Korea : First Strike Capability with Conventional Weapons

I think the honnest way we can look at it is we dont know.
We cant really predict anything its all guess work.

Chances are the USA,South Korea and Allies will win but there is no way to predict how easy or how difficult it could be.

reply to post by SeekerofTruth101

I applaud the OP's enthusiasm and effort but NOT his critical thinking using facts and logic for his presentation. Only fools will believe a low tech ancient military force such as NK is will win in this current modern age of conventional warfare, when even hi-tech nations are very very cautious to even think of using one.

But then, some are fearful and let their fears get the worse of them, clouding their judgement, or stupidities clouding theirs such as the senile old military farts whom are in power , still trapped in the 50s tech era, and advising young fatboy kim to think he can fool others. He may be able to fool OP, but not many others well informed.

That attitude is what saw the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong hanging off tanks as they went through the gates of the US Embassy, Presidential Palace and other sites of symbolic importance in a big city the world used to call Saigon in 1975.

That attitude is how we've had our butts handed to us on a platter in Iraq and all but thrown out while our Embassy there is the largest on Earth and resembles a 100% truly self contained city within a city complete with the walls and defenses of an ancient Roman stronghold, just to keep things stable and safe for the guys working out of it these days.

That attitude is also why, after over a decade, we're now having to...AHEM...negotiate and cow-tow to the Taliban who once were described by common man and media alike as primitive cave dwelling rebels who only came to power because it was a backward nation to begin with.......and yet, who will be leaving while who is still very much an effective fighting and governing force across much of Afghanistan today?

How do you figure North Korea would/will represent some giant change in fortunes and luck for approaching "low tech ancient" forces when we haven't won ONE war yet where we went in with that attitude from the start??

The only war we've outright *WON* since 1945 was the 1991 war. Bush Sr. Amassed over a half MILLION Western troops and support people to so totally overwhelm and smash the enemy that overkill is almost a laugh out loud understatement, given what the world saw and the leaders likely knew at the time for Iraqi combat effectiveness. Still...If Bush Sr. had half assed it with 150,000 or something? Kuwait would likely still be an Iraqi province and we'd have lost THAT one too.

War just isn't for those who look DOWN on others. Those little guys have a way of being more tenacious and resilient precisely because it's all they have to fight with and you can't shoot or bomb THAT out of people.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


It is foolish attitudes that you displayed, that when proven wrong and yet refused to admit to it, but to justify with irrational nonsense that not only had led to mankind walked away with tails between their legs when they could have won, simply because you ASSUME the worst instead of calmly rationalizing what and where went wrong.

Each situation in crisis is different, and need to be approach in different manners and perspective.

Your anti-americanism stance had only clouded your judgement as well as credibility here on ATS, that only fellow anti-americansim will support . USA had not won any war except 'Iraq' under Bush senior? I know not how to express my disgust at your pathetic attempts to hate america to the point of using lies to support your hatred, and really regretting my efforts on this post instead of what I normally would have done - the right to ignore your ignorances.

So I will stop here least I be accuse of destroying your credibility here. My hope is that you be more objective to seek for truths and realities, than to let petty animosities cloud your judgement and opinions. Stars and flags are worth little here, but when truth is shared, it stands forever, and even though you may be only a nick, many more will know your stance where truth lays, seldom acknowledged or rewarded, but nevertheless, will be known when you see other posts and threads supporting your views.

I wish you good luck, and may you be part of the solution than be part of the problem to safety, enlightenment, honest assurances and peace.

Put it this way,there is no winning a war with Nkorea,the casualty rate would be astronomical on both sides
the only "win" imo is a change in leadership and/or steps towards de-nuclearising of Nkorea

reply to post by pheonix358


S&F for this guys !!
In addition to what you had mentioned regarding military budgets though... I did some research myself and found out that North Korea has several BILLIONS of dollars in slush funds across Europe and China. Which they had earned from their drug trade (they concoct drugs in some NK factories) thus, I am sure that whatever money they DID make all these years, has been used towards their military arsenal. If you would like to read more about my findings, here is the link
www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by SeekerofTruth101


Anti-americanism stance? ME? Anti-American?

I didn't mean my post to be singular for the attitude of looking down and basically ridiculing our enemies right into how forces are deployed and handled in response. It's not any individual thing and perhaps I should have clarified that. I meant no personal challenge. This is a national problem ...and a long running one evidenced by the historic approach of "incremental" engagement with opposing forces that have no time or interest in fighting 'properly planned stages of escalation' by some guide or book in their equivalent of a war college.

