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As you said, Nuclear bombs don't go off when you drop them. You think North Korea is any closer to accidentally nuking itself than the US is?
Hitler = you're gullible and believe every trash blowing in the wind.
You clearly believe US propaganda...look at those silly North Koreans, dropping missiles on their own houses.
Pay no attention to the US dropping a MOTHER FING NUCLEAR BOMB out of an airplane.
Let me clue you in a little. I served in the Navy as a nuclear weapons officer. I am not gullible. I have probably forgotten more than you will ever know on this topic. I also specialized in AAW and ASW.
Let's see your bona fides.
I don't present bona fides on the internet because I can make anything up as can you.
But I am published in this field for a think tank, probably more bona fide than you. But we can let the argumentum speak for itself. If you think your Nuclear weapons instruction qualifies you for a top-down look at North Korea's conventional capabilities by all means...explain why you think the KN 06 isn't as capable as the S-300, or something.
In other words, you are full of shit.
Congrats on your publishing for a non-thinking tank, because that is all you have done so far is prove you don't have a clue.
The KN-06 would last about 1 second after the first cruise missile impact on it's radar.
KN-06 like every other piece of artillery the North Has seems to be nicely squirreled away in bunkers. I'm sure the US cruisemissiles will "easily" penetrate those too?
Despite no evidence of that ability.
What it comes down to is you have a paper-thin understanding of the situation and you just tout it, over and over. Claiming I'm full of sh.t for giving you a reply is hardly a retort.
Radar works really well underground, doesn't it? Also, it is not artillery.
All you keep proving is that you have no concept of warfare from a real world standpoint.
Your information is flat out wrong in your knowledge of these systems. Did you get a lot of your info from video games?
Sinpo class Submarine. Recently built too so at peak performance, if its built off the Romeo-design then it's not much noisier than modern Nuclears. But no where near as quiet as modern Diesels.
Wrong. They have one. Experimental. If that is the quality of the information you are using to base your analysis on, it is easy to see why you are clueless.
NK doesn't invest in an air-force it sees it as a waste of money, and it is for their strategic purpose. They invest in anti-air capabilities, not strategic bombing abilities.
Couldn't answer the question? They fly a 1950 designed POS.
If the 3 US Troop ships cannot pack 10,000 troops on it, its even more useless than if it could. So you're not exactly winning points for yourself here.
We don't have troop ships. Another gap in your knowledge.
The strait of Korea never is deeper than 600 feet, for instance, so the strait can be closed. And it is the most heavily trafficked strait in the world.
You didn't answer the question. What type of mines can be used there that would close that strait?
What kind of ships so blue water are that useful?
Cruise missiles.
Missile frigates won't have the fire power to stop massive ground battles. Air craft carriers? 3 of them at best? Not much fire power either.
Your knowledge of a carrier's firepower is underwhelming at best. Each carrier can do significant damage all on its own and probably carries more firepower than we expended in WWII.
Their ground troops are apparently disease-ridden and starving. They won't last more than a few hours.
Conventional bombing isn't ignored at all, it's all lumped into the problem of sortie turn around times.
Carrier aircraft have much shorter times. You downplayed their significance also. We also have land-based aircraft all over Japan and Okinawa. You ignored them also. Those bases can support aircraft that are now based further away.
The US just doesn't have the ability to bring enough conventional fire power to bear in North Korea. Turn around times are massive. And the forces involved aren't huge armies in open deserts with no cost to lost-time.
Their command and control would be decimated in the first wave. How long do you think they can hold out?
All of South Korea could be devastated in a single sortie turn around time
How do you figure that? Another baseless claim?.
It's embarassing that you are so insulting.
The Sinpo is not "experimental" it's in Development as we speak, further more the Song-O is currently in production and is their Romeo-modernization equivalent.
The missile for the Sinpo is experimental, yes.
As for Carriers, its fire power is underwhelming, unless you think 20 fighter-bombers flying around is an amazing contribution to a million manned land invasion of South Korea.
Carrier Aircraft do have a shorter turn around time compared to GUAM which is many many hours. But it's still not a large air-wing in comparison to the forces involved. I've already stated that clearly.
As for Command and Control, the best US estimates is that the North Koreans have given full authority to their corps level commanders. So whose command and control are you knocking out "in the first wave"?
