4 ms·

I think have thousands of artillery shells aimed at Seoul is the larger deterrent.

wood_spirit 10mo ago
The nukes are to deter the US. They have been steadily increasing their missile range to first reach regional bases like Guam and now the all the way to the continental USA, and are now even launching a nuclear powered and nuclear armed ballistic missile submarine https://www.hisutton.com/DPRK-SSN-Update.html https://www.hisutton.com/DPRK-SSN-Update.html
- roncesvalles 10mo ago
  The nukes are a bargaining chip (disarmament). Basically, if your country has the human and tech capital to develop a nuke, you probably should because it's free money. I don't believe that NK's nukes deter the US from doing anything. Would NK nuke Guam and risk getting carpet-bombed with nukes for endless days and nights until even the ants are dead? Artillery on Seoul doesn't matter. The US would just ask SK to evacuate it. The US doesn't do anything about the DPRK because it's not economically relevant (i.e. it doesn't have the world's largest oil reserves etc). In an ironic way, their economy being closed-off and mostly unintegrated with the Western world maintains the peace.
  - wood_spirit 10mo ago
    The nukes have many roles perhaps but I think the fully developed weapons are for retaliatory strike. They are the North Korean leadership saying that if the US (or China or anyone really) tries to surgically decapitate them (like the US just did in Venezuela) then the nukes are used to take the attackers with them
    - stackghost 10mo ago
      Yes that's the orthodox doctrine of nuclear deterrent. To be truly effective you need a triad of land-based ICBMs, nuclear-armed submarines, and aircraft-based delivery systems so that your second-strike capability remains intact through any decapitation attempts. If you don't have the triad then you need to brandish your capability more ostentatiously, like France does with its deliberate refusal to commit to a no-first-strike policy. This is (one of the many reasons) why North Korea does so much sabre-rattling: they don't have a (publicly known) nuclear triad for deterrence.
      - aebtebeten 10mo ago
        P5 by triad capability: CN 3 FR 2 RU 3 UK 1/2 US 3 Looks like IN ought to get Airstrip One's seat?
      - mandevil 10mo ago
        Just a note that the importance of the triad is a very American perspective on deterrence and most other countries don't seem to approach this the same way the US does. The Russians really have a quad (they also have mobile, truck mounted ICBM's that form a significant part of their deterrent, offering some of the guaranteed second-strike advantages that the US gets from SSBN's- and which their SSBN program does not provide nearly as well as the USN does). The Chinese only recently added a manned aircraft leg of their triad with the JL-1. The Indians technically have a triad- just no silo based systems, all of their land based missiles are from TELs, and they only have two SSBN's and do not do alternate crews so more than 1/3 of the time they don't have any deterrent at sea. The Israeli's are not believed to have any sea-based ballistic missiles, their sea-based deterrent would be Popeye cruise missiles and so vulnerable to interception. The Pakistanis are still building their first sea-based deterrent. The French and the UK have no land-based missiles, they are only sea-based and airplanes. The South Africans invested in the Jericho missile more for its space launched capabilities than its warhead delivery abilities, and never really looked at anything sea-based, so far as is publicly known.
        stackghost 10mo ago
        I don't agree regarding a quad vs a triad. At risk of sounding like gpt, the triad is not silo/boomer/bomber, it's land-based/airborne/seaborne. Whether or not the survivability of your land-based ICBMs are due to mobility or hardened bunkers doesn't change much at the strategic level.
        mandevil 10mo ago
        I don't think they fill the same strategic purposes, though. The value of silo based missiles to the US is as a missile-sponge, taking most of the warheads from a Russian first strike and keeping them from American cities (forcing any Russian first-strike to be counter-force instead of counter-value). This is not particularly valuable, honestly, which is why only the USSR during the height of the Cold War (largely in reaction to Minuteman) and China very recently have also made the investment into large numbers of ICBM silos.(1) I won't claim to be as much an expert on Russian doctrine, but they seem to consider their mobile missiles to be a survivable second strike weapon, while silo based missiles are obviously not. Because their boomer fleet does not offer the same assured second strike, they rely on those mobile missiles to play a greater deterrent role then the US does. 1: That is the official justification for the US silos. The real reason for silos is, if you want to build a truly insane number of strategic warheads, silos are the only way to afford it- ships and planes and even TELs are too expensive. So first the US (worried they were behind because of the Missile Gap) built a thousand Minuteman (then tripled the deployed warheads with MIRV on the Minuteman-III). Then the Soviets responded with 1000 SS-11s of their own. But if you are only building a few hundred warheads total, you don't bother with silos, they don't add as much value as other delivery mechanisms.
    - nonethewiser 10mo ago
      Guess the US's mistake was not decapitating NK earlier then. Too late for NK, not too late for other regimes.
      - conception 10mo ago
        Guess you missed why NK wasn’t decapitated earlier.
        nonethewiser 10mo ago
        Why are you guessing that?
  - LargoLasskhyfv 10mo ago
    > Artillery on Seoul doesn't matter. The US would just ask SK to evacuate it. How do you evacuate 10 to 15 million(counting Incheon in) of people, fast? Where to?
    - coryrc 10mo ago
      Proportionally that's about evacuating all of California. Completely ridiculous, which is exactly why DPRK has installed all that artillery.
JasonADrury 10mo ago
The importance of this is often exaggerated. It's significant, but it's not that significant. RAND Corporation modeled this, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA619-1.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA619-1.html It assumes ~130,000 casualties from a worst-case surprise attack on population centers by the North. If a conflict started ramping up, evacuations would rapidly shrink this. A significant deterrent, sure. But it rapidly becomes less and less meaningful as the DPRK builds its nuclear arsenal.

