Might invading North Korea be both a moral duty, and a sure thing?

[Zeriel]

@Magiver

North Korea doesn’t have the trained pilots that Iraq had.

Dangerous, dangerous assumption. They have literally hundreds of missile-armed (albeit ancient) interceptors with Soviet-doctrine GCI–the first day is gonna be rough. Even if they have low amounts of training, we’re still discussing ground-controlled interceptors with AA-11 radar-homing missiles in the triple digits.

Add in the two squadrons of modern MiG-29s (they’ve got the latest as of 2006 because Russa and Belarus have been selling them airframes and training) and it’s not even close to the turkey shoot that Iraq was.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Cosmic Relief

The Iraq war comparison is bogus because the enemy artillery was so far away from anything valuable that it could easily be crushed before it could do any damage. Whatever pieces happened to be hidden, the US just waited for them to start firing, casually triangulated their location, then obliterated them with counterbattery fire.

North Korea is different. There are said to be 6,000 artillery pieces in range and targeted at Seoul. The hidden ones can’t be located until they fire. A trained artillery crew can get off something like 5 shots a minute. Do you see the problem here? When the shooting breaks out, a dense urban area is going to soak up something in the neighborhood of 30,000 rounds per minute.

Well the 5 rounds/minute rate can probably only be sustained for a few minutes so its only going to be a few hundred thousand rounds (one for every 20 or 30 living souls in Seoul)

[straight_man]

See section D of this link.

North Korea has eighteen thousand artillery pieces, not eighty.

Um, sorry for the misremembering. My original correction was correct, at least.

[Magiver]

@Zeriel

Dangerous, dangerous assumption. They have literally hundreds of missile-armed (albeit ancient) interceptors with Soviet-doctrine GCI–the first day is gonna be rough. Even if they have low amounts of training, we’re still discussing ground-controlled interceptors with AA-11 radar-homing missiles in the triple digits.

Add in the two squadrons of modern MiG-29s (they’ve got the latest as of 2006 because Russa and Belarus have been selling them airframes and training) and it’s not even close to the turkey shoot that Iraq was.

While I agree with Muffin’s assessment of the situation the hard cold fact is that NK would get chewed up in a very short period of time. They don’t have the training to fly the aicraft they’ve got. It’s all smoke and mirrors. They would quickly lose control of the skies because of poorly trained 4th generation aircraft pilots against highly trained 5th generation aircraft pilots.

As for artillery, they would experience what Iraq experienced and that is radar controlled return fire that calculates the trajectory. If you can’t move your artillery it’s gone after the first couple of shots. that doesn’t include attacks from the air which is a multi-layer series of delivery systems. Wild weasels destroy radar facilities, drones target and fire on hard assets and feed the coordinates for glide-to-target standoff weapons from bombers. The days of lengthy battle engagements are over.

[Muffin]

So we have Gates and Clinton visiting SK, and commencing major naval exercises in the area, to which NK has countered by executing Kwon Ho Ung, a former cabinet member and chief delegate at the last round of high level talks.

You’d think that a negotiator in a multi-generation war would have some sort of job security.

[Der_Trihs]

@Magiver

While I agree with Muffin’s assessment of the situation the hard cold fact is that NK would get chewed up in a very short period of time. They don’t have the training to fly the aicraft they’ve got. It’s all smoke and mirrors. They would quickly lose control of the skies because of poorly trained 4th generation aircraft pilots against highly trained 5th generation aircraft pilots.

As for artillery, they would experience what Iraq experienced and that is radar controlled return fire that calculates the trajectory. If you can’t move your artillery it’s gone after the first couple of shots. that doesn’t include attacks from the air which is a multi-layer series of delivery systems. Wild weasels destroy radar facilities, drones target and fire on hard assets and feed the coordinates for glide-to-target standoff weapons from bombers. The days of lengthy battle engagements are over.

And so what? Even granting your optimistic predictions, Seoul will still be wrecked and huge numbers of civilians dead.

[Stoneburg]

@Bryan_Ekers

I guess what profit to win the pennisula but lose your Seoul?

POTY

[Ionizer]

I’ve seen firsthand what an artillery bombardment is like from not too-far away - a ‘firepower demo’ at Ft Sill for commanders of Allied powers (a type of General’s Conference, iirc,mid-80’s) and involved three Batteries (iirc, maybe 30 tubes/guns), a few MLRS, couple aircraft (not large bombers, smaller ‘fighters’) and small assortment of smaller arty-weaponry. OMFingG is too much of an understatement for how quickly a large multi-story reinforced concrete building practically disappeared. And there was really only one ‘bombardment’, so to speak. I know it was American stuff, but I assume that NK is roughly comparable in what could be expected (to a degree - no claims made) about devastation from the equivalent tubes. The whole ‘show’ took less than a minute, much less actually. Time stood still awhile that day. I had seen/stood by plenty of tubes firing before, but that day gave me WHOLE new respect for the receiving end of artillery and their ‘payloads’ when coordinated to FireForEffect.