Iwo Jima held out just fine without command and control from Tokyo. Per the strategic objectives there, the Japanese won that battle. They never expected to hold the island, only to make the costs so high. And they did.
If you think South Korea doesn't have a possibility of being devastated in a few hours of war on its soil, you're the fool, not me.
I have not yet begun to insult you.
They have ONE Sinpo class submarine, and it is a missile submarine that doesn't have a nuclear missile. It was built 4 years ago and not another one has been seen since. That's called experimental. What exactly are they going to do with it in combat? Where is the threat? Also, diesel-electric boats have one major drawback. They have to come up for air sometime!
Where do you get 20 fighter-bombers from? Do you have a children's book on aircraft carrier capabilities? It must have been in a book about the 10,000 Marine troop carriers. Each carrier has 40 strike/fighter aircraft, plus an EW squadron.
Iwo Jima's troops were defending a position, not invading a country. To compare the two is ludicrous.
How do you expect NK to get to SK in a matter of hours? You think they can walk that fast, because that is exactly what they would have to do.
You confuse armament with the boat, the boat is not experimental.
Fine, wow, 40 air planes. I'm so at ease that when 2 million North Koreans are invading South Korea, I'll have about 120 US planes flying around the country to help out.
There's nothing ludicrous about Iwo Jima comparison, since the North has dug into granite mountains more than Iwo Jima could ever hoped to have done into their tufa.
Basically you just want to imagine that the KN06 doesn't even exist. And then when you acknowledge it you say the US would just destroy it out right. Sure it would.
Let me clue you in a little. I served in the Navy as a nuclear weapons officer. I am not gullible. I have probably forgotten more than you will ever know on this topic. I also specialized in AAW and ASW.
Let's see your bona fides.
I don't present bona fides on the internet because I can make anything up as can you.
But I am published in this field for a think tank, probably more bona fide than you. But we can let the argumentum speak for itself. If you think your Nuclear weapons instruction qualifies you for a top-down look at North Korea's conventional capabilities by all means...explain why you think the KN 06 isn't as capable as the S-300, or something.
In other words, you are full of shit.
Congrats on your publishing for a non-thinking tank, because that is all you have done so far is prove you don't have a clue.
The KN-06 would last about 1 second after the first cruise missile impact on it's radar.
KN-06 like every other piece of artillery the North Has seems to be nicely squirreled away in bunkers. I'm sure the US cruisemissiles will "easily" penetrate those too?
Despite no evidence of that ability.
What it comes down to is you have a paper-thin understanding of the situation and you just tout it, over and over. Claiming I'm full of sh.t for giving you a reply is hardly a retort.
Radar works really well underground, doesn't it? Also, it is not artillery.
All you keep proving is that you have no concept of warfare from a real world standpoint.
Your information is flat out wrong in your knowledge of these systems. Did you get a lot of your info from video games?
I'm sure in your fantasy you'd have won in Iraq too, back in 2004. Unfortunately it's people like you who have no real world understanding, and no concept of the situation, especially vis-a-vis North Korea.
Supposedly my information is wrong, but only because you say so.
This all runs on the assumption that the modern N-Korean forces are capable of taking on the most highly trained, highly funded army in the world. By a ridiculous margin by the way. The US hasn't been beaten in conventional warfare, ever .This thread covers 3 basic areas:
There is a concept most people over-look when discussing anything strategy related: Theory of Victory.
- HARTS
- KN06
- Submarines laying sea-mines
Spoiler Alert, the US doesn't really have a theory of victory in North Korea, but we can get to that later. However, this problem is significant because without a theory of victory there is no way to determine what the appropriate tactical and strategic responses should be. Arguably the US theory of victory in North Korea is to maintain a status quo. A theory of victory framework people often think of is "complete destruction of North Korea" which I suppose means reunification of North Korea on US-South Korean terms unconditionally.
That goes out the window, because China would not accept this outcome, they do have a theory of victory, and if I can post URLs I could link to the lecture sources about what North Korea and Chinese Theory of Victory are. The reason this is worth mentioning is their Theory of Victory is far easier to achieve than the US's. Theirs is to simply keep the Status Quo, which is easy enough, because it's the situation that exists now, and the only alternatives seem to box the US into wars it can't afford or is unwilling to fight.
Enough of that though, on to the meat-and-potatoes. Can the US win a war with North Korea?
Why are the 3 bullet points significant?
