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North Korean Tactics (2020) [pdf]
- horns4lyfe 4y agoCool, another army manual that no Soldier will read. In all seriousness, though, sounds really interesting
- orangepurple 4y agoOfficers, warrant officers, and noncommissioned officers (NCO) study these in depth on the job depending on their U.S. Army Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) and rank.
- horns4lyfe 4y agoI worked with people from logistics specialists up to special forces commanders, and the only manual that anyone took seriously was the ranger handbook.
- UberFly 4y agoSure they do depending on their job/rank. This is a case where RTFM might actually severely matter to those you work with.
- omginternets 4y agoEnlistees? No. Officers? Yeah, absolutely.
- openasocket 4y agoNote for those reading this: I'm pretty sure the diagrams in the first part of Chapter 6 are all mislabeled. The diagram labeled as an encirclement maneuver is really a penetration maneuver, the penetration maneuver diagram is really of a thrust maneuver, etc.
- nimbius 4y agopage 1-12 is...generous. "Due to the United States’ ability to overwhelm almost any opponent with technology and firepower..." with the exception of Iraq, afghanistan, korea, cuba, and vietnam at no real point in these battles was our technological sophistication or "firepower" a decisive capability that led to a victory. in fact in afghanistan during the last six days of conflict our exodus led to perhaps the largest single transfer of sixth generation advanced western warfighting technologies to an enemy in the history of armed conflict. the Taliban had a blackhawk helicopter over the city as a command presence in less than a day. the entire book also neglects to highlight a real point of contention: the US never formally declared any end of hostility to North Korea. again in 1-16 "To deter any foe from attacking, the country has threatened the use of nuclear weapons against South Korea, Japan, or any reachable U.S. military facility in Asia" the 2020 document neglects to mention North Koreas ICBM system can now successfully reach most targets in the United States, so any real effort toward regime change is completely off the table. https://www.popsci.com/north-koreas-new-icbms-can-reach-most-united-states/ https://www.popsci.com/north-koreas-new-icbms-can-reach-most...
- pdabbadabba 4y ago> page 1-12 is...generous. The sentence you are criticizing is, itself, a direct acknowledgement of the fact that simply "overwhelming" an adversary with technology and firepower is not sufficient for victory. The full sentence reads "Due to the United States’ ability to overwhelm almost any opponent with technology and firepower, the KPA emphasizes asymmetric warfare in conjunction with large numbers of SOF units"--much like the tactics employed by the U.S.'s adversaries in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam
- dudyr5fjo 4y ago
- Jtsummers 4y agoYou skipped the end of that first sentence: > Due to the United States’ ability to overwhelm almost any opponent with technology and firepower, the KPA emphasizes asymmetric warfare in conjunction with large numbers of SOF units. [emphasis mine] Which seems to imply that NK is, indeed, preparing for something more like Vietnam, Afghanistan, or the second Iraq war, or at least whoever prepared this believes they are.
- ARandomerDude 4y ago> Songbun is a three-tier class system divided into 51 categories that was created by the Kim regime to isolate and control perceived internal political threats. It is very difficult to move up even from one category to the next-higher category, but it is very easy to move downward. Even an elite person living in Pyongyang can commit an infraction and be exiled to the country with a much lower songbun. Every person above the age of 17 in North Korea has a file maintained by the government that contains the individual’s songbun. Sad: This type of social credit score system seems pervasive and will no doubt be here soon. Doubly sad: many of the FAANGers here on HN will bring it about.
- Mizza 4y agoSongbun is actually a good word we can use for it as it creeps into western society.
- imwillofficial 4y agoSongbun sounds delicious, I wanna eat one
- wrp 4y agoI believe the pronunciation sounds more like sung-poon.
- speed_spread 4y agoOh, that's different, but I still wanna eat some.
- lifthrasiir 4y agoYes, its Hangul rendition is 성분 and it originally (and, in South Korea, only) meant ingredients in materials, typically chemical.
- inversalAutoDoc 4y ago
- Mizza 4y agoSection 1-21 is interesting to me right now as I'm currently listening to season 3 of the Blowback podcast and this season is all about the Korean War. Their history of events is very different than how it is presented here.
- jgbmlg 4y agoThe Songbun caste system is the weakness that renders the North Korean society inherently unstable. The most able members of the society are discriminated against the most. And the more powerful and resource consuming "Core" members are not selected on the basis of merit. I think that there is historical precedent for the political principle that Aristocracy will eventually be replaced by meritocracy, but there may be revolutionary instability first.
- nickff 4y agoAll the actions and effects you describe actually seem to make North Korean society more stable, at the cost of productivity, flexibility, and agility.
- newsclues 4y agoIt’s unstable because it is ripe for revolution, compared to a competent government. What perhaps isn’t discussed is what generations of oppression and political murder does to a people, like Russia and strongman leadership.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tastyfreeze 4y agoIt may appear that way to an outsider. North Korean defector, Yeonmi Park probably said it best. "In survival mode, there is no time to think about freedom."
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- helloworld11 4y agoIt's so unstable that the existing government has been firmly in power for over 70 years, passed down from one generation of leaders to the next from just a single family with no present signs of slackening practical authority. If this is hoped-for instability, i'd hate to see a stable regime at work.
- jasonhansel 4y agoWhile interesting, this is surprisingly poorly written. It contains a lot of the sort of overly verbose and pointlessly technical language that is far too common in the corporate world. One might say that the apparently excessive overuse of nominalization and the remarkably high prevalence of redundant, duplicative, or otherwise unnecessary adjectives and adverbs serve as needless, pointless hindrances to the all-important readability of this critical document.
- hitekker 4y agoWow! Your third paragraph was a seamless example. I had a laugh.
- imwillofficial 4y agoWelcome to military technical writing.
- ethbr0 4y agoAt the same time, a huge amount of the verbosity is defining terms within a document itself. When you're dealing with things with consequences (multi-party construction projects, high tolerance manufacturing, killing humans), it behooves one to be precise. Or, as the allegory goes: The offense was not stopped, for want of proper defensive deployment. The defense was not properly deployed, for want of spacing. The spacing was not correctly measured, for want of a standardized length. The length was not standardized, for want of someone writing a standard down and distributing the documentation.
- jasonhansel 4y agoAnother note: Figure 1-2 (on page 26 of the PDF) is so incomprehensible and useless that I almost wondered if it was satire.
- fieryskiff11 4y ago>At most, North Korea has fuel for only 2 months before it must get resupplied from external sources or used captured stores. If North Korea cannot end the conflict quickly, it will likely take steps to slow the tempo and prolong the conflict. Is Ukraine taking plays from the norks?
- ethbr0 4y agoRussia isn't lacking in fuel or artillery stores.