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Warbadger posted:Well, honestly I think you've missed the mark by a pretty long shot. It has little to do with a nuclear deterrent aimed at the outside parties who haven't made any serious move against NK for the last 60 years, if for no other reason than they already have demonstrated a nuclear deterrent. Instead, this is about the same thing the sudden cross-border shelling, sinking of the Cheonan, and the various North Korean leaders ending up dead was about - KJU is a fat nobody who was suddenly shoehorned into power as his father died. He needs to soludify his own position and lead a North Korean leadership that justifies many of its current policies and past actions on being the only defense against the ravening mud-blood horde who are poised to invade. They can't just stop doing that and they can't allow it to look like it isn't true - which is becoming more difficult over time with the dramatically expanded black and grey markets along with technology. you're right in that they won't back down to save face but wrong for the reason. the problem is that in the past, when they've interpreted aggression or dangerous military buildup and lashed out, there has historically been a muted response from the US (the ROK is always happy to trade limited artillery fire but still far short of full engagement), which to them achieves their goal of reinforcing the status quo of not being invaded. now that trump is matching or exceeding their rhetoric, they're going to be even more fearful of a preliminary strike and lash out more to show their strength and then we're on a short course to war. as for the propaganda aspect, let's not pretend like they actually need to do anything externally at all to create propaganda to control the populace. that machine is well-oiled and has no shortage of juche material to come up with. Sperglord posted:From the last page or so, we are heading into a crisis with North Korea with a military which has large readiness problems.... That Works posted:Naive question here but where's the money go? We always hear the constant harping about how we spend more on defense than x countries combined. Is it just that to run as big of a setup as we have properly we'd need even more money or?
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Aug 11, 2017 04:01
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brains posted:don't mistake readiness issues for lack of capability: the US military has enormous overmatch of the DPRK and would win in any conflict, nuclear or not. the problem is that any military solution would guarantee to result in thousands of dead US service members, tens to possibly hundreds of thousands of dead South Koreans, and possibly dead Japanese civilians before that victory occurs. and then you have the entire population of North Korea turned into a refugee crisis that dwarfs the current one by an order of magnitude. I had two horror situations in mind. First, a preventative strike is prepared under an optimistic assumption of US Military capabilities. The broad public, see the #MAGA friend mentioned earlier, assumes the US can defeat North Korea in a matter of hours. For example, Dale Brown on his FB feed said: quote:Ten B-2A Spirit stealth bombers from Whiteman AFB will take out North Korea's command and control facilities, followed by U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force cruise missile strikes. Thirty B-1B bombers will take out North Korea's missile and artillery sites, followed by B-52, F/A-18, F-22, and F-35 strikes against North Korean military targets. All these strikes will take place before North Korea will have a chance to attack South Korea--a "Desert Storm"--type massive attack. This operation should start tomorrow morning. No more waiting for negotiations. Strike now, strike hard, strike fast. It isn't actually clear whether the US has enough readiness to pull off that sort of strike, yet that capability is assumed by the public. One has to worry how optimistic the war plans shown to Trump are. The second horror scenario is a war starts, for whatever reason, and the US can't bring it to a close quickly, because of the aforementioned readiness issues. That could see an increase in deaths by an order of magnitude. Granted, from millions to tens of millions, so it is already a horror show, but I digress. On the topic of North Korea airstrikes, wouldn't the US Air Force find a nice high speed weapon useful? Good thing there has been steady development towards such a munition! (/Sarcasm) Sperglord fucked around with this message at 04:11 on Aug 11, 2017 |
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Aug 11, 2017 04:08
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there is no circumstance where the US can neutralize 8,000 pieces of artillery before they inflict heavy civilian casualties. and if the norks start slinging chemical weapons, which they have plenty of, only 1 needs to get through before the cost calculus fails. and now, you have to add in potential nuclear exchange. again, this isn't to say that the US and ROK forces wouldn't win handily, but only 1 warhead needs to get across the 38th and there is just no military option to prevent that from happening.
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Aug 11, 2017 04:12
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brains posted:there is no circumstance where the US can neutralize 8,000 pieces of artillery before they inflict heavy civilian casualties. and if the norks start slinging chemical weapons, which they have plenty of, only 1 needs to get through before the cost calculus fails. and now, you have to add in potential nuclear exchange. again, this isn't to say that the US and ROK forces wouldn't win handily, but only 1 warhead needs to get across the 38th and there is just no military option to prevent that from happening. I don't doubt you at all, it is just that the public perception is not at all in line with that reality, much less the diminished capability of the military. Which under normal circumstances would be a problem, under the current president, a big disconnect between the public expectations and reality is going to be an issue for him.