Because of this, I think the US cannot win a war in North Korea. Because this does not meet the criteria of any reasonable US "theory of victory". There is no middle ground where the US goes to war and North Korea conditionally surrenders like the Emperor of Japan, keeping their President Kim Jong Un, but losing their Nuclear Weapons, and returning to a Status Quo.
- HARTS - Hardened Artillery Sites. These sites form the nucleus of North Korea's visible strategy to deal with US-ROK forces. In brief, North Korean corps are 2x larger than US corps, and are half comprised of artillery units. What this means is that each corps is expected to act independently with a common objective, like links in a chain, regardless of any command or control in place. North Korea chose this operational strategy because they expected that their top leadership would be decapitated, a decapitating strike will not do anything though to stop North Korea's corps from acting independently and working toward their objectives.
The HARTS themselves form the stronghold around which these Corps and these Artillery units exist. They are frequently built, rebuilt and relocated, and they face away (to the North) from the DMZ. They are positional warfare (think WW1 trench warfare) on steroids. Their survivability against bombing is regarded as high.
Time and space is critical in warfighting, and HARTS buys a lot of time and space. The US for instance may have 500 fighter-bombers in theater. If a turn around time for their sorties is 1 hour, that's only 500 sorties an hour. If a HARTS can survive several hits, and if there are 10,000 HARTS, you can quickly see that these bombing sorties are INSUFFICIENT to deal with the amount of artillery shells North Korea can fire at South Korea and the DMZ.
This gives the North Koreans a significant advantage in forcing the US-ROK into a positional war, a trench war, along the DMZ.
These HARTS extend up the coast line, reducing the possibility of a meaningful amphibious landing. But will be further reinforced by sea-mines, which will be discussed in #3.
- KN06 - A more modern, S-300, phased array radar version of anti-Air missiles. This missile is arguably capable of tracking F-22, F-35, and possibly can be incorporated with civilian Air Traffic radars to track B-2 bombers also. The specifics on the KN06 are difficult to figure out (I just couldn't find good available sources on it specifically) looks like the general assumption is it will perform like the S-300, but that the phased array radar is the critical piece and it is difficult to tell but assumed that it is similar in capability of Nebo-M. But the Nebo-M system is a 3 part system capable of tracking B-2 stealth. Likely the North Koreans have the ability to track complex stealth targets like F-22, and F-35. But not to engage B-2s and would have to rely upon a different radar for that that is not integrated to their fire-control systems.
The effectiveness therefore is hard to determine, but the North Koreans are well trained. If their systems are effective, they will be used and used well.
This again, buys time and space for their decision process and their ground armies.
It blunts the impact of US-ROK air forces in striking North Korean targets especially command and control targets which are critical.
It rules out almost completely any chance at destroying North Korea's strategic targets such as Nuclear tipped missiles.
Us Air supremacy may be possible, but would take more time until the KN06 threat is dealt with.
- Submarine laid Sea-Mines. This threat is an overlooked mainstay of North Korean strategy. They have 50,000 mines that are modern, in the Korean War they used mines including deep sea bottom laying magnetic activated mines which were of Soviet design. Now they have a more robust and modern equivalent in mine technology that can be most certainly based on China and Russia designs.
The problem the North Koreans and Russians faced in the Korean war was laying the mines when the US had blue-water supremacy. They could effectively mine harbors and prevent invasions like at Wonsan, but they had trouble layering mine fields in depth.
It is self-evident that North Korea's reliance upon a submarine that can't be useful in anti-submarine and surface fleet engagements, but is great at creeping and very silent when running at only a few knots, that their Submarines are intended to circumvent this problem and lay sea-mines in open waters or maybe more strategically.
Such as mining the straits of Korea and Japan, and mining further out on the sea-beds in order to try and do as much threat to the US Navy.
North Korea probably considers that the US is much less likely to tolerate Naval losses than air or ground force casualties. Naval losses are so dramatic and singular, and the US has had barely any damage done by enemy action to its Navy since WW2 that losing a troop ship killing 10,000 marines to a sea-mine would be unfathomable casualty rate in modern US calculation.
Because of this, and experience in Korea shows, the US treats mines like nuclear weapons, and spends all its efforts on ensuring mine-sweeping is finished before moving in troop ships.
This is so significant that it delayed an invasion in Wonsan by 2 weeks, afterwhich the invasion was no longer necessary because of ground developments.
