Agreed. That’s rather the idea behind all of this expensive technology that nobody wants to pay for but are happy is there once morons like this start rattling the sabres.
Modern warfare is meant to kill as few as possible, and just the baddies should the killing be necessary at all, which in this case, it won’t. If KJI ACTUALLY launches that missle at Hawaii, he, his dictatorship and in fact the entire leadership of NK will be promptly smushed, with SK and China following in after to pick up and restore order. He doesn’t want that, WE don’t want that, but he knows that would be the result, just because Obama can rally the troops like nobody’s bidness.
I’m actually rather concerned that people think Obama would wait for the results of a hostile launch. If Kim were foolish enough to announce that he was going to attack, then I would expect an immediate and massive reaction. If NK were to make an unannounced launch, then I would also expect such a reaction immediately the flight path was computed to land in US territory. Maybe other territories too. I mean, suppose Kim were to ‘accidentally’ nuke Taiwan?
BTW I don’t understand the issue of refugees flooding North; surely they’d flood South where their brethren would welcome them with open arms?
You’re a boomer…and you don’t know the answer to these questions? Of course we have such weapons, and have for a LONG time. InterContinental Ballistic Missles.
Which means they ah, travel across continents and stuff.
I think the U.S. would require some pretty strong evidence to launch a preemptive attack. Half of what comes out of Kim’s mouth is crazy, so certainly Obama is not going to nuke a nation because the crazy dear leader says they are going to attack the U.S.
For the OP, considering the United States has a contingency plan for invading Canada if need be (one of our strongest allies), I am pretty sure the military brass have developed plans to blow North Korea to smithereens.
Not a chance. First because NK won’t hand over nukes to loose cannons; no one does that. And second, what makes you think that Hamas could afford one ? If NK sells them ( which I don’t believe for a moment will happen ), they would have to be very expensive to make a profit. If Hamas could afford one, it could afford it’s own serious army with tanks and fighters and artillery to fight Israel with.
When you’re poor, you’re desperate. I’m thinking of the Soviet Union selling off everything after it dissolved. It just “disappears” sometimes.
I understand your point. But there are assumptions built in I’m not willing to risk. I don’t know how much it would cost, but I’m sure it’s not as much as maintaining an army that could actually fight USA/Israel. We spend an enormous amount on our military, as does Israel.
Here’s what will happen. NK will warn us it intends to launch a missile. The missile will be on a trajectory that won’t actually intercept any of our Pacific Islands. But it will give us a chance to shoot the thing down using our missile defense system. If we do, then we get free target practice, and Kim gets attention. If we don’t, then Kim gets attention and we get embarrassed.
He’s doing it because the attention of the world is currently focused elsewhere. He doesn’t like this. He wants us paying attention to him, and incidentally, paying him in the form of foodstuffs and the like so that he stops being a jerk.
Hell, it worked with the last two administrations. I can understand why he would think it would work with this one.
But you are right, there are no known sales of actual finished nuclear warheads to date (if that’s what you were implying). I tried to use reputable cites, please feel free to dispute.
The United States does not possess that many conventional weapons.
I’m a little stunned, like others, that the OP is unaware of the fact that the United Styates possesses nuclear weapons and the means to launch them at targets around the world - did we not all see “The Day After”? However, I think there’s also a common misconception that the USA has this unlimited ability to just blow countries away from the air at its leisure and, apparently, almost effortlessly.
I assure you that is not the case. Hopelessly defenseless goobers like Saddam Hussein’s circa-2003 Iraqi army can be pretty seriously damaged by aerial attack but even in that war it was certainly not the case that the USA could “take out all their surface installations” with conventional weapons. The claims of aerial warface success made during wars are always exaggerrations. NATO’s bombardment of Kosovo and Yugoslavia in 1999 was especially noteworthy for its lack of damage caused to military targets.
If war were to break out on the Korean peninsula there is no chance at all that the US could stop the North Korean army purely with conventional air power, or even seriously blunt their advance before Seoul was destroyed. The U.S. doesn’t have that many planes and they don’t drop that many bombs and you can be sure the North Koreans are not going to lie down like the Iraqis did.
The Allies would likely win the war, but it would be extraordinarily bloody and would require boots on the ground.
It’s my understanding that we have weapons capable of everything from blowing up the inside of a small closet to destroying most of a full city. It seems improbable to me that we don’t have a fairly linear range of blast loads between those two extremes.
Perhaps we didn’t destroy a lot of the military installations of Kosovo, but we also weren’t fighting Kosovo. Our strategy seemed mostly to be to scare people into running, figuring that people of differing ethnicities would run in separate directions. Causing damage to their bases wasn’t really related to what we were going for.
That’s not to say that you don’t need people on the street, but I never said that you don’t need people on the street. I said that there are already two full nations in close proximity who would gladly step in to handle that part.
I don’t believe, though, that it would be a particularly bloody battle. After decades of starvation and seeing how the USSR fell apart all over itself, and seeing as how fully outgunned the North Korean military is, I wouldn’t be surprised if the first reaction of all North Korean soldiers was to start hightailing it for South Korea and China.
While it’s true that the US does have a range of weapons like this, in many cases it doesn’t have a lot of them, especially after using up a lot of the existing stockpiles over the past decade of bombing various places. Some of the expended weapons are being replaced very slowly, others not at all, due to budget constraints, use of existing budget for sexier hardware, and loss of manufacturing capability.
There is also a problem with the declining numbers of delivery systems. While new aircraft and other systems are individually more capable than the ones being replaced, the constant reductions in numbers means that there is a reduction in total delivery capability, with a growing dependence on ANG and AF Reserve part-time units to actually operate what’s left. Any significant US effort against North Korea right now would require stripping forces out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Perhaps I’m overly patriotic, but I believe other nations arm themselves by rehashing and refining existing military innovation, while Americans actually invest to forge the innovation of tomorrow. When the last time Europe, China, or North Korea sent a rover to Mars or a telescope toward Pluto? Can anyone point to any meaningful technological contribution these countries have provided in the last 10? 20 years? Its unclear to me how the North Koreans could pose a significant military problem for the U.S. From what I was taught, the U.S is so far advanced that the world hasn’t figured out how we make these; while European authors sit in their ivory towers writing about the bespectacled boys donning invisibility cloaks and playing football on broomsticks, American scientists are in the laboratory harnessing invisibility. Comparatively, militarily, and technologically, these other nations are in the Stone Age.
I’m convinced, a US-North Korean war would likely end up like the Russian-Georgian conflict - swift, merciless, and conclusive.