I think we are very much in different areas of approaching this and beyond common ground to go forward with ...when you figure I'm anti-American. (I'm still laughing, physically laughing over that one.... ) I'm against our leadership approaching the business of war as en exercise in economy of resources and manpower in some very misguided belief that we are SO superior, we have that luxury and can still win.

In a movie I consider very solid for depiction of the times, "Gardens of Stone", a young buck assigned to the graves detail at Arlington National Cemetery and raring for overseas deployment to the Vietnam War very insulting asks his friend and superior officer 'How can America lose against people fighting with Bows and Arrows?!?!' ..having made the point that a recent story showed a helicopter returning with, of all things, an arrow stuck in the fuselage.

The answer was one I've obviously never forgotten. "How do you fight people who fight you with bows and arrows?". Well, how indeed. To ask the former members of the Viet Cong and Viet Minh before them? France never learned how ...and neither have we. Then or now.

Click here for more information.

the reasons for an fact that there IS an NK... should be reminded :-)
we couldend overwin them then an will not now..
geografic seen NK has an advantige.... all mountains that are booby traps for oure forces...

so make peace ... it aint wordt it to loose that amount of human lives

reply to post by ressiv


I agree, war is never worth it. You can go back 2000 years and seldom has a country been attacked for the reasons outlined by the Government. There is always some other reason and most revolve around wealth and power.

Interestingly, the defenders have always had an advantage born of defending the homeland. 'Taking' and 'holding' are two very different concepts. We applaud the French Resistance fighters of WW2 and some demonize the 'resurgents' in Iraq. As if labeling them differently makes a difference.

You can tell the rest of the world whatever you want and some will fall for it, If you attack a country the people will fight back. We are told, quite clearly that North Koreans have been 'Indoctrinated' as if that is the reason for their willingness to fight.

When it all comes down to the crunch they will fight for their country and their freedom. They have been told that the Forces of Evil are the US with modern weapons poised over the border to destroy them.

There are US forces poised over the border. They have huge military exercises every year to ensure they are ready for a conflict. Many would say they are only defensive forces but a certain US President labelled North Korea as one of the Axis of Evils. In fact for sixty years the rhetoric coming from the US has always been the same, North Korea is evil. The US has attacked nation after nation.

If you were North Korea how would you feel? I would feel very threatened and intimidated. I would be thinking that it is our turn very soon.

If I am going to be attacked anyway, if I am going to be destroyed come what may, then I will study "The Art of War" and decide to have this war on my own time table. I will prepare for it and I will look at the tactics of all the nations that survived such an onslaught.

We need to look at this from the perspective of North Korea. It is an eye opener.

P

Lmao @ NK could destroy Japan they can't even feed their own people..

Everyone wants to show videos of how bada$$ they are and it makes me giggle I mean cmon man it's frikin North Korea

here is a real military and what will happen to little kimmy

















LMAO @ NK... America "snip" yeah

reply to post by goou111


Thanks for the vids, they were great, some really nice kit!

As I have said, the US will win in the sky, they will win on the sea, they will win on the plains. They have a huge tech advantage and you are justifiably proud of that achievement.

If they attack NK they will take heavy losses as they did in Vietnam and for the same reason. The moment you get into terrain that is great for ambush tactics such as jungles and mountains the high tech becomes less of an issue.

One of those vids showed the numbers of front line troops, impressive!

Now the problem is that North Korea will put 100% of its troops and assets into a war.

The US is so busy all over the world that she cannot do that. North Korea does not have to take on the whole US War Machine, only a portion of it at a time.

Yes you can take North Korea. The losses will be extreme and then you have to hold North Korea, that you will never do. The US lost more troops trying to keep Iraq than they did taking the place. The losses will be unacceptable.

P

ETA, thanks for the post, apologies for the other day. Bad hair day

In Vietnam, the US military had not lost the war. It lost it thanks to politics.

For those who think US suffered the most casualties, that is a fallacy. While every human life is precious, but when war happens, there will be casualties, therefore wars must be carefully considered, and when enacted, casualties must be expected.

During the Khe Shan siege by the north vietnamese army, the few america troops up on the hill managed to hold off hundred thousands of enemies by laying rings of artillery fire upon them. The losses on the NVA side was horrific.

The NVA made a mistake, for they thought that they could achieve the same success as happened when they attacked the french and send them packing, over the siege of Dien Ben Phu, similar in many physical was as the seige of Khe Shan.

