Yep. The largest guns in NK’s arsenal can reach 60 km, especially with rocket-assisted munitions. Plus there are “dumb” rocket launchers like this with a similar range – they’re not very accurate, but that’s not a concern when targeting cities…
I wonder how quickly SK and the US could silence those 13,000 guns. Even presuming they were vulnerable to air strikes and counter-battery artillery fire, that’s an awful lot of guns to take down. The fastest way would probably be to just take the positions with ground forces.
Also, everyone seems to keep mentioning that the US will be (eta: mostly) responsible for invading and securing North Korea. The US only has a single infantry division and a handful of fighter wings in the area, for a total of 28,500 people. South Korea has a military 500,000 strong, with a lot more heavy armor than the US can spare on short notice. In the case of a sudden North Korean invasion, the the US would only play a supporting role.
You may find the maps on this site helpful - they show how much the front line moved back and forth over the whole of the Korean peninsula, with Seoul actually under North Korean control at certain times.
The stalemate phase lasted the longest, from early 1951 to 1953. I’ve always assumed that MAS*H is set during this period, since Seoul is in ROK possession and the Chinese are in the field.
Something tells me that the South Koreans might not be real keen on having a bunch of nuclear explosions with their associated fallout just 35 miles northwest of Seoul. Might not be much better than eating the artillery barrage until conventional means can stop it.
Something also tells me that South Korean and US military planners have gone over what to do in the event of a NK artillery barrage to the nth degree.
Even if the USA had sufficient conventional ordnance, how’s it going to be delivered without alerting the NKs? Your fleets of ordinary bombers are going to be detected a long way away, and I doubt there are sufficient Stealth Bombers. You’ve got to cover a vast area very quickly, and that means using nukes.
The way Kim thinks, the odds are high that the appearance of US planes in North Korean airspace would be viewed as the start of a pre-emptive strike to remove either Kim himself, his nuclear facilities or the army positions along the border. Things could get real nasty, real fast. And if it was in any way possible to blame the mayhem on “American provocation”, you can bet the Chinese (and others) would be only too keen to do it.
North Korea routinely threatens all-out war as retaliation for pretty much anything. Inaction is a horrible choice, but pushing Kim’s buttons is incredibly dangerous especially since no-one really knows what they’re connected to.
That seems insanely conservative to me, like by an order of magnitude at least. I skimmed over the link you gave and it doesn’t seem to include those casualty projections, so where are you getting that?
Having that many guns would be like having dozens of B52s flying over the city dropping their payload constantly. If we didn’t neutralize the threat quickly, the city would be pretty much wrecked. It would probably be the bloodiest day in human history.
I’m not sure how much counterbattery capability the US and South Koreans have. Certainly we have the radars and accurate guns and rockets to counterstrike, but their guns are dug in and might be difficult to kill. The use of tactical nukes along the border to destroy the artillery emplacements would be justified - almost mandatory - to prevent a calamatous level of bloodshed. It would be destruction on a level never before seen. Some of the most bombed cities in WW2 would come close, but they were bombed over weeks and months and years, and not in a day or two.
Do you consider being in command of all combat forces–both US and South Korean–during the conflict a supporting role? Right now, the date of transfer of commnad control of South Korean forces to the South Korean military during a conflict is being pushed back. This latest incident, of course, has some bearing on that.
The nukes that the US have and the ones NK may have are two different kinds. The US has tactical nukes, with very low yield and low lingering radiation. They are mainly designed to take out military bases, and fortified positions. In fact even in the 50s and early 60s before MAD early Generals thought of these as just any other weapon with their own place. The ammount of shells NK could throw south equal a nuke in terms of power. So where do you draw the line? NK could shell every sqaure inch of Seoul in a few hours which in effect is almost the same as using a nuke. Why couldn’t the US respond with nuclear tipped shells?
EDIT: Now that I think about it didn’t the US take out a shell with an airplane laser a couple years ago? I know the tech is young but how many years until we could get a bunch of aircraft flying over SK blasting each shell outta the sky? Once we get to that point (10 years?) What other deterrence would NK have? Their nuke tech may increase some in that time as well though.
Because there is a line that is crossed by using Nuclear Weapons, regardless of the scale of conventional attack.
We’re better off punching across the border with troops to take the ground the artillery is on and cut off resupply after the initial “scorched earth” air assault.
I missed my Edit window but thinking about this more how hard would it be for the US to have Kim die of a sudden heart attack? We have brought down governments before sneaking a couple of advanced CIA paramilitary guys in can’t be that hard. Is it mostly us not caring enough to take care of the cleanup and refugees? Isn’t there an old saying that some things are either meant for 1 man to do or a million men. Keep the military out of it. Have the CIA make him have an accident. I am sure we have a few people there already giving us intel already anyways.
Leaflets would be a good idea but they are so brainwashed they might not believe it whatever is shown on them. Dropping a bunch of portable DVD players with documentaries showing them what the world is really like might be a better idea. Or jamming all of their Radio and television broadcast and showing our own.
Totally closed nation and society. Homogenous population. Totalitarian State.
The odds of putting anyone into that nation, finding Kim Jong-Il and taking him out are staggeringly thin. Odds of getting away, zero.
Even if we put in a two man team, they were able to penetrate to one of his houses when he happened to be there and by some miracle of timing, efficiency and enough luck to make the God of Luck weep for envy, they were able to take him out…the after effect of “Here are the bodies of two Americans who snuck in and killed our beloved Great Leader” would be much the same as if we nuked the place from orbit.
I look at it this way;
Fifty some odd years ago, the entire peninsula was a back alley shit hole of poverty. Today, South Korea is one of the wealthiest and most advanced nations on the face of the Earth, while the North is nothing but a back alley shit hole filled with crazy. Every single year, the West and the rest of the world advance, while the North spins in the toilet. Every single year they fall farther and farther behind. No miracle of Juche is going to change this.
China, in my mind, is taking a very short view of the situation. They should be taking a much longer view. Sure, if the North fell today and the South took over, they’d have a US ally right on their border with US troops. They’d have a bunch of refugees to deal with. But where would they be in ten or twenty years? The answer is that a united Korea would have little or no need for US troops. They’d want us out, and we’d be gone. Then Korea would be back to where they have always been and will always be, which is a small state on the border of a large state, knowing which way the wind blows.
If the DPRK actually has 13,000 tubes,
and we assume they have the same sustained fire rate of 2 rounds/minute as our M198,
and we assume the shells have the same 6.62 kg TNT charge as our M107 (which is apparently on the low side),
I’m getting a delivery of 273 kilotons of TNT per 24 hours sustained firing of all tubes. That can’t be right.
6.62 kg TNT/round
2.20 lbs/kg
2 rounds/(minute * tube)
60 minutes/hour
24 hours/day
13,000 tubes
ton /2000 lbs
kiloton/1000 tons
Did I make a mistake? It’s very late, that’s my excuse. I thought they had enough to match a small nuke maybe, but 273 kilotons is a strategic nuke’s worth. That’s stupendous.