I’m inclined to think that a number of folks are not really appreciating just how friggin’ much literally goes away in a few blinks when massed arty has your address. No appreciation at all possibly. IMHO, a thousand tubes is well beyond serious for any city, but 18000 - holy shi… I did not realize there were that many. Seoul will be toast long before the (possible/probable) follow-up barrages, at least if what I saw (and then multiplied by whatever factor) is anywhere near what NK can do. I just wanna point that out to someone that has never seen/felt massed arty - cannot be explained with words, trust me. Heck, I live around ~32 miles (per Google Earth, fwiw) from an Arty impact area which is the usual one I see used nowadays when I watch from a nearby ‘mountain’ (Mt Scott, Wichita Mt Wildlife Refuge), and I hear shells as well as feel the pressures sitting here at my computer by a closed window. I had windows broken in my then-home off-base (Lawton/Ft Sill, OK) from impacts miles away. Ground-shaking is likely to tumble buildings (imho, ???), not just ‘direct hits’, per se. Maybe Seoul has earthquake-ready architecture like Los Angeles and other major metros and won’t be an issue (plead ignorance on that bit). No matter as the ground would roll like jelly, or at least feel like it, I bet.

Just to repeat myself, there’s no way cities can withstand much arty before they are gone. No way at all. And arty can fire pretty darn fast in the initial batterings - a few thousand or all 18000, not much difference when all that is left is ~dust from first impacts (!). And interspersed with (probable??) chemical rounds?? All betting is off as far as I am concerned. And I am thinking of arty only, which gives fear enough to anyone really in the know about arty. Looking at paper/numbers and estimating/debating things is easy, but a person should know firsthand to really know what it would be like. Toast without the butter

I am not schooled in any military tactics/planning or such, but can affirm arty effectiveness/quickness. And finality when struck/targeted → BOOM…buh-bye! Red Legs, King of Battle, if I may say so…

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Ionizer

I’ve seen firsthand what an artillery bombardment is like from not too-far away - a ‘firepower demo’ at Ft Sill for commanders of Allied powers (a type of General’s Conference, iirc,mid-80’s) and involved three Batteries (iirc, maybe 30 tubes/guns), a few MLRS, couple aircraft (not large bombers, smaller ‘fighters’) and small assortment of smaller arty-weaponry. OMFingG is too much of an understatement for how quickly a large multi-story reinforced concrete building practically disappeared. And there was really only one ‘bombardment’, so to speak. I know it was American stuff, but I assume that NK is roughly comparable in what could be expected (to a degree - no claims made) about devastation from the equivalent tubes. The whole ‘show’ took less than a minute, much less actually. Time stood still awhile that day. I had seen/stood by plenty of tubes firing before, but that day gave me WHOLE new respect for the receiving end of artillery and their ‘payloads’ when coordinated to FireForEffect.

I’m inclined to think that a number of folks are not really appreciating just how friggin’ much literally goes away in a few blinks when massed arty has your address. No appreciation at all possibly. IMHO, a thousand tubes is well beyond serious for any city, but 18000 - holy shi… I did not realize there were that many. Seoul will be toast long before the (possible/probable) follow-up barrages, at least if what I saw (and then multiplied by whatever factor) is anywhere near what NK can do. I just wanna point that out to someone that has never seen/felt massed arty - cannot be explained with words, trust me. Heck, I live around ~32 miles (per Google Earth, fwiw) from an Arty impact area which is the usual one I see used nowadays when I watch from a nearby ‘mountain’ (Mt Scott, Wichita Mt Wildlife Refuge), and I hear shells as well as feel the pressures sitting here at my computer by a closed window. I had windows broken in my then-home off-base (Lawton/Ft Sill, OK) from impacts miles away. Ground-shaking is likely to tumble buildings (imho, ???), not just ‘direct hits’, per se. Maybe Seoul has earthquake-ready architecture like Los Angeles and other major metros and won’t be an issue (plead ignorance on that bit). No matter as the ground would roll like jelly, or at least feel like it, I bet.

Just to repeat myself, there’s no way cities can withstand much arty before they are gone. No way at all. And arty can fire pretty darn fast in the initial batterings - a few thousand or all 18000, not much difference when all that is left is ~dust from first impacts (!). And interspersed with (probable??) chemical rounds?? All betting is off as far as I am concerned. And I am thinking of arty only, which gives fear enough to anyone really in the know about arty. Looking at paper/numbers and estimating/debating things is easy, but a person should know firsthand to really know what it would be like. Toast without the butter

I am not schooled in any military tactics/planning or such, but can affirm arty effectiveness/quickness. And finality when struck/targeted → BOOM…buh-bye! Red Legs, King of Battle, if I may say so…

And lets not forget the hundreds if not thousands of SCUD missiles (possibly carrying biological and chemical agents or just a huge frikking bomb.

