What are they going to do about it? Attack America? Side with the North?
The South Koreans would die in very large numbers, which would make the whole point of going to war with NK moot.
“What are they going to do about it? Attack America? Side with the North?”
Defend their own territory presumably, as the US would be being a direct aggressor in that situation from their perspective.
It would be a shambles. As pointed out above you’d be nullifying one of the major reasons for doing it in the first place.
Otara
How are standoff missiles supposed to track and destroy materiel being moved underground ? As for counterbattery fire, it’s all very well in the open desert, not all that effective when the firing site is a reinforced bunker buried in a cliffside.
If it’s underground it’s not a weapon. If it’s in a fixed bunker then it is already a target. North Korea has built the finest 3rd world army in the world. Saddam did the same thing. In the age of stealth aircraft, satellites and GPS weapons North Korea has successfully reinvented the Maginot Line. Much money has been spent on assets that need air support which would cease the moment a war started.
You don’t get it. The guns are stored/moved around underground most of the time - the visible bunkers are empty, and there’s so many that hitting them does precisely squat.
Then, when an attack is ordered, guns are moved to the bunkers, let loose a few rounds and when incoming arty/missiles starts hitting the bunker, the guns are moved back out. It’s, effectively, the same kind of hit-and-run tactics the US army is powerless against in Iraq, only with division-scale assets. I’m not saying their arty would be an unkillable murder machine, but it’s more dangerous than you think.
Not to mention of course that NK is also bristling with SAMs and ack-ack, which can also be redeployed at will through tunnels and put a bit of a dent in that whole “air superiority” thing. Those might be Cold War stuff, but even stealth isn’t all that effective against raw saturation fire - a few of those missiles are bound to hit something eventually. And the present day US Army is ill-designed to win any war of attrition. Especially with two *other *wars on the back burner.
And again, it’s not like we can’t chew through the staticly placed artillery and AAA. Sure we can. But it’s not going to be over in a few hours of bombing, it’s going to take weeks to degrade their counter-air to the point where our air can operate with impunity.
And a dug in artillery piece aimed at Seoul doesn’t need reinforcement. It’s got got enough ammo to keep firing until it runs out or gets smashed. Reducing Seoul to rubble isn’t just a terror tactic, it’s also a military tactic, because Seoul is a transportation hub. Millions of civilians fleeing the shelling will slow down the military response.
And of course, the bulk of the fighting will be done by the South Koreans, the US has significant forces there, but we’re dwarfed by the South Koreans. The notion that it will be a mostly American show, with South Koreans as backup and second-line troops is false. We’d be backing up the South Koreans, not the other way around.
You don’t get it. They’ve created a fixed location easily destroyed with satellite guided munitions. A bunker/tunnel may have been useful in WWII when bombers were blindly trying to carpet bomb it from above but now a single missile is directed to the center of the opening. They are nothing but pre-fabbed tombs in the making.
The Iraqi army was was once the 3rd largest in the world and it was systematically sliced up in days. First command and control was destroyed then missile radar sites/missiles were destroyed then mobile tanks/artillery were destroyed. when you consider a great many of the artillery sites will have been identified over the years it’s a function of pre-planned communication to the munitions used. The more NK digs in, the easier it is to identify the location and destroy it.
The days of dealing with saturation fire are gone. The concept of selectable self guided munitions means weapons and their guidance systems can be combined and launched from a variety of platforms ranging from submarines to high altitude stealth bombers. During the Iraq war, entire Iraqi tank brigades never saw their attackers. The tanks just started blowing up without warning. If they had the luxury of seeing an A-10 on the horizon they could exit the tank but if it was an autonomous weapon released at altitude there was no warning. The function of an A-10 as a tank killer has been supplanted by the newer munitions.
And again, I’m not advocating a war with NK. I think time will bring down the government from within. However, if they every attacked, it would be a very short war measured in days.
You’re not getting it.
I agree that it’s very likely that the North Korean army will be so badly cut up in a few days that they won’t be able to command and control their forces, won’t be able to reinforce or resupply their forces, and won’t be able to advance or retreat without being massacred.
But of course, “fire your artillery piece south until you run out of ammo or are dead” doesn’t require a lot of command and control. So we could “win the war”. But at the cost of the destruction of huge swaths of South Korea, and hundreds of thousands to millions dead or homeless.