The difference was that US had much more supplies and resupplies than the french did, and held out long enough for the NVA to flee with tails stuck between their legs.

There were many other military successes, such as the vietcong TET offensive and saw the vietcong almost annihilated. Hanoi was pounded daily and close to destruction by US B52 bombers.

US is not some dictatorship, whom cannot change if it discovered errors. It realized that it had backed the wrong side - the southern vietnam Diem regime, whom were smooth talkers and heavily corrupted administrators, which was the cause for Vietnam's anger, and it was this reason it held talks with the communists and decided to end the war, to let the Vietnamese people decide their national path.

The Northern NVA leader - Ho Chi Ming, was NEVER a commie. He actually sought for US aid to end French occupation repeatedly after being inspired by the formation of UN. During WW2, he helped recue american pilots back to friendly territory, and yet, he was snubbed by the stupid US state dept, and thus made Uncle Ho resort to China and Russia for help to boot out the corrupted monarchy and diem regime, which led to the tragedy of Vietnam - Both Vietnamese and Americans whom could and should have been friends but misled into becoming enemies.

All these and more can be found in the leaked Pentagon Papers, for those who wish to learn more.


Back to the topic, during Korean War 1, General Van Fleet of the 8th army laid a ring of cannon steel around hills it occupied as US advanced into Pyongyong the 2nd time. The human waves of the Chinese red army was awesome, that even CGI cannot duplicate, and yet, they could not take the beating from Van Fleet's canons. 1, 500,000 chinese and NK troops died. American casualties were only minimal, as it used weapons and tech to win.

Similarly today, US and SK have and will use ADVANCED weapons and tech, and win, for the unsupported NK military is blind. It may roused up 9 million reserves, but soft skin is not match against steel and explosives. How many will Fatboy sacrifice, before the canon fodders turn tail and flee?

No one wants war, but if forced into it, the casualty toll will be astronomically high on NK's side, if Fatboy Kim is foolish to wage one.

reply to post by SeekerofTruth101


We 'lost' Vietnam and now they're a peaceful trading partner.

We 'won' or 'tied' Korea and now get threatened with constant nuclear war.

When you realize that 'losing' these wars is better for America than 'winning' them, how does that change your viewpoint?

You have to realize that there's only imperative for our involvement if the situation is unstable. If the situation is unstable then force is required to make it stable. If we don't get involved then eventually one force will overcome another and they'll stabilize themselves. If we do get involved then our force is required to stabilize the situation. The factors that required our force to be there will actually still exist. We then commit ourselves to maintaining force there forever to prevent the other forces from taking over. That's a HUGE cost. And there's no reward at all for it. That's a terrible cost/ benefit analysis.

The best thing to do with Iraq, Afghanistan, and Korea would be to pull out and let the chips fall where they may. Let the Taliban take over Afghanistan, Iran take over Iraq, and the communists unify Korea. Then we just make peace with and trade with them. How crap the lives of citizens would be in these countries does not effect us at all.

That's much better for America than the cost of hundreds of thousands of American lives and possibilities of WW3. And the rewards for winning in lieu of these costs? Absolutely nothing.

The rewards of 'losing'? Peaceful, profitable trading partners. The costs of 'losing'? Absolutely nothing.

You're arguing that we could win fights when winning those fights actually hurts us more than losing them. America LOSES by winning those wars. By losing them, America WINS. By not fighting them at all, we'd win even more.

reply to post by RedDragon


Hindsight is often a useful tool - to learn from mistakes or make further fools of ourselves.

Geopolitics, unfortunately, is not as simple as you make it out to be - in white or black, wining or losing. There are many other contributing factors which one cannot disregard inorder to simplify, or we would have only made fool of ourselves, never learning and never to progress and evolve.

Each situation is different in many ways - geopolitcally, economics and socially.

Let Iran and NK have nukes, soon every nation will want nukes, and when mass produced - even terrorists and non state actors including drug lords and probably the corner liqour store owner wants one too.

The only constant in life is change. Nothing can stand the juggarnaut of change. Either we adjust and adapt to changes, or be trampled by change, as NK will be if it refuses to give up on nukes. The world is far more educated today, learnt and understood more the lessons of History, China and Russia is no longer ruled by Mao and Stalin, humans can now grow body parts using stem cells and 3d printers, etc.

reply to post by SeekerofTruth101


There's nothing you can do about WMD proliferation (access to high amounts of energy). So, it's pointless to worry about.