Putting it all together
So what does all this mean?
There's a lot of hear-say about what the US can do in North Korea, but the real facts on the ground is...not much.
Going to war in North Korea will be starting a WW1-type war, which was how the Korean war ended, stuck in trenches on the now-DMZ. The geography favors this. And the only way around this is to do amphibious landings, which North Korea has coastal defenses in depth, and multiplied by the effect of sea-mines, which they can lay more effectively using their Submarine's only advantage, stealth.
The air power is thus the US-ROK next best bet, but it is much more limited than it was in Iraq or in the middle east in general, where the US has complete supremacy. At least in the beginning of the war, the skies would be contested because of the KN06. Until those threats have spent their ammunition (North Korea has around 450 missiles), or those threats are destroyed, they will make sorties very dangerous.
There is not enough B52 and B-2s to make any meaningful conventional impact. Their sortie turnarounds are enormous, a B52 flying out of Guam will take 1 full day to do a bombing run.
North Korea has 10s of thousands of targets to bomb. So you can see how these turn around times are not useful in large scale action.
Conclusion
Since that theory of victory is off the table, it is arguable that given the above problems, the US cannot achieve its only practical theory of victory, total destruction of North Korea, with any reasonable cost.
The cost is so enormous, without factoring in variables such as Chemical, Biological, and Nuclear weapons.
North Korea can Nuke Guam, can Nuke Hawaii, this delays US response even further.
Can North Korean forces push into South Korea? If there's no positional war, can they push to Busan?
If they push to Busan can the US reinforce the Peninsula or will Sea-mines have too great an impact?
Etc.
These problems alone raise the costs so high, that the American people would not tolerate a victory and the US economy may not be able to suffer it.
This conventional problem alone is why North Korea has not been dealt with in 50 years, and why it won't be dealt with now except by a madman who clearly has no understanding of Strategy, costs, and what the end-game should look like in the first place.
This thread covers 3 basic areas:
There is a concept most people over-look when discussing anything strategy related: Theory of Victory.
- HARTS
- KN06
- Submarines laying sea-mines
Spoiler Alert, the US doesn't really have a theory of victory in North Korea, but we can get to that later. However, this problem is significant because without a theory of victory there is no way to determine what the appropriate tactical and strategic responses should be. Arguably the US theory of victory in North Korea is to maintain a status quo. A theory of victory framework people often think of is "complete destruction of North Korea" which I suppose means reunification of North Korea on US-South Korean terms unconditionally.
That goes out the window, because China would not accept this outcome, they do have a theory of victory, and if I can post URLs I could link to the lecture sources about what North Korea and Chinese Theory of Victory are. The reason this is worth mentioning is their Theory of Victory is far easier to achieve than the US's. Theirs is to simply keep the Status Quo, which is easy enough, because it's the situation that exists now, and the only alternatives seem to box the US into wars it can't afford or is unwilling to fight.
Enough of that though, on to the meat-and-potatoes. Can the US win a war with North Korea?
Why are the 3 bullet points significant?
Because of this, I think the US cannot win a war in North Korea. Because this does not meet the criteria of any reasonable US "theory of victory". There is no middle ground where the US goes to war and North Korea conditionally surrenders like the Emperor of Japan, keeping their President Kim Jong Un, but losing their Nuclear Weapons, and returning to a Status Quo.
- HARTS - Hardened Artillery Sites. These sites form the nucleus of North Korea's visible strategy to deal with US-ROK forces. In brief, North Korean corps are 2x larger than US corps, and are half comprised of artillery units. What this means is that each corps is expected to act independently with a common objective, like links in a chain, regardless of any command or control in place. North Korea chose this operational strategy because they expected that their top leadership would be decapitated, a decapitating strike will not do anything though to stop North Korea's corps from acting independently and working toward their objectives.
The HARTS themselves form the stronghold around which these Corps and these Artillery units exist. They are frequently built, rebuilt and relocated, and they face away (to the North) from the DMZ. They are positional warfare (think WW1 trench warfare) on steroids. Their survivability against bombing is regarded as high.
Time and space is critical in warfighting, and HARTS buys a lot of time and space. The US for instance may have 500 fighter-bombers in theater. If a turn around time for their sorties is 1 hour, that's only 500 sorties an hour. If a HARTS can survive several hits, and if there are 10,000 HARTS, you can quickly see that these bombing sorties are INSUFFICIENT to deal with the amount of artillery shells North Korea can fire at South Korea and the DMZ.
