Who were they shooting at, dragon’s teeth?
I broadly agree with Corry El’s assessments.
The various people upthread who are insisting the US/ROK tech will defang the KPA are drinking the wartoys fanboy Koolaid. Real war is not a video game with 99+% kill rates.
At the same time the folks talking about millions killed are also wildly exaggerating. Unless they’re positing carpeted nuking of Seoul and/or Tokyo. Which seems … fanciful. At least in 2017.
Millions of people with damaged homes, sure. Tens of thousands dead and hundreds of thousands displaced, sure. Millions killed is silly.
The NK military might be largely a Potemkin village. But only a fool would plan on it being so. Regardless of who really started it, the US/UN succeeds to the degree the combat takes place inside NK, not inside SK. As such the NK soldiers will be fighting on their homeland for their homeland. Against what they’ve been told is a merciless aggressor who intends to eat their children. I have no doubt the individual soldier will fight with great toughness and tenacity. Until his last bullet is shot and his last grain of rice is eaten. With luck that’ll be early in the conflict.
The problem next time around, like the problem back in the 1950s, is that the faster and more effective the UN/US forces are, the more likely they are to spook China or even conceivably Russia into sticking their oars in the hornet’s nest. If we slowly and gingerly roll up the NK government we have time to convince the Chinese we’re going to leave the post-war environment to their liking. Conversely, overwhelming air and surface blitzkrieg aimed towards everything south of the Yalu will have the Chinese in an uproar from which they will find it hard to back down even if, internally, they agree they want to.
Late add last paragraph:
OTOH, that all-out blitzkrieg to the Chinese border is the best way to limit US/UN/SK casualties both civil and military. IOW, once combat is joined we want the biggest fastest hottest war we can create; so long as it doesn’t get out of hand.
Getting that tradeoff right will not be easy under even the best of leadership.
How on earth can you use missiles to shoot down a wave of artillery rounds? How could that even be a thing a country would want to spend the money to try to do?
Every reasonably modern army has had this for some time now. Counterbattery tactics are a pretty old thing, and the North Koreans certainly have such capabilities and know South Korea has them. The concern is that by the time North Korea’s artillery is destroyed they’ll have killed a hundred thousand innocent people.
Surely Russia and China know that, unlike the 1950s, there is zero possibility of the US/UN/ROK being MacArthur-ish and expanding the war beyond North Korea’s northernmost borders into China.
That’s terribly uneconomical. If North Korea fires 500,000 shells, does South Korea fire 500,000 missile interceptors, each of which could cost hundreds of times more apiece than the artillery shell?
There’s a limit to how much you can harden up an artillery site. OK, so you bury most of it in an underground bunker… but it can’t all be underground, because there has to be some way for the shells to leave. That’s your target.
True, but a hole just big enough to poke a gun tube out of is a very small and hard target. It’ll be pretty resistant to counter-battery fire from conventional artillery. It won’t be resistant to any kind of precision bomb. But it’ll take an awful long time to silence thousands of dug-in NK guns with air strikes.
I’m not sure if I’m remembering this correctly, but I recall reading about some fairly extensive NK tunnel and fortification systems. Conceivably, a gun could be wheeled to the mouth of a tunnel, fire off a handful of shots, and be wheeled back to safety before counter-battery fire or air strikes arrive.
You don’t shoot down artillery shells with missiles you use a C-ram which fires off projectiles at high speed. Pretty soon that system will be replaced with laser systems such as this one which makes it even economical.
Put the shoe on the other foot. Imagine Mexico is ruled by a real bastard who’s been rattling the Chinese’ cage for the last few decades. Patience snaps and a couple weeks later the PLA is rapidly rolling up Mexico.
How sanguine are our hottest heads going to be as the Chinese drive up near the border? How calm will our BMD people be as they see missiles launched towards our border that should, if we’re tracking them right, fall short? What of our air defenses as PLA fighters come screaming towards the border en masse over and over, only to turn short a couple miutes or a few seconds before getting there?