Technology is going to advance to the point that the average Joe will have access to more energy in his nuclear fusion car than a nuclear weapon has. It's barely possible to contain nuclear weapons right now and future technology will be more destructive and vastly more accessible. So, containing WMDs is impossible at the individual level, let alone the state level.

Our focus should be on how to benefit from that situation, not how to prevent it. You say hindsight is 20/20 -- this is one thing that's obvious now and will be incredibly obvious in hindsight. The countries that waste resources and political capital trying to fight nuclear proliferation will lose out to countries that use those resources to benefit from it.

As you say, the only constant in life is change. Those who squander resources trying to prevent change (eg - exponential proliferation of access to massive amounts of energy) will lose. Those who use resources profitably by adapting to that change will win.

reply to post by RedDragon


As much as tech will advance far beyond what we know today for sure, but there is still something called Morality and Ethics.

Just because we can easily kill the guy beside us - should we do it?

This is the very first lesson our cavemen and junglemen ancestors taught us when they learnt to form communities and societies so as to progress and evolve.

Similarly, as tech advances, we must apply moral and ethical codes to it to ensure tech serves us, and not we be ruled by tech. What is we good, we expand upon it, but that which will be harmful to our very existance as a race on this planet - must and will be stopped.

Nukes are clear evidences of such tech that should never had been allowed to proliferate, for the harm it will do if no one is checking on it, regulating it or ensuring it does not fall into wrong hands.

Moral and Ethics guidelines are the duties our ancestors passed to us, and for us to pass it down to ensure our future generations get a chance to live and not be destroyed through utter stupidity and greed.

reply to post by SeekerofTruth101


Morality and ethics are logical fallacies. They're pointless constructs caused by empathetic brain centers and don't actually exist in real life. As humans, we have the ability to use logic to overcome instincts.

Animals have empathy and other emotions. What separates us from animals and allows us to be so successful is the ability to think rationally.

Countries that let emotions like empathy overtake the gift of rational thought will have policies on the intellectual level of animals; they will be self-destructive. Countries that don't let their emotions overtake their ability to think and instead use logic will be rewarded by reality.

If the countries with Nukes would dramatically scale back on what they have then we may see other countries willingly fall into line.

As long as the US and Russia have thousands of the things, why should other countries bother to even listen to the rhetoric. Israel has them and does not have a single sanction in place, WTF.

SO why should these other players, who have been directly threatened by the mightiest nation on earth give them up? Why? I wouldn't!

The two countries that have them and scare me the most is the US and Israel.

The US is the only country to have used them AND SHE USED THEM ON CIVILIAN CITIES!

P

reply to post by goou111


you know one great thing about relying heavily on technology
it only takes someone with a lot of time and talent to hack and use that against you
aka the taliban using off the shelf laptops and other gear to see what the US see with their drones.

as mentioned before firepower wise the US is king of the Hill, when it comes to urban warfare where they have to fight gorilla style warfare they tend to be on less then level playing field as they lose the advantage (short of bombing the block)

also to add, North Korea was to use its diseal subs and pulled off what China did when it shadowed the US carrier without being detected, that's one hell of a trophy target

just because one has a bigger gun does not mean someone aka north Korea with a tiny ass gun cant do something

To all those posters who say "Just go in and wipe them all out" I would reply, "Yea mate, you lead the charge."

I think that this series of posts emphasizes some important points, that seem to be getting lost on many readers.

1) While we have ample resources that can "take them out", the key is knowing WHERE to hit with those resources.

2) Despite all our technology and weapons in the area, NK can easily kill many in SK and Japan if they choose to attack en-mass.

3) While eventual victory is pretty much assured (just "doing the math" as it was put)...it will be at a great cost to our allies, and the American public will have to stomach some good losses as well.

The US can decapitate the NK leadership in a matter of weeks, but it would take many months/years to police NK should we have to put boots on the ground there, and this would be expensive in many ways (lives, money, equipment, etc.).

I believe these are the primary reasons that although we aren't ready to budge on pushing for a non-nuclear NK, we are also trying to resolve this peacefully, as long as it takes...because time is just time, but lives are more important.

Militarily speaking, our best move here would be to do a pre-emptive strike on NK, take out the weapons threatening our allies, prevent them rolling through the DMZ, etc. Politically however, our hands are tied in a "they have to move first" kind of trap, due to the potential reactions of China and Russia.