[HMS_Irruncible]

@Magiver

As for artillery, they would experience what Iraq experienced and that is radar controlled return fire that calculates the trajectory. If you can’t move your artillery it’s gone after the first couple of shots.

Given the figure above of 18,000 artillery pieces, Seoul will get pounded by around 100,000 shells in the duration it takes for radar to acquire the locations, and another 100,000 in the ~60 seconds it takes for the counterbattery volley to hit. And since artillery fire can be spoofed by a decoy, not all the tubes will even get hit in that first volley.

So, in summary… whatever else happens to the NK and its military afterward, count on Seoul being reduced to rubble within the first 2 minutes of the shooting.

[Boyo_Jim]

I’m pretty sure they can’t calculate 18,000 trajectories at once, either. My guess, it would take hours, while the fire is still incoming.

OTOH, the US and south probably have most locations already pinpointed through surveillance.

[Kobal2]

@Paul_in_Qatar

If we have most of the artillery pits located we could smite them in a single massive strike with heavy bombers. Say 50 aircraft each zapping five targets and repeating sorties every twenty-four hours or so. In a day or two it would be cleared up. Bombers would also break the PDRK’s fiberoptic backbone as jamming reduces their C&C. Then of course comes the messy part. But it could be done.

The problem with the day or two time frame having been addressed, let’s move on.

The messy part would indeed be quite messy : NK is positively riddled with tunnels. Some wide enough to be tank highways, some barely large enough for men to crawl through. Remember them from Viet-Nam ? Yeah, the GIs loooved clearing those. According to this piece, the tunnels also shielded from chemical/biological attacks, so no “smoking them out of their caves”.

If you thought fighting against handfuls of insurgents who pop a few mortar rounds out before bolting was no fun, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.

@Boyo Jim

I’m pretty sure they can’t calculate 18,000 trajectories at once, either. My guess, it would take hours, while the fire is still incoming.

Errr, they’ve been doing nothing *but *calculating them for the past 60 years. Even if their maths really suck, I’m pretty sure they have it down pat by now :p.

[Magiver]

@Cosmic Relief

Given the figure above of 18,000 artillery pieces, Seoul will get pounded by around 100,000 shells in the duration it takes for radar to acquire the locations, and another 100,000 in the ~60 seconds it takes for the counterbattery volley to hit. And since artillery fire can be spoofed by a decoy, not all the tubes will even get hit in that first volley.

So, in summary… whatever else happens to the NK and its military afterward, count on Seoul being reduced to rubble within the first 2 minutes of the shooting.

Yes, Seoul would take a beating, and then NK would cease as a government. SK is gotta want reconciliation pretty bad to do it.

The best weapon is information.

[Cheshire_Human]

@Der_Trihs

“Exposed” in fortified, hardened positions where all they have to do is get off a few shots to fulfill their mission. The bombers couldn’t even reach them before they got off quite a few shots, and it would take a long time to get them all. Just how many bombers do you think we have and are willing and able to put in range?

Yes, this. Just how many aircraft, with how many precision weapons do you think are available. NK has much more artillery pieces and positions than the US has aircraft to bomb in one or two or twelve goes.

[Cheshire_Human]

@Magiver

While I agree with Muffin’s assessment of the situation the hard cold fact is that NK would get chewed up in a very short period of time. They don’t have the training to fly the aicraft they’ve got. It’s all smoke and mirrors. They would quickly lose control of the skies because of poorly trained 4th generation aircraft pilots against highly trained 5th generation aircraft pilots.

As for artillery, they would experience what Iraq experienced and that is radar controlled return fire that calculates the trajectory. If you can’t move your artillery it’s gone after the first couple of shots. that doesn’t include attacks from the air which is a multi-layer series of delivery systems. Wild weasels destroy radar facilities, drones target and fire on hard assets and feed the coordinates for glide-to-target standoff weapons from bombers. The days of lengthy battle engagements are over.

And it would take only a week. In the meantime, Seoul gets pounded. Many civilians dead. The fact that US & SK will virtually own the sky within minutes does not alter the fact that US & SK air forces are grossly insufficient for eliminating that arty before it eliminates a huge portion of Seoul’s population.

[marshmallow]

@Stoneburg

I’m starting to think that maybe Americans need to be involved in a war for real, not just export it to other countries.

Looking at previous aggressive nations in the modern age such such as Germany, Japan, and Britain you’d have to kill 4-8% of Americans before they turned into peaceniks. Although maybe those example nations would still wish to conquer the world if they had the capability. So we just have to wait for America to lose the Cold War (it’s taking a bit longer than Russia).