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Aug 11, 2017 04:15
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One or two or five nuclear detonations below the 38th would just be further post-mortem justifications that a first strike was needed by the red hat crowd. No matter how many die. Everyone is already against the war and the repercussions of it or not, the calculus is almost entirely non the executives of both countries. KJU will threaten everyone to make the cost of regime change unpaletrable. Trump won't understand the threat, perhaps even dismissing it as a bluff, and initiating that very war because of Korean rhetoric.
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Aug 11, 2017 04:27
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Sperglord posted:I had two horror situations in mind. First, a preventative strike is prepared under an optimistic assumption of US Military capabilities. The broad public, see the #MAGA friend mentioned earlier, assumes the US can defeat North Korea in a matter of hours. It's funny in a grim way how the First Gulf War has fully transitioned into mythology in the public mind even while most of the participants are still alive. Desert Shield took six months to assemble the necessary air, naval, and ground forces to take out Saddam, with huge amounts of worldwide attention throughout the build up - and that was still with Cold War levels of strength and readiness. Nowadays everyone seems to think the US just pressed a button and the Iraqi Army was wiped from the face of the earth, but it takes serious time to gather the necessary forces in theater for a major offensive. And North Korea has been paying attention. https://twitter.com/armscontrolwonk/status/839925753068269568 KJU has made it pretty clear that if the US starts building up for a Desert Storm/OIF style attack he's not going to wait around like a chump. His only chance is to hit fast and hit hard, and hope that massive US casualties in the opening minutes would be enough to shock the US into backing down. The alternative is waiting for the US to roll in and JDAM him in the middle of the night, so what does he have to lose?
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Aug 11, 2017 04:55
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What kinds of signs are there that Russia is having trouble seeing the NK missile launches?
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Aug 11, 2017 05:04
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Godholio posted:We've already started retiring C-17s ffs. Is the C-17 production line still up? And if so, did McD/Boeing ever give up hope of civilian sales? To be honest, I'm amazed they didn't sell at least a couple, but I guess anybody that needs a C-17-sized delivery to a short field in the rear end in a top hat of nowhere (thinking of those places in extreme northern Alaska and such) gets it at a subsidized rate from the USAF or local equivalent, because the military can write it off as a training flight. Sperglord posted:There seems to be a decent amount of specialized capabilities which the South Koreans don't have, e.g. bombers, stealth strategic reconnaissance, etc.  ).Korean War II would be messy as hell and a bad time for all involved, which is why everybody puts up with their poo poo, but it they start it, all bets are off. Unless Warmaster Kim literally shits SA-11 batteries (as I'm sure he or his father have claimed to be able to), there's not much hope of it ending up in his favor. M_Gargantua posted:KJU will threaten everyone to make the cost of regime change unpaletrable. Trump won't understand the threat, perhaps even dismissing it as a bluff, and initiating that very war because of Korean rhetoric. Edit: Terrifying Effigies posted:It's funny in a grim way how the First Gulf War has fully transitioned into mythology in the public mind even while most of the participants are still alive. Desert Shield took six months to assemble the necessary air, naval, and ground forces to take out Saddam, with huge amounts of worldwide attention throughout the build up - and that was still with Cold War levels of strength and readiness. Chillbro Baggins fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Aug 11, 2017 |
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Aug 11, 2017 05:07
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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Delivery McGee posted:Is the C-17 production line still up? And if so, did McD/Boeing ever give up hope of civilian sales? To be honest, I'm amazed they didn't sell at least a couple, but I guess anybody that needs a C-17-sized delivery to a short field in the rear end in a top hat of nowhere (thinking of those places in extreme northern Alaska and such) gets it at a subsidized rate from the USAF or local equivalent, because the military can write it off as a training flight. Lockmart is producing L-100s again for that market. I'm not sure why there'd be demand for a civilian C-17, the C-130 fills that niche better I'd think.