This gives the North Koreans a significant advantage in forcing the US-ROK into a positional war, a trench war, along the DMZ.
These HARTS extend up the coast line, reducing the possibility of a meaningful amphibious landing. But will be further reinforced by sea-mines, which will be discussed in #3.
- KN06 - A more modern, S-300, phased array radar version of anti-Air missiles. This missile is arguably capable of tracking F-22, F-35, and possibly can be incorporated with civilian Air Traffic radars to track B-2 bombers also. The specifics on the KN06 are difficult to figure out (I just couldn't find good available sources on it specifically) looks like the general assumption is it will perform like the S-300, but that the phased array radar is the critical piece and it is difficult to tell but assumed that it is similar in capability of Nebo-M. But the Nebo-M system is a 3 part system capable of tracking B-2 stealth. Likely the North Koreans have the ability to track complex stealth targets like F-22, and F-35. But not to engage B-2s and would have to rely upon a different radar for that that is not integrated to their fire-control systems.
The effectiveness therefore is hard to determine, but the North Koreans are well trained. If their systems are effective, they will be used and used well.
This again, buys time and space for their decision process and their ground armies.
It blunts the impact of US-ROK air forces in striking North Korean targets especially command and control targets which are critical.
It rules out almost completely any chance at destroying North Korea's strategic targets such as Nuclear tipped missiles.
Us Air supremacy may be possible, but would take more time until the KN06 threat is dealt with.
- Submarine laid Sea-Mines. This threat is an overlooked mainstay of North Korean strategy. They have 50,000 mines that are modern, in the Korean War they used mines including deep sea bottom laying magnetic activated mines which were of Soviet design. Now they have a more robust and modern equivalent in mine technology that can be most certainly based on China and Russia designs.
The problem the North Koreans and Russians faced in the Korean war was laying the mines when the US had blue-water supremacy. They could effectively mine harbors and prevent invasions like at Wonsan, but they had trouble layering mine fields in depth.
It is self-evident that North Korea's reliance upon a submarine that can't be useful in anti-submarine and surface fleet engagements, but is great at creeping and very silent when running at only a few knots, that their Submarines are intended to circumvent this problem and lay sea-mines in open waters or maybe more strategically.
Such as mining the straits of Korea and Japan, and mining further out on the sea-beds in order to try and do as much threat to the US Navy.
North Korea probably considers that the US is much less likely to tolerate Naval losses than air or ground force casualties. Naval losses are so dramatic and singular, and the US has had barely any damage done by enemy action to its Navy since WW2 that losing a troop ship killing 10,000 marines to a sea-mine would be unfathomable casualty rate in modern US calculation.
Because of this, and experience in Korea shows, the US treats mines like nuclear weapons, and spends all its efforts on ensuring mine-sweeping is finished before moving in troop ships.
This is so significant that it delayed an invasion in Wonsan by 2 weeks, afterwhich the invasion was no longer necessary because of ground developments.
Putting it all together
So what does all this mean?
There's a lot of hear-say about what the US can do in North Korea, but the real facts on the ground is...not much.
Going to war in North Korea will be starting a WW1-type war, which was how the Korean war ended, stuck in trenches on the now-DMZ. The geography favors this. And the only way around this is to do amphibious landings, which North Korea has coastal defenses in depth, and multiplied by the effect of sea-mines, which they can lay more effectively using their Submarine's only advantage, stealth.
The air power is thus the US-ROK next best bet, but it is much more limited than it was in Iraq or in the middle east in general, where the US has complete supremacy. At least in the beginning of the war, the skies would be contested because of the KN06. Until those threats have spent their ammunition (North Korea has around 450 missiles), or those threats are destroyed, they will make sorties very dangerous.
There is not enough B52 and B-2s to make any meaningful conventional impact. Their sortie turnarounds are enormous, a B52 flying out of Guam will take 1 full day to do a bombing run.
North Korea has 10s of thousands of targets to bomb. So you can see how these turn around times are not useful in large scale action.
Conclusion
Since that theory of victory is off the table, it is arguable that given the above problems, the US cannot achieve its only practical theory of victory, total destruction of North Korea, with any reasonable cost.