[Captain_Midnight]

North Korea can never be invaded successfully because of China. This would spark WWIII with two superpowers with nuclear weapons, and runtass North Korea with a few nuclear firecrackers of their own that would fall on South Korea and Japan. Japan and Russia would possibly jump in and before you know it, there are ICBM’s being fired at every city on the Earth. That would suck.

I don’t think the North Korean army would flee in a conventional war. They have been taught since they were babies that the Americans are evil monsters who wish to destroy them.

The only way that North Korea will cease to exist is internally. The common people of NK do not have the capacity to even begin a revolution. They are closely monitored and the mere mention of the “The Dear Leader” in a negative light means that literally your whole family, including children end up in a gulag and possibly tortured to death. NK people are not allowed to leave their village without permission from the government. The people cannot begin to organize any kind of front against the regime.

The people in power (there are about 600 people who run North Korea altogether) closely monitor themselves to guard against desent. These people do not want to lose what they have. The small minority at the top are living pretty well. This is where sanctions come into play to keep things away from their elite. (like plasma TV’s, Japanese pron, Hello Kitty crap etc.)

I don’t know if this would work, but to airlift and drop food, rice, and books/newspapers and magazines, medical supplies, anything to show the people about the outside World, papering the landscape in Korea of Kim Jong Il and his opulent lifestyle, while they are hungry, cold and repressed. If nothing else, it would ease and counter the lies of the regime that Americans are killers and that South Koreans are repressed and impoverished (make sure the mags have lots and lots of ads for meat.)

The USA needs to leave Korea. If that were to happen, NK would have no one to blame their problems on. A regime like this requires an enemy, and this could turn on China. What China should do is to invade NK and liberate the people and replace the government with one similar to a Chinese model. They can seal the border with China, have lots of cheap labor and the Chinese could speculate on the real estate and all the other crazy shit the Chinese do.

The two Koreas can then sit down and hammer out a reunification plan, if that is what works for them. They can stipulate that no foreign troops are to be on their soil. If China invades Korea, the USA will defend it and vice versa. (which caused this shit in the first place!) So it would be very important to have a non alligned united Korean military.

[Zeriel]

@Magiver

Yes, Seoul would take a beating

Understatement of the year. Seoul would be completely obliterated under any realistic wartime conditions, within the first hour of bombardment. Eighteen thousand targets, with hardened revetments and decoys, and integrated close and medium-range air defense.

As for counterbattery…I’d welcome an assessment of how many artillery tubes and intercept radars the US/SK forces have for that.

, and then NK would cease as a government. SK is gotta want reconciliation pretty bad to do it.

South Korea would have be to suicidal to do it. Look, there’s no question that (barring China getting nervous again) the US and SK could wipe the North out completely and utterly with conventional attacks. The problems are the following: A) the correlation of forces in numbers alone is highly unfavorable to us, especially given our current commitments elsewhere, and B) we have to accept that we are going to lose a LOT (in the millions) of South Korean civilians to artillery bombardment, most especially from mobile tubes and mobile BM-21 batteries. Seoul is going to look worse than Dresden in March 1945.

[Stoneburg]

@marshmallow

Looking at previous aggressive nations in the modern age such such as Germany, Japan, and Britain you’d have to kill 4-8% of Americans before they turned into peaceniks. Although maybe those example nations would still wish to conquer the world if they had the capability. So we just have to wait for America to lose the Cold War (it’s taking a bit longer than Russia).

I think a nations tolerance for casualties is probably lower nowadays. The more democratic a nation becomes the less tolerant, ease of communication etc should also be increasing this. But it is actually an interesting question: How many Americans have to die for Americans to start thinking of war the same way as Europeans do? And what factors influence this number?

[Magiver]

@Zeriel

South Korea would have be to suicidal to do it. Look, there’s no question that (barring China getting nervous again) the US and SK could wipe the North out completely and utterly with conventional attacks. The problems are the following: A) the correlation of forces in numbers alone is highly unfavorable to us, especially given our current commitments elsewhere, and B) we have to accept that we are going to lose a LOT (in the millions) of South Korean civilians to artillery bombardment, most especially from mobile tubes and mobile BM-21 batteries. Seoul is going to look worse than Dresden in March 1945.

Artillery is a very limited weapon. It can’t be easily moved without air support. I don’t understand where you get “millions” of civilian dead. it’s not like they are going to stand on the tops of buildings waving hello. Seole is 20 to 35 miles away from the border so there is a limited number of artillery that can strike the city.

the assumption should be made that US and SK contingencies are focused on the artillery. It’s not like the concept of an artillery attack sprung up yesterday. And the scenario is not “are we morally bound to attack NK”. The likely scenario is that NK WILL attack at some point as an act of desperation.