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Aug 11, 2017 05:16
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hobbesmaster posted:Lockmart is producing L-100s again for that market. I'm not sure why there'd be demand for a civilian C-17, the C-130 fills that niche better I'd think. Fair play, I guess any single unit big enough to need a C-17 but not essential enough to get the USAF involved, they can just truck up when it's possible, and make do with deliveries of finished product via L-100 bush pilots until that can be arranged. I guess any scenario that absolutely requires a C-17 (say, transoprt of a VIP armored limo and support staff) would end up being an Air Force job anyway. Unless you're visiting places where the locals would be offended by a military jet, but then it's cheaper to paint the Boss' limo-hauler bird in the colors of the national airline and maintain a polite fiction than to buy and crew a civilian version.  Edit: tangent: what're all those doors on the main gear bulge for? Big flap hinged aft with grey inside at the front, and little doors swung upward beween the gear doors and engines? Never noticed them before. Chillbro Baggins fucked around with this message at 05:31 on Aug 11, 2017 |
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Aug 11, 2017 05:20
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Terrifying Effigies posted:KJU has made it pretty clear that if the US starts building up for a Desert Storm/OIF style attack he's not going to wait around like a chump. His only chance is to hit fast and hit hard, and hope that massive US casualties in the opening minutes would be enough to shock the US into backing down. Ah yes, the tried and true "If we hit the Americans hard and fast and unexpectedly they will back down" strategy that has met so much historical success.
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Aug 11, 2017 05:21
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Fojar38 posted:Ah yes, the tried and true "If we hit the Americans hard and fast and unexpectedly they will back down" strategy that has met so much historical success. You don't have to think it'll work, KJU has to.
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Aug 11, 2017 05:25
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Fojar38 posted:Ah yes, the tried and true "If we hit the Americans hard and fast and unexpectedly they will back down" strategy that has met so much historical success. Yeah I got a laugh after reading that too.... That's not how Americans work at all. It's not really a positive or anything to brag about.
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Aug 11, 2017 06:08
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MrMojok posted:What kinds of signs are there that Russia is having trouble seeing the NK missile launches? Jeffrey Lewis of Arms Control Wonk discusses it in this twitter thread. They also discussed it on their latest couple of podcasts. Read the tweets, it's good, unnerving stuff. https://twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk/status/883459440208297984 Basically Russia seems to be saying completely different things about the North Korean missile launches than the US, Japan and SK. http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/502248/russia-eyes-north-korea/ http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/502257/russia-north-korea-worse-than-you-thought/ This has been going on for years, the latest example being them apparently not seeing the second stage of the recent KN-14 launch, instead saying that the missile only went as high as the first stage. Now this being Russia, this could be that their NK-facing equipment is not that good, or it might be intentional disinformation. In that case, why?
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Aug 11, 2017 06:20
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LingcodKilla posted:Yeah I got a laugh after reading that too.... That's not how Americans work at all. It's not really a positive or anything to brag about. You'd end up invading a completely unrelated country a couple years later for no apparent reason.
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Aug 11, 2017 06:22
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A Saudi guy with a beard broke a bar stool over our backs in the Pub Internationale, and when the rest of the civilized world asked us if we were okay, we broke our bottle on the bar and loudly exclaimed that anyone who didn't pledge undying allegiance and loyalty to us was 'gonna get cut.' Then we singled out the people we thought we saw laughing in the corner and spent most of our treasure in making their lives as miserable as possible, at ruinous expense to most, but tremendous profit to the usual suspects. Then we called our dumbest friend over to convince everyone to never gently caress with us again, not realizing he molested our daughter and has been robbing us blind the entire time we've known him. This segment of Obvious Metaphors has been brought to you by BIG HEADLINE 
BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 06:26 on Aug 11, 2017 |
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Aug 11, 2017 06:24
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Kemper Boyd posted:You'd end up invading a completely unrelated country a couple years later for no apparent reason. Hey now, we had plenty of apparent reasons for invading Germany.
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Aug 11, 2017 07:28
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Fojar38 posted:Ah yes, the tried and true "If we hit the Americans hard and fast and unexpectedly they will back down" strategy that has met so much historical success. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969_EC-121_shootdown_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Pueblo_(AGER-2) On the second one, they kept the ship. It's not like there's zero precedence for them.
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Aug 11, 2017 07:35
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Here's a little medevac story I hadn't heard before http://www.popasmoke.com/visions/displayimage.php?album=69&pid=873#top_display_media
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Aug 11, 2017 10:29
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That Works posted:Naive question here but where's the money go? We always hear the constant harping about how we spend more on defense than x countries combined. Is it just that to run as big of a setup as we have properly we'd need even more money or? <insert GIF of all the world's carriers here, where like 2/3rds of the picture is Murrica>
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Aug 11, 2017 10:36
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Delivery McGee posted:On the other hand, between the US and local forces in SK and Japan who are still at Cold War readiness levels (at least, I'd hope so) and the sort of ridiculous poo poo we pulled with B-52s in Gulf War 2 (broke the Black Buck distance/time of flight record by flying from Barksdale to Baghdad and back, IIRC), plus whatever naval assets may happen to be showing the flag in the south China sea, we may be a little ahead on that point. While we are talking about Desert Storm, let's mention that we managed to stop all of 0 Scud launches.