And what of the inevitable target misidentifications, overflys, weapons malfunctions and such? As the Russians and Turks demonstrated in Syria last year the wiggly borders on the ground are often hard to reliably identify from the air. Any large scale employment of serious ordnance within 50 miles of a border runs a decent risk of a leak or two onto the wrong side. Stuff happens. And that’s before considering a rogue low level player who wants to take a pot-shot at the Main Boss for his/her own glory. Somebody like that armed with a half-dozen 500# aerial bombs or a couple tubes of artillery can really stir the pot.
The coolest of rational geopoliticians will be hard pressed to remain cool with all that excitement right next door. The hard-core nationalists who know in their bones that all other countries want only to harm us Good Guys will be apoplectic.
The US has certainly over the years had its share of over-aggressive hotheads in high positions. I have no reason to believe a more monocultural closed society such as China will produce fewer. Recall that the people in charge in China are not 25 and did not attend Stanford. They’re 50 to 80 years old and came up in the growth and glory days of the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution.
Always remember that from the other side’s POV, they are the Good Guys of fair hair and pure motive while we’re the untrustworthy Bad Guys of perfidy and deceit.
Mistakenly thinking that the other side knows they’re really the black hats and that we’re really the white hats seems to be a uniquely US conceit.
Late add final paragraph for clarity:
I’m *not *suggesting the US & PRC are morally equivalent. I *am *suggesting that each side thoroughly considers itself to be the Good Guys. Those are different assertions despite many ‘Mericans’ inability to recognize or understand that distinction.
Not true. ROKA fought in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
It was a function test at one of the arsenals, I believe. There are plenty of instances of Vickers Guns firing insane amounts of ammunition more or less continuously without jamming or malfunctioning, though - especially from WWI.
While certainly not a subject matter expert or an analyst, when the concept of wartrace replaced capstone mission in 1994 for employment of our reserve components my battalion had a wartrace to support Korea. That meant major, and some of the smaller, CPXs (Command Post Exercises) were based on real terrain against a threat employing North Korean force structures and doctrine. My experience includes being primary staff (technically S1/Personnel Officer but dual hatted as the S4/Logistics officer since he couldn’t attend) for one of the major staff training exercises, A Brigade Warfighter Exercise. That focus went away post 9-11 but I continued to pay more attention to changes than the populace at large.
Some things most aren’t tracking and rarely get more than cursory coverage in the normal mass media:
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North Korea has significant experience being on the receiving end of the US love of fires in typical field fortifications. It wasn’t pleasant for them even before accuracy improved. They’ve taken that lesson to heart. Besides the HARTS (Hardened ARTillery Shelters) along the border they have been digging in for 6 decades. That includes air defense positions in depth. That includes major logistics stockpiles. That includes tunnels to nowhere as protection for maneuver units behind the FLOT (forward line of troops.) That includes mission command nodes and communications, to include deeply buried fiber optic communications.
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North Korea says they don’t have chemical weapons. They aren’t signatories to the convention against them though which means there is no agreement to allow inspections. They train and equip their troops to operate in contaminated areas (because the US and South Korea that are signatories might use them anyway…that’s the ticket…riiiiiight ;).) It’s widely believed they do have a significant capability to use both persistent and non-persistent agents.
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Their air defenses do include a lot of low capability systems. They also have phased array radars and a domestically produced air defense missile system, KN-06, that is believed to be on par with earlier variants of the Russian S300. Again, those systems are extensively fortified to make rooting them out more difficult than more recent US experiences in Iraq and Libya. Gaining complete air supremacy with the ability to operate unhindered by the threat won’t happen quickly.
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North Korea has a large MANPAD (MAN Portable Air Defense) capability. That’s hard to defeat or suppress early since it’s shouldered fired missiles scattered with ground forces. That makes the low level threat persistent. That is an issue for A-10 gun runs and attack helicopter usage.