The nukes are to deter the US. They have been steadily increasing their missile range to first reach regional bases like Guam and now the all the way to the continental USA, and are now even launching a nuclear powered and nuclear armed ballistic missile submarine https://www.hisutton.com/DPRK-SSN-Update.html https://www.hisutton.com/DPRK-SSN-Update.html

roncesvalles 10mo ago
The nukes are a bargaining chip (disarmament). Basically, if your country has the human and tech capital to develop a nuke, you probably should because it's free money. I don't believe that NK's nukes deter the US from doing anything. Would NK nuke Guam and risk getting carpet-bombed with nukes for endless days and nights until even the ants are dead? Artillery on Seoul doesn't matter. The US would just ask SK to evacuate it. The US doesn't do anything about the DPRK because it's not economically relevant (i.e. it doesn't have the world's largest oil reserves etc). In an ironic way, their economy being closed-off and mostly unintegrated with the Western world maintains the peace.
- wood_spirit 10mo ago
  The nukes have many roles perhaps but I think the fully developed weapons are for retaliatory strike. They are the North Korean leadership saying that if the US (or China or anyone really) tries to surgically decapitate them (like the US just did in Venezuela) then the nukes are used to take the attackers with them
  - stackghost 10mo ago
    Yes that's the orthodox doctrine of nuclear deterrent. To be truly effective you need a triad of land-based ICBMs, nuclear-armed submarines, and aircraft-based delivery systems so that your second-strike capability remains intact through any decapitation attempts. If you don't have the triad then you need to brandish your capability more ostentatiously, like France does with its deliberate refusal to commit to a no-first-strike policy. This is (one of the many reasons) why North Korea does so much sabre-rattling: they don't have a (publicly known) nuclear triad for deterrence.
    - aebtebeten 10mo ago
      P5 by triad capability: CN 3 FR 2 RU 3 UK 1/2 US 3 Looks like IN ought to get Airstrip One's seat?
    - mandevil 10mo ago
      Just a note that the importance of the triad is a very American perspective on deterrence and most other countries don't seem to approach this the same way the US does. The Russians really have a quad (they also have mobile, truck mounted ICBM's that form a significant part of their deterrent, offering some of the guaranteed second-strike advantages that the US gets from SSBN's- and which their SSBN program does not provide nearly as well as the USN does). The Chinese only recently added a manned aircraft leg of their triad with the JL-1. The Indians technically have a triad- just no silo based systems, all of their land based missiles are from TELs, and they only have two SSBN's and do not do alternate crews so more than 1/3 of the time they don't have any deterrent at sea. The Israeli's are not believed to have any sea-based ballistic missiles, their sea-based deterrent would be Popeye cruise missiles and so vulnerable to interception. The Pakistanis are still building their first sea-based deterrent. The French and the UK have no land-based missiles, they are only sea-based and airplanes. The South Africans invested in the Jericho missile more for its space launched capabilities than its warhead delivery abilities, and never really looked at anything sea-based, so far as is publicly known.
      - stackghost 10mo ago
        I don't agree regarding a quad vs a triad. At risk of sounding like gpt, the triad is not silo/boomer/bomber, it's land-based/airborne/seaborne. Whether or not the survivability of your land-based ICBMs are due to mobility or hardened bunkers doesn't change much at the strategic level.
        mandevil 10mo ago
        I don't think they fill the same strategic purposes, though. The value of silo based missiles to the US is as a missile-sponge, taking most of the warheads from a Russian first strike and keeping them from American cities (forcing any Russian first-strike to be counter-force instead of counter-value). This is not particularly valuable, honestly, which is why only the USSR during the height of the Cold War (largely in reaction to Minuteman) and China very recently have also made the investment into large numbers of ICBM silos.(1) I won't claim to be as much an expert on Russian doctrine, but they seem to consider their mobile missiles to be a survivable second strike weapon, while silo based missiles are obviously not. Because their boomer fleet does not offer the same assured second strike, they rely on those mobile missiles to play a greater deterrent role then the US does. 1: That is the official justification for the US silos. The real reason for silos is, if you want to build a truly insane number of strategic warheads, silos are the only way to afford it- ships and planes and even TELs are too expensive. So first the US (worried they were behind because of the Missile Gap) built a thousand Minuteman (then tripled the deployed warheads with MIRV on the Minuteman-III). Then the Soviets responded with 1000 SS-11s of their own. But if you are only building a few hundred warheads total, you don't bother with silos, they don't add as much value as other delivery mechanisms.
  - nonethewiser 10mo ago
    Guess the US's mistake was not decapitating NK earlier then. Too late for NK, not too late for other regimes.
    - conception 10mo ago
      Guess you missed why NK wasn’t decapitated earlier.
      - nonethewiser 10mo ago
        Why are you guessing that?
- LargoLasskhyfv 10mo ago
  > Artillery on Seoul doesn't matter. The US would just ask SK to evacuate it. How do you evacuate 10 to 15 million(counting Incheon in) of people, fast? Where to?
  - coryrc 10mo ago
    Proportionally that's about evacuating all of California. Completely ridiculous, which is exactly why DPRK has installed all that artillery.

JasonADrury 10mo ago

The importance of this is often exaggerated. It's significant, but it's not that significant. RAND Corporation modeled this, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA619-1.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA619-1.html It assumes ~130,000 casualties from a worst-case surprise attack on population centers by the North. If a conflict started ramping up, evacuations would rapidly shrink this. A significant deterrent, sure. But it rapidly becomes less and less meaningful as the DPRK builds its nuclear arsenal.