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Aug 11, 2017 12:28
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LingcodKilla posted:Yeah I got a laugh after reading that too.... That's not how Americans work at all. It's not really a positive or anything to brag about. It certainly wouldn't save KJU (lol), but losing a major port or airfield like Busan or Osan to a stray nuke on the first day of conflict would be a setback the US military hasn't experienced since the first Korean War. America would wipe the north clean but we'd certainly get knocked back a step from a hit like that after decades of nigh-invincibility.
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Aug 11, 2017 12:51
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slothrop posted:Here's a little medevac story I hadn't heard before Technically that's CASEVAC.
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Aug 11, 2017 13:57
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Aug 11, 2017 14:28
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Delivery McGee posted:Is the C-17 production line still up? And if so, did McD/Boeing ever give up hope of civilian sales? To be honest, I'm amazed they didn't sell at least a couple, but I guess anybody that needs a C-17-sized delivery to a short field in the rear end in a top hat of nowhere (thinking of those places in extreme northern Alaska and such) gets it at a subsidized rate from the USAF or local equivalent, because the military can write it off as a training flight. The line is dead, the 70+ year old factory is closed permanently. I'm kind of surprised they didn't find more civilian sales (there were a couple), but the C-17's operating costs are kind of high. quote:ROKAF has better Mudhens than the USAF and pretty good AEW/AWACS, and if there's any capability the US hasn't lost over the last 17 years of Operation Pound Sand Into Smaller Sand, it's heavy bombing and recon. Wild Weasels might be a problem, but I'm sure Raytheon could glue a HARM onto a Tomahawk booster for the right price, and then stuff a Bone full of 'em (maybe I've read too much Dale Brown The problem with an AR-TLAM is that it's slow. REAL slow compared to an actual HARM. -------------- We're not talking about Desert Storm. The US-led coalition is not going to need 1,000,000 troops for a massive land war. It's going to be an air campaign with incursions over the border to secure chokepoints and NK staging areas. In DS we had to reclaim land; in whatever we want to call this one we're toppling a house of cards with HE and then figuring out the humanitarian crisis in shock because who could've seen it coming. We've got a good portion of the necessary assets to topple Kim permanently positioned in the region already.
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Aug 11, 2017 15:20
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Wanna scritch that belly. 
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Aug 11, 2017 15:28
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Terrifying Effigies posted:It certainly wouldn't save KJU (lol), but losing a major port or airfield like Busan or Osan to a stray nuke on the first day of conflict would be a setback the US military hasn't experienced since the first Korean War. America would wipe the north clean but we'd certainly get knocked back a step from a hit like that after decades of nigh-invincibility. All I'm seeing is us smearing NK then rebuilding with massive contract jobs for $$$$$$$. Oh yeah and god bless Murica. It's really too bad about those coastal elites but we will rebuild!
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Aug 11, 2017 15:28
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I was once told that under tail doors are undesirable because they require a heavier airframe which means less payload for commercial operators. Question about procurement for the thread at large: Assume that tomorrow it's discovered that every C-17* has an unrepairable crack in the main spar and are no longer airworthy. Simply: would procurement still be an utter fustercluck if there's an urgent need and glaringly obvious capability gap? *: Or other lynchpin, as you like.
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Aug 11, 2017 15:38
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standard.deviant posted:There are a lot of wrong assumptions in your post, but assuming that between forces in theater (US/ROK/Japan) and tanked bombers from CONUS we are "a little ahead" of the Gulf War's "more than 1000 fixed-wing attack aircraft and another 800 air defense fighters and electronic combat aircraft" really takes the cake. (Gulf War Air Power Survey, p53). Was there ever an unclassified report about how many got destroyed in their bunkers by bombing? If by 'stopped scud launches' they only counted ones where they rolled the launcher out and then we blew it up then yeah we stopped 0.