The cost is so enormous, without factoring in variables such as Chemical, Biological, and Nuclear weapons.
North Korea can Nuke Guam, can Nuke Hawaii, this delays US response even further.
Can North Korean forces push into South Korea? If there's no positional war, can they push to Busan?
If they push to Busan can the US reinforce the Peninsula or will Sea-mines have too great an impact?
Etc.
These problems alone raise the costs so high, that the American people would not tolerate a victory and the US economy may not be able to suffer it.
This conventional problem alone is why North Korea has not been dealt with in 50 years, and why it won't be dealt with now except by a madman who clearly has no understanding of Strategy, costs, and what the end-game should look like in the first place.
USA would win easily
Nikki Haley thought "Bimono" was a country. That says all we need to know about your analysis.
This conventional problem alone is why North Korea has not been dealt with in 50 years, and why it won't be dealt with now except by a madman who clearly has no understanding of Strategy, costs, and what the end-game should look like in the first place.
This thread covers 3 basic areas:
There is a concept most people over-look when discussing anything strategy related: Theory of Victory.
- HARTS
- KN06
- Submarines laying sea-mines
Spoiler Alert, the US doesn't really have a theory of victory in North Korea, but we can get to that later. However, this problem is significant because without a theory of victory there is no way to determine what the appropriate tactical and strategic responses should be. Arguably the US theory of victory in North Korea is to maintain a status quo. A theory of victory framework people often think of is "complete destruction of North Korea" which I suppose means reunification of North Korea on US-South Korean terms unconditionally.
That goes out the window, because China would not accept this outcome, they do have a theory of victory, and if I can post URLs I could link to the lecture sources about what North Korea and Chinese Theory of Victory are. The reason this is worth mentioning is their Theory of Victory is far easier to achieve than the US's. Theirs is to simply keep the Status Quo, which is easy enough, because it's the situation that exists now, and the only alternatives seem to box the US into wars it can't afford or is unwilling to fight.
Enough of that though, on to the meat-and-potatoes. Can the US win a war with North Korea?
Why are the 3 bullet points significant?
Because of this, I think the US cannot win a war in North Korea. Because this does not meet the criteria of any reasonable US "theory of victory". There is no middle ground where the US goes to war and North Korea conditionally surrenders like the Emperor of Japan, keeping their President Kim Jong Un, but losing their Nuclear Weapons, and returning to a Status Quo.
- HARTS - Hardened Artillery Sites. These sites form the nucleus of North Korea's visible strategy to deal with US-ROK forces. In brief, North Korean corps are 2x larger than US corps, and are half comprised of artillery units. What this means is that each corps is expected to act independently with a common objective, like links in a chain, regardless of any command or control in place. North Korea chose this operational strategy because they expected that their top leadership would be decapitated, a decapitating strike will not do anything though to stop North Korea's corps from acting independently and working toward their objectives.
The HARTS themselves form the stronghold around which these Corps and these Artillery units exist. They are frequently built, rebuilt and relocated, and they face away (to the North) from the DMZ. They are positional warfare (think WW1 trench warfare) on steroids. Their survivability against bombing is regarded as high.
Time and space is critical in warfighting, and HARTS buys a lot of time and space. The US for instance may have 500 fighter-bombers in theater. If a turn around time for their sorties is 1 hour, that's only 500 sorties an hour. If a HARTS can survive several hits, and if there are 10,000 HARTS, you can quickly see that these bombing sorties are INSUFFICIENT to deal with the amount of artillery shells North Korea can fire at South Korea and the DMZ.
This gives the North Koreans a significant advantage in forcing the US-ROK into a positional war, a trench war, along the DMZ.
These HARTS extend up the coast line, reducing the possibility of a meaningful amphibious landing. But will be further reinforced by sea-mines, which will be discussed in #3.
- KN06 - A more modern, S-300, phased array radar version of anti-Air missiles. This missile is arguably capable of tracking F-22, F-35, and possibly can be incorporated with civilian Air Traffic radars to track B-2 bombers also. The specifics on the KN06 are difficult to figure out (I just couldn't find good available sources on it specifically) looks like the general assumption is it will perform like the S-300, but that the phased array radar is the critical piece and it is difficult to tell but assumed that it is similar in capability of Nebo-M. But the Nebo-M system is a 3 part system capable of tracking B-2 stealth. Likely the North Koreans have the ability to track complex stealth targets like F-22, and F-35. But not to engage B-2s and would have to rely upon a different radar for that that is not integrated to their fire-control systems.
