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That’s not quite an accurate read though, at least as far as NK. The US can’t really make a credible military threat because of the north’s proximity to the sou

That’s not quite an accurate read though, at least as far as NK. The US can’t really make a credible military threat because of the north’s proximity to the south, an important US ally and a country all but guaranteed to be mortally wounded in the event of north/USA hostilities.

marcoperaza 9y ago
Sure we can. We have the capability to totally annihilate as much of North Korea as we need in order to prevent a counter attack. The question is if we are willing to do it, and kill millions of North Korean civilians. Trump is sure trying to convince the North Koreans that he is.
- kbenson 9y ago
  From missile launch to missile detonation is enough time for NK to shell large chunks of high population areas of SK. They have the guns already pointed and ready for exactly this reason.
  - hutzlibu 9y ago
    And Seoul is still very close to the border ... bad with artillery allready, worse with possible nuclear shelling.
  - dogma1138 9y ago
    You assuming that NK has an early warning system which consists of more than a guy with binoculars and circa 1960s radar which they don’t. 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.
    - kbenson 9y ago
      > You assuming that NK has an early warning system which consists of more than a guy with binoculars and circa 1960s radar which they don’t. 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.
      - dogma1138 9y ago
        China doesn’t have sophisticated early warning systems either, nor does it have a central military command nor integrated command and control infrastructure they’ve started one in 2011 but as their military ranks are a political appointment the competency of their military leadership is lacking at best. 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.
  - cocoablazing 9y ago
    DPRK leadership wouldn't know a strike was underway until most of their military capability could be destroyed by stratcom. 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.
  - fapjacks 9y ago
    You're underestimating the power and depth of American and South Korean counterbattery along the DMZ. DPRK will not be able to sustain a prolonged artillery attack. They'll get a their first punches in, but they won't be able to keep it up. All that shit is completely automated, too. All they have to do is flip a switch and anything in Best Korea firing ordnance across the DMZ will explode fairly quickly and completely automatically.
- PostOnce 9y ago
  > We have the capability to annihilate as much of NK as we need to prevent a counterattack ...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.
  - countryslicker 9y ago
    China would intervene for very good reasons. 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.
  - cocoablazing 9y ago
    You’re assuming that China’s nuclear force posture is like that of the US or RF. It is much more robust against false alarms. Given the massive alert arsenal the US possesses, along with the historical fact that both the USSR and US sat out strong technical alerts of incoming massive strikes, rather than launch — it’s a good prior that they would sit it out.
  - MertsA 9y ago
    It's simple orbital mechanics to calculate the trajectory. ICBMs aren't like planes, it's not like they just fly to the target and stop. It's powered during the first minutes of flight and then it just coasts from there. The exception to this is MIRV ICBMs where warheads are deployed one at a time and the final stage changes orbit a bit before releasing the next warhead. MIRVs can't change their trajectory that much though, you can target multiple locations, but they have to be in a couple hundred kilometers of each other. 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.
- YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
  If you "annihilate as much as North Korea as we need in order to prevent a counter attack" you'd also be annihilating much of South Korea- and China, and every country bordering North Korea to boot. That's unless your scientists have found a way to control nuclear fallout so that it stays within national borders.
  - marcoperaza 9y ago
    That’s a common misconception. Fallout from nuclear weapons is only a problem if detonated at the wrong altitude.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > If you "annihilate as much as North Korea as we need in order to prevent a counter attack" you'd also be annihilating much of South Korea- and China, and every country bordering North Korea to boot. So...Russia?
- FabHK 9y ago
  > and kill millions of North Korean civilians 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).

marcoperaza 9y ago

Sure we can. We have the capability to totally annihilate as much of North Korea as we need in order to prevent a counter attack. The question is if we are willing to do it, and kill millions of North Korean civilians. Trump is sure trying to convince the North Koreans that he is.

kbenson 9y ago
From missile launch to missile detonation is enough time for NK to shell large chunks of high population areas of SK. They have the guns already pointed and ready for exactly this reason.
- hutzlibu 9y ago
  And Seoul is still very close to the border ... bad with artillery allready, worse with possible nuclear shelling.
- dogma1138 9y ago
  You assuming that NK has an early warning system which consists of more than a guy with binoculars and circa 1960s radar which they don’t. 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.
  - kbenson 9y ago
    > You assuming that NK has an early warning system which consists of more than a guy with binoculars and circa 1960s radar which they don’t. 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.
    - dogma1138 9y ago
      China doesn’t have sophisticated early warning systems either, nor does it have a central military command nor integrated command and control infrastructure they’ve started one in 2011 but as their military ranks are a political appointment the competency of their military leadership is lacking at best. 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.
- cocoablazing 9y ago
  DPRK leadership wouldn't know a strike was underway until most of their military capability could be destroyed by stratcom. 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.
- fapjacks 9y ago
  You're underestimating the power and depth of American and South Korean counterbattery along the DMZ. DPRK will not be able to sustain a prolonged artillery attack. They'll get a their first punches in, but they won't be able to keep it up. All that shit is completely automated, too. All they have to do is flip a switch and anything in Best Korea firing ordnance across the DMZ will explode fairly quickly and completely automatically.
PostOnce 9y ago
> We have the capability to annihilate as much of NK as we need to prevent a counterattack ...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.
- countryslicker 9y ago
  China would intervene for very good reasons. 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.
- cocoablazing 9y ago
  You’re assuming that China’s nuclear force posture is like that of the US or RF. It is much more robust against false alarms. Given the massive alert arsenal the US possesses, along with the historical fact that both the USSR and US sat out strong technical alerts of incoming massive strikes, rather than launch — it’s a good prior that they would sit it out.
- MertsA 9y ago
  It's simple orbital mechanics to calculate the trajectory. ICBMs aren't like planes, it's not like they just fly to the target and stop. It's powered during the first minutes of flight and then it just coasts from there. The exception to this is MIRV ICBMs where warheads are deployed one at a time and the final stage changes orbit a bit before releasing the next warhead. MIRVs can't change their trajectory that much though, you can target multiple locations, but they have to be in a couple hundred kilometers of each other. 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.
YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
If you "annihilate as much as North Korea as we need in order to prevent a counter attack" you'd also be annihilating much of South Korea- and China, and every country bordering North Korea to boot. That's unless your scientists have found a way to control nuclear fallout so that it stays within national borders.
- marcoperaza 9y ago
  That’s a common misconception. Fallout from nuclear weapons is only a problem if detonated at the wrong altitude.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > If you "annihilate as much as North Korea as we need in order to prevent a counter attack" you'd also be annihilating much of South Korea- and China, and every country bordering North Korea to boot. So...Russia?
FabHK 9y ago
> and kill millions of North Korean civilians 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).