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Aug 11, 2017 15:53
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Godholio posted:We're not talking about Desert Storm. The US-led coalition is not going to need 1,000,000 troops for a massive land war. It's going to be an air campaign with incursions over the border to secure chokepoints and NK staging areas. In DS we had to reclaim land; in whatever we want to call this one we're toppling a house of cards with HE and then figuring out the humanitarian crisis in shock because who could've seen it coming. We've got a good portion of the necessary assets to topple Kim permanently positioned in the region already. LingcodKilla posted:All I'm seeing is us smearing NK then rebuilding with massive contract jobs for $$$$$$$. Oh yeah and god bless Murica. It's really too bad about those coastal elites but we will rebuild! There is zero chance that China and possibly SK wouldn't step in in a big way (depending on the how much collateral damage there is, of course), if for no other reason that NK citizens would stream into those countries like there's no tomorrow. They are both scared to death of NK getting into an actual war/unplanned regime change, because they know it will cost many billions if not trillions, not to mention a couple decades, to really reincorporate a population that size in any meaningful way. Not to mention, the current NK population is largely wasted - years of malnutrition and poor or nonexistent education makes it difficult to find suitable jobs for them, so we're talking a full generation or two to reincorporate. Getting from Syria or Africa to Europe is a relatively nontrivial task. Civilians massing at the shared border of a country (DMZ notwithstanding) that they have strong ethnic ties to is pretty simple in comparison, if there is nobody to stop them. I can't even begin to imagine how that scenario will play out.
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Aug 11, 2017 16:04
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Shooting Blanks posted:I can't even begin to imagine how that scenario will play out. On the northern boarder, machine-guns and/or internment camps, on the southern boarder "reeducation camps"
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Aug 11, 2017 16:15
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https://twitter.com/ap/status/895978470311952384 It's ok. Donny T says he has this covered.
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Aug 11, 2017 16:48
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That Works posted:Yeah. I have a MAGA friend who is completely insistent that our anti-missile defenses will take out anything that NK launches at us and then we'll nuke them into oblivion. Reminded him to check on the success rate for anti-missile systems and he could only reply that 'everyone hate NK and will help us on this one, we have 7000 nukes'. I remember on some forum, 'perspectives'? I'm not sure. Some idiot kept insisting that since stuff 'made in china' is bad quality, their nuclear ICBM's are too and won't work, and that the US can invade and nuke china without getting nuked back. This was many years ago so it is uncertain if that person still believes that, but I wonder.
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Aug 11, 2017 16:50
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"Everyone knows the Chinese can't make complicated stuff. Why they'd never be able to make the Iphone in China. #MAGA"  I've met the type as well.
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Aug 11, 2017 17:52
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IPCRESS posted:I was once told that under tail doors are undesirable because they require a heavier airframe which means less payload for commercial operators. You would almost certainly see a COTS derivative solution that carries both an FAA and military type certificate. Deptfordx posted:"Everyone knows the Chinese can't make complicated stuff. Why they'd never be able to make the Iphone in China. #MAGA"  but:I hate this analogy as an iPhone is trivially simple compared to a "modern" defense industry system-of-systems type project. It can do dope stuff but in basically every quantifiable measure of system complexity (SLOC, number of interfaces, number of circuit cards, design requirements, etc.) its much simpler. Theres a reason why it takes the defense industry 5+ years to turn out a new product and it takes Apple 1 despite the same number of engineers working on it. CarForumPoster fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Aug 11, 2017 |
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Aug 11, 2017 17:54
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Deptfordx posted:"Everyone knows the Chinese can't make complicated stuff. Why they'd never be able to make the Iphone in China. #MAGA" This is doubly funny because the exact same line was spouted in the 30s. "Japan is only good at making cheap, poor quality toys the yellow races could NEVER threaten the white mans hegemony in the pacific."
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Aug 11, 2017 17:56
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Cyrano4747 posted:I'm normally not a fan of the Economist's "what if" articles, but they ran a pretty good one outlining a theoretical chain of events leading to nukes cooking off on the Korean peninsula. The short version is that Lil Kim had to do stupid poo poo for domestic political reasons, then had to double down on that stupid poo poo to not look weak in the face of the American response, then the Americans had to respond to THAT under the assumption that he wasn't just playing pretend, then the DPRK had to go all in because oh gently caress this is going to lead to regime change, isn't' it? So, to break this vicious cycle we need carefully crafted foreign policy and diplomacy? poo poo. But yeah, I guess there is a huge fog over the decision of KJU that we can't see through. At least the books afterwards will be interesting.
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Aug 11, 2017 18:11
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Listen we all told you not to enlist
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Aug 11, 2017 18:14
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Newsweek is reporting a counterpoint from two MIT scientists claiming that DPRK actually cannot deliver a nuclear warhead to CONUS and probably not even AK. This is all way over my head so I'd like yalls impression on it. E: one MIT scientist and two German scientists, rather zoux fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Aug 11, 2017 |
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Aug 11, 2017 19:02
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I didn't even have to click the link to know Postol would be involved. He did some important work in the early 90s but I've seen him be  flat wrong about things for the last decade. I'll read it this afternoon after work.
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Aug 11, 2017 19:05
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