Note that even in the Gulf War, the Iraqis were able to lob scuds into Israel for weeks even with intensive scud-hunting efforts, even with complete air superiority. But of course the scuds didn’t do much besides make a few craters in out of the way places. But instead of a couple dozen scuds we’re facing tens of thousands of artillery rounds, and instead of a far-away country across the desert, the rounds are aimed at a highly urbanized area where it’s pretty much impossible to miss hitting something of value.
You know, I might be a bad person for saying this, but I’m kind of praying for war just to see how this turns out. It’s kind of exciting!
I understand that Seol would take a pounding in any conflict.
They would be dead long before they ran out of ammo. And they couldn’t take large swaths out of SK because they have a very limited range. The more money that NK pours into artillery the better. The real danger is in intermediate range missiles. They travel farther and make bigger holes.
Scuds were launched and then they immediately relocated. There was no ability to continue firing from the same location. This is the ground equivalent of a standoff weapon and is probably the most dangerous asset NK can deploy (except for the obvious nuclear device). The days of conventional artillery warfare are over. Any attempt to establish a line creates a target which can be sorted out with RAV’s and satellites in advance of approaching launch platforms. Something like a column of tanks only requires a rough location so an autonomous weapon group can be dropped in the vicinity.
While I am very much against the idea of invading and bombing North Korea, if we actually decided on a preemptive strike I image a scenario like this.
We run Navy operations most years close to Korea. We ensure we have 3 carrier fleets in place for this one. We already have air units in S. Korea and we still have at least one airbase in the Japan. Our tech leaves them far behind. This is sufficient air cover to strike and destroy all known targets and to stand ready to blow up anything that takes to the air, rolls towards the DMZ or turns on active satellite.
We have an edge currently that is overwhelming to a small nation like N. Korea. If we went down this silly road, crushing their forces would not be hard. As usual the problem would be after that with trying to fix the wreck of the country we leave behind.
China. All this talk has no bearing on reality and nothing will happen without China’s approval. which is exceedingly unlikely. We don’t care enough about any Korea to piss off China, and so they are calling the shots on this one.
Hell, we don’t even have to do it. We could recruit a bunch of ex-Cubans who wish to liberate their country - train them and send them to Cuba.
Sounds like a plan!
Yeah, you probably are. Try playing videogames or something.
Brilliant idea. Let’s call it Operation Zapata.
If we knew the PDRK was going to attack, smiting them first would offer certain advantages. But from a political point of view the US would probably only do it if the ROK decided to do it. Very much US policy is and ought to be run from the ROK, their country after all.
So hanging a bushel of ‘what ifs’ together, we could imagine a scenario where the PDRK was about to deal with internal excitement by creating external excitement. They have a history after all.
We would be very lucky if such an event happened alongside a scheduled exercise. Better would should fake a carrier having fake mechanical problems and pretending to head east for home as a replacement heads west. That would give us two air groups on Day One. We can expect complete cooperation from the ROK of course, so add in the entire ROKAF plus some huge amount of USAF based in bare-bones and other bases. In any case, we could hope from massive air power on Day One.
We (the US) have (has) a bobtail infantry division in place, plus POMCUS to bring them up to two maneuver brigade equivalents, as well as an aviation brigade (If memory serves). Also one USMC brigade offshore when the opening bell rings. Keeping it as a ‘force in being’ would probably be the smart play. The ROKs have their own plans for spinning up reserves, but it would be too much to expect our complete mobilization.
The PDRK is a mystery. Seven million guys under arms, plus a militia and whatnot. But at what level of capacity? Each North Koreans equalling 0.5 of a South Korean? 0.75? It depends on which ‘what ifs’ are in play.
White moves first, and we smash them with heavy bombers hitting the chemical warfare stockpiles in the north, and we cut the fiber optics. Do not count on any tactical airpower (except the A10s and helicopters) in the first 24 hours. ROK missiles will hit the nastiest artillery and ADA sites with cluster bombs before the PDRK guys can shelter.
Then we hit any problem areas with some really massive airpower and hold our defensive lines until the PDRK collapses.
IMO, the best conceivable future for Korea is peaceful unification under a settlement that extinguishes the DPRK state, but allows its Communist Party to share power, or at least form an opposition, within the ROK government.
If that were possible, it would be really interesting to see the results.
I think South Korea should hire seven gunslinger heroes to defend it from the predatory North.
Yes, I’ve been watching old movie reruns on AMC.