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North Korean doctrine ultimately is based on one main national goal, the conquest of the entire Korean peninsula. They have been thinking about how to do just that, against forces that have a significant technological edge, in terrain specific to the peninsula since the cease fire.
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North Korea has the world’s largest special operations capability. They don’t bother with some of the tasks most western nations expect from their special operations which makes having them trained, equipped and ready easier. They focus on a narrower mission set more akin to the US’s 75th Ranger Regiment. Doctrinally they expect to use them to infiltrate and then raid/ambush throughout South Korea’s rear area. The difference is they are manned at the level of a little over 28 Ranger Regiments. Rear area security is, understandably, a HUGE deal in planning for any fight with them.
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Their doctrine for both offensive and defensive operations is heavily tied to the use of massed artillery fire. My first thought on the slightly more detailed description of it was a dismissive “how WWI.” Working through it made me realize it might work. Fighting against it in simulation made me glad it was a simulation. It’s well thought out and brutally effective if they can execute.
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We tend to hear about long range artillery dug in near Seoul. Their formidable artillery force is predominantly located near the FLOT/DMZ in hardened shelters. That’s along the entire FLOT/DMZ. They are already in place and able to range targets needed to support penetrations of forward defenses.
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Remember the difficulty the US had finding Iraq’s SCUDs in relatively open terrain? North Korea has a much larger short range ballistic missile force in terrain more suited to hide them even before we consider tunnels into mountain sides. North Korea also has more advanced SCUD variants including some with inertial guidance and IIRC a 50m CEP for the target. Iraq could fire a couple missiles that might hit a target as large as a city. North Korea can fire enough to potentially overwhelm THAAD with some of the wave able to effectively hit specific targets at a port or airbase. North Korea also has intermediate range ballistic missiles that have passed testing able to target similar supporting facilities in Japan. If they have chemical capable warheads for them they can use persistent agents to help isolate the peninsula from reinforcement and reduce the tempo of air operations against them.
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Their force is weighted toward light infantry. The terrain of the peninsula is well suited to light infantry operations. That gives them strong capability to attack through rough terrain to flank/surround mechanized forces that are arrayed along mounted avenues of approach.
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The relatively ancient mechanized force is less overmatched than we might think thanks to the terrain. In Iraq, the US had a big stand off range advantage. We could and did tear through Iraqi armor units before even coming into their effective range to hit our vehicles. If they use the terrain right that advantage narrows in Korea. On the defensive (and every offensive operation also involves units defending somewhere) it’s possible to locate vehicles for keyhole shots. Hiding a tank up in a draw along a mounted avenue of approach gives them known and short ranges to an attacker that has to expose their flank as they advance. Even a T-55 or Type 59 can be a threat to an M1A2/K1A1/K2 in those situations. Mostly their mechanized force provides mobile forces for pursuit and exploitation once their artillery and infantry units have created and pushed through the point of penetration.
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20% of South Korea’s population is in Seoul. Evacuation there is a major issue for transportation networks and humanitarian assistance. If North Korea manages to achieve enough surprise to start their attack before evacuation it produces serious issues for the defender. That’s the same defender that is already worried about ambush and raids throughout those same rear areas.
IMO the start is pretty ugly if North Korea gets enough surprise and manages to effectively execute their doctrine. It gets harder and their pace likely slows as they move away from their pre-exisiting strongpoints and hardened logistics nodes as attrition takes it’s toll. Achieving their overall strategic objective of conquering the peninsula is probably near hopeless in strictly military terms. Punching through the DMZ and possibly even capturing Seoul I could see. I wouldn’t call it likely but certainly plausible. The strategic level gets uglier if we consider the high cost, especially in casualties, to dislodge them from those early gains. Would the US populace be willing to commit significant ground reinforcement forces into that meat grinder? I’m not so sure. I could certainly see NK assuming the odds of us doing that being low.
South Korea sent what were essentially guard or peacekeeping forces protecting engineers and reconstructors in both those wars, not active offensive operations. It was hardly relevant experience to prepare for a second Korean War.
