they don't care about the world).

US and South Korea have a defense treaty equivalent to NATO. US doesn’t need to send troops cause they are already there. An entire division.

last I heard South Korea host the most US troops out of any country outside of the US itself.

But why? Let's say North Korea nukes Seoul. Is nuking Pyongyang an appropriate response? Are the inhabitants of Pyongyang guilty of the use of Kim Jong Un's nukes?

If the war in Ukraine showed us something is that for military targets precision conventional strikes are very effective. Ukraine could use more Himars, more GLSDBs, more 155 mm rounds (preferably guided), more suicide drones. And could obviously use cruise missiles. But it could not make any meaningful use of nukes.

In a confrontation between North Korea and South Korea, the dominance of South Korea in conventional weaponry is absolutely jaw dropping. Any type of retaliatory response against a use of nukes that can be done with nukes can also be done with conventional precision bombs, and it could be much more directed against Kim's clique.

How is it any more dangerous than the Western or Asian-Pacific countries?

Other countries develop the same war kit, no one bats an eye. N.Korea does; everyone panics.

It might have something to do with NK’s erratic and aggressive leadership.

And what about Russia's erractic and agressive leadership, or China's erractric and agressive leadership?

Russia - Ukraine

China - Hong Kong, Tibet, spectulating Taiwan.

Many eyes have been batted over Russia’s erratic leadership. One one extended instance was called The Cold War.

As for China, if you can’t hear the war drums being beat over the threat to Taiwan, get your hearing checked.

Right, so how is that any different to NK developing ICBM's?

This is just as the same level of war mongering as Isreal going to war for not wanting Iran to build nuclear. It's okay for other countries to have bombs, but not if..

Seems legit. If I were a country faced with a belligerent other country avowing my nuclear destruction once they get the capability I wouldn’t be super eager to see that happen. That’s not warmongering that’s taking serious explicit threats explicitly seriously.

Not if they are totalitarian and have plans to invade a sovereign nation it borders.

You cannot ignore the values of these states in this discussion.

Because Russia and China's occasional hyperbolic rhetoric notwithstanding, one gets the sense that behind the posturing, the people with their hands on the nuclear machinery are cold-eyed professionals. North Korea doesn't appear to have a layered command structure - it just has a succession of paranoid, isolated, all-powerful individuals, and almost directly underneath them, terrified administrators who feel that if they put a foot wrong they'll be disappeared. On the nuclear stage that's a terrifying dynamic. The US plays games, same for Russia and China - in a sense they're all veterans and they've been opponents on the same pitch for forever. Pakistan and India are going to be involved in their own private drama (from a global perspective) for the foreseeable future. I agree that Israel/Iran has disturbing potential, but North Korea? They're the damaged kid who had a .22 two decades ago, then got a 9mm, and now is about to take delivery of a Kalashnikov - that's why it's different.

China is not erratic. They are the most long-term managed superpower out of them all. They don't have to worry about the next election nor bickering with their oligarchs. They just continue slowly and steadily with their plans made years in attendance. Geopolitically they are often in conflict with us but they are really predictable.

Kim Yong Un is the total opposite of that, he has a similar stable position but many internal challenges like food supply that destabilize. And he uses his nuclear ambitions as a distraction.

This nut should really have been cracked before he got his hands on nukes. I know the thousands of artillery shells pointed at Seoul were a problem but it's nothing compared to what it is now. It would have been better for their own population too which is living in a hellhole.

The Chinese would have never let NK get "cracked". This is their rabid attack dog, and it keeps the US, Japan, and SK off kilter.

Probably because no one else is building ICBMs that are designed and pointed at the west coast (closet target being Seattle) and a rhetoric of launching a nuclear attack on the United States and Allies in the region. Words and actions matter I guess.

> Other countries develop the same war kit, no one bats an eye.

I’m pretty sure that every single time a country has become a “nuclear state”, it has been a huge deal and dramatically altered the regional and global dynamics. Only 10 countries have ever developed nuclear weapons (South Africa giving up theirs, leaving 9 total today).

The US developed the bomb, and it was a pretty big deal (for Japan and the world). In response, the USSR developed one and nuclear holocaust became the focus of the Cold War; with the UK and France developing them as well to counter the USSR and China developing them to counter the US and “West”. South Africa developed them to counter Soviet backed Angola, then gave them up after the collapse of the USSR and the end of apartheid. India developed them to dominate Pakistan, and in response, Pakistan developed their own. Israel developed them so that it would never lose as arms race against a combined Arab country adversary (also part of the reason why they are so opposed to Iran becoming a nuclear state).

Several former soviet states gave up the nuclear weapons that the USSR housed in their countries after it collapsed, including Ukraine. If they had not, do you really think Russia wouldn’t have “batted an eye” about that when making its decisions to invade? The idea that nuclear weapons development has ever been anything but world changing is just not true.

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