The effectiveness therefore is hard to determine, but the North Koreans are well trained. If their systems are effective, they will be used and used well.
This again, buys time and space for their decision process and their ground armies.
It blunts the impact of US-ROK air forces in striking North Korean targets especially command and control targets which are critical.
It rules out almost completely any chance at destroying North Korea's strategic targets such as Nuclear tipped missiles.
Us Air supremacy may be possible, but would take more time until the KN06 threat is dealt with.
- Submarine laid Sea-Mines. This threat is an overlooked mainstay of North Korean strategy. They have 50,000 mines that are modern, in the Korean War they used mines including deep sea bottom laying magnetic activated mines which were of Soviet design. Now they have a more robust and modern equivalent in mine technology that can be most certainly based on China and Russia designs.
The problem the North Koreans and Russians faced in the Korean war was laying the mines when the US had blue-water supremacy. They could effectively mine harbors and prevent invasions like at Wonsan, but they had trouble layering mine fields in depth.
It is self-evident that North Korea's reliance upon a submarine that can't be useful in anti-submarine and surface fleet engagements, but is great at creeping and very silent when running at only a few knots, that their Submarines are intended to circumvent this problem and lay sea-mines in open waters or maybe more strategically.
Such as mining the straits of Korea and Japan, and mining further out on the sea-beds in order to try and do as much threat to the US Navy.
North Korea probably considers that the US is much less likely to tolerate Naval losses than air or ground force casualties. Naval losses are so dramatic and singular, and the US has had barely any damage done by enemy action to its Navy since WW2 that losing a troop ship killing 10,000 marines to a sea-mine would be unfathomable casualty rate in modern US calculation.
Because of this, and experience in Korea shows, the US treats mines like nuclear weapons, and spends all its efforts on ensuring mine-sweeping is finished before moving in troop ships.
This is so significant that it delayed an invasion in Wonsan by 2 weeks, afterwhich the invasion was no longer necessary because of ground developments.
Putting it all together
So what does all this mean?
There's a lot of hear-say about what the US can do in North Korea, but the real facts on the ground is...not much.
Going to war in North Korea will be starting a WW1-type war, which was how the Korean war ended, stuck in trenches on the now-DMZ. The geography favors this. And the only way around this is to do amphibious landings, which North Korea has coastal defenses in depth, and multiplied by the effect of sea-mines, which they can lay more effectively using their Submarine's only advantage, stealth.
The air power is thus the US-ROK next best bet, but it is much more limited than it was in Iraq or in the middle east in general, where the US has complete supremacy. At least in the beginning of the war, the skies would be contested because of the KN06. Until those threats have spent their ammunition (North Korea has around 450 missiles), or those threats are destroyed, they will make sorties very dangerous.
There is not enough B52 and B-2s to make any meaningful conventional impact. Their sortie turnarounds are enormous, a B52 flying out of Guam will take 1 full day to do a bombing run.
North Korea has 10s of thousands of targets to bomb. So you can see how these turn around times are not useful in large scale action.
Conclusion
Since that theory of victory is off the table, it is arguable that given the above problems, the US cannot achieve its only practical theory of victory, total destruction of North Korea, with any reasonable cost.
The cost is so enormous, without factoring in variables such as Chemical, Biological, and Nuclear weapons.
North Korea can Nuke Guam, can Nuke Hawaii, this delays US response even further.
Can North Korean forces push into South Korea? If there's no positional war, can they push to Busan?
If they push to Busan can the US reinforce the Peninsula or will Sea-mines have too great an impact?
Etc.
These problems alone raise the costs so high, that the American people would not tolerate a victory and the US economy may not be able to suffer it.
This conventional problem alone is why North Korea has not been dealt with in 50 years, and why it won't be dealt with now except by a madman who clearly has no understanding of Strategy, costs, and what the end-game should look like in the first place.
USA would win easily
Nikki Haley thought "Bimono" was a country. That says all we need to know about your analysis.
Stupid response. If you want an actual conversation stay on point.
This conventional problem alone is why North Korea has not been dealt with in 50 years, and why it won't be dealt with now except by a madman who clearly has no understanding of Strategