So, uh, how long until this causes nuclear war and World War III to break out and we all die? 
Just in time for 2012?
A Chinese sub popped up unexpectedly in the middleof a US war game exercise a bit ago. It wasn’t detected either and we’re supposed to have the best stuff.
China will downplay it and South Korea is just going to have to let it go.
If the South attacks the North, and the US jump in and the South win, there is no way in hell that China will want a US military presence on it’s border. They would not want the North Koreans crossing either as refugees into China.
Kim is not as crazy as you think. He is very shrewd.
It will fizzle out. China will back the North.
What will happen after that is relations between the US and China will get worse than they are now.
I tend to favour retaliation by stealth. Things can happen to a half-century-old submarine.
In turn the people of Japan won’t allow that Okinawa base and their Prez will be ousted shortly if he allows that to happen. Japan will want to stay out of it.
There is a big shift going on and countries will shift alliances.
Of course if Kim has nuclear then it will all be over if the South and US are mad enough to attack.
Are they that mad?
We will see.
According to Wiki, these subs have entered service in the past 10 years, so they are generations ahead of anything North Korea has.
But this gave me another thought. China probably has a bunch of old subs tootling around that general area too. It would be a really bad thing if the US or S Korea sank one of them thinking it was a N Korean sub.
Maybe an ex-submariner will pop in here. I’ve read any number of novels where it’s claimed that all vessels have a unique acoustical sgnature, that if you can hear them well enough though your sonar you can tell not only what type of vessel it is, but what specific individual ship it is. And that US subs carry libraries of these signatures for ID purposes. I wonder how much if any of this stuff is true.
Kim has nukes. What he doesn’t have is ICBM’s that work. However, putting a nuclear warhead on a SCUD and pointing it at Seoul is quite within the North’s abilities, as are nuclear artillery shells and just dropping a bomb WW2-style.
Frankly, I wouldn’t blame the Japanese if they don’t let the US use the base at Okinawa. Who’s to say that there isn’t already a North Korean submarine lurking around Okinawa, ready to nuke the base? Japan doesn’t have a military worth speaking of, so North Korea probably isn’t too worried about pissing them off.
If North Korea does use nuclear weapons would the United States respond in kind? And just melt away the entire miserable fucking country? What would be the repercussions of that be in global politics?
That seems unlikely to be productive, given that it’s quite likely that (a) NK doesn’t have many nukes and (b) the US plus South Korea would almost certainly be able to wipe out the North Korean state in a conventional fight.
Hasn’t NoKo sunk South Korean or western ships before?
North Korea doesn’t have any missile-launching subs, AFAICT.
I do not know the material condition of the subs in N. Korean hands.
According to wiki, the N. Koreans have 22 Chinese “Ming” class subs with a range of 14,000 miles, and 4 “Whiskey” class with a range of 13,000 miles.
In comparison, the US “Gato” class subs of WW2 had a listed range of 11,000 miles, and they made war patrols to the Formosa straits and back from Pearl Harbor rather routinely.
Considering this and your other posts in this thread, you do realise that any “miserable fucking country” is inhabited by actual human beings, and that “war” is not cool stuff on TV, but you know, like, reality?
There aren’t spawn points in RL?
I seriously doubt North Korea has the capability of fitting nuclear warheads on either Scud missiles or into artillery shells. Both would require a degree of miniaturization that would be well beyond their likely capabilities at this time. (North Korean nuclear tests have been “small” in the sense that the explosive yields were low, but that doesn’t mean their bombs were “small” in the sense of physically fitting into a small volume, like the inside of an artillery barrel.)
The Japan Self-Defense Forces are about the fifth most well-funded armed forces in the world.
Whose to say we didn’t see it? Nothing is better than letting the Chinese think we can’t see their subs when we knew it was following us. The sub was not fired upon when it surfaced making me think we knew it was there and it was a Chinese sub, our underwater acoustics are very advanced we can ID subs by the sound of their prop
When you’re not at war, you don’t just open fire on a sub that pops up in the middle of your fleet, whether you knew it was there in advance or not.
If war did break out would China and Russia back NK ?
Is a new US-Russian Cold War brewing?
DEBKAfile DEBKA-Net-Weekly May 20, 2010, 10:23 AM (GMT+02:00)
White House and Kremlin efforts to paper over their mounting discord wore thin this week under the strain of Iran’s nuclear machinations. As DEBKA-Net-Weekly reveals in its coming issue out next Friday, the debut of a nascent anti-American “third world” in Tehran brought to light Moscow’s fingers secretly pushing the buttons.
Washington is reacting by deploying a large naval-air-marine armada in the Middle East and turning back to Israel.
You can track these epic trends and counter-trends with our specialists.
http://www.debka.com/article/8793/
Obama starts massive US Air-Sea-Marine build-up opposite Iran
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report May 20, 2010, 2:20 PM (GMT+02:00)
Tags: US-Iran Aircraft carriers
USS Truman carrier
debkafile’s military sources report a decision by the Obama administration to boost US military strength in the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf regions in the short term with an extra air and naval strike forces and 6,000 Marine and sea combatants. Carrier Strike Group 10, headed by the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier, sails out of the US Navy base at Norfolk, Virginia Friday, May 21. On arrival, it will raise the number of US carriers off Iranian shores to two. Up until now, President Barack Obama kept just one aircraft carrier stationed off the coast of Iran, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Arabian Sea, in pursuit of his policy of diplomatic engagement with Tehran.
For the first time, too, the US force opposite Iran will be joined by a German warship, the frigate FGS Hessen, operating under American command.
It is also the first time that Obama, since taking office 14 months ago, is sending military reinforcements to the Persian Gulf. Our military sources have learned that the USS Truman is just the first element of the new buildup of US resources around Iran. It will take place over the next three months, reaching peak level in late July and early August. By then, the Pentagon plans to have at least 4 or 5 US aircraft carriers visible from Iranian shores.
The USS Truman’s accompanying Strike Group includes Carrier Air Wing Three (Battle Axe) - which has 7 squadrons - 4 of F/A-18 Super Hornet and F/A-18 Hornet bomber jets, as well as spy planes and early warning E-2 Hawkeyes that can operate in all weather conditions; the Electronic Attack Squadron 130 for disrupting enemy radar systems; and Squadron 7 of helicopters for anti-submarine combat (In its big naval exercise last week, Iran exhibited the Velayat 89 long-range missile for striking US aircraft carriers and Israel warships from Iranian submarines.)
Another four US warships will be making their way to the region to join the USS Truman and its Strike Group. They are the guided-missile cruiser USS Normandy and guided missile destroyers USS Winston S. Churchill, USS Oscar Austin and USS Ross.
debkafile’s military sources disclose that the 6,000 Marines and sailors aboard the Truman Strike Group come from four months of extensive and thorough training to prepare them for anticipated missions in the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean.
The long delay in getting to the present point–the Cheonan was torpedoed almost two months ago!–reinforces the North Korean impression of South Korea and their American allies as pussies. This probably makes war more likely now than it was in the first few days after the sinking, when a hard but judicious counterstrike might have chastened the North.