There have actually been no cases where a ‘western’ (including western allied) army has fought again an adversary able to seriously threaten destruction of its division (or larger) size units since the first Korean War. That was the last time that happened, to the US either.
It’s true the KPA and CPV (of the PLA, the other army which destroyed ROKA divisions and heavily mauled US ones) haven’t had similar experiences since either. Experience is just not a big factor distinguishing the two sides in a new Korean War, especially considering how small the US ground contingent is, to the extent recent US experience in wars where large units were never in real danger is still relevant, which at a smaller unit level it might be to some degree.
The ROKA’s relevant experience in fighting a Korean War remains mainly the same as the KPA’s: the last one.
Thank you DinoR.
My professional connection to the Korea theater was even more tenuous than yours. At various times in the '80s I was working alongside ground FACs, air FACs, and fighter pilots who’d served in various locations in Korea. And with the enlisted guys who later became JTACs (non-vets see Joint terminal attack controller - Wikipedia for more). But I never participated directly in planning or exercising or operating in Korea.
To a man they said the initial damage to both Seoul and to US/UN/ROK forces would be horrific. As long as the NK forces stayed in their border fortifications and made it an artillery / missile fires fight they had great advantages. Plus, as you say, the infiltrating SpecOps guys. As they moved to occupy SK territory their advantages would dwindle & quickly become disadvantages. At the same time, because both NK & SK are small landmasses, a small distance across the ground is a large percentage of either country.
That the US *could *win, given the political will, was not in question. That the political will *would *be there was far from a given. It was also a coin flip whether individuals believed US public support would redouble or would whither if China and/or Russia entered the fight. As several people have said in several recent threads, not too many Americans really care enough about SK’s survival to run a big risk of visiting WWIII on the US homeland.
No matter how it went, SK would be pretty severely wrecked as to infrastructure and economy. It’d be a retreat to their 1960s but with lots of wreckage laying around in the way. Given the centrality of SK in modern supply chains, my amateur financier thinks we’d experience a 2007 style meltdown even if we won the war in 3 months flat without nukes or chemicals used by either side. The financiers in NYC, London & Tokyo will panic sell in milliseconds; them taking their lumps like everyone else is simply not part of their vocabulary.
All in all, it’s not quite a game where the only way to win is to not play. But one can certainly understand why 60 years worth of sober decision-makers have decided this particular boil is better left unlanced … today. It’s the world’s collective misfortune than Kim Jong Un and Trump (not to mention Putin and to a lesser degree Xi) are all in charge just as NK is approaching crossing the nuclear threshold.
Thanks for this, DinoR - very informative.
Regards,
Shodan
To add to your already excellent points, a scenario where South Korea is facing a humanitarian catastrophe and threat of the capture of Seoul also raises the possibly of the ROK arranging an independent ceasefire with North Korea, cutting off the ability of the US and its allies to ever achieve an effective counteroffensive. It’s the job of South Korea’s government to do what is best for South Koreans, and saving hundreds of thousands of them might be considered worth a brief and embarassing concession of defeat, if they don’t have to give up much.
North Korea/Kim Jong Il would probably consider a nominal victory with few, if any, territorial gains to be, well, a fricking huge victory. He doesn’t have to actually conquer South Korea; minor concessions and the ability to say “I won” would be just wonderful for him.
With all the lying could the regime’s people really believe a victory?
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“We captured a large chunk of Southern territory!”
“Uh huh - and Kim can hit nine holes-in-one in golf.”*
I just had an interesting experience. I searched Bing maps using the names of several fairly well-known US military facilities in SK. Oddly enough, they’re all shown as dense forest in the overhead views and as holes in the road network in the map view.
Nothing to see here folks, move along. This demonstrates just a smidgen of the differences involved in living in a country that’s under threat of imminent attack by a belligerent near-peer power every day and has been for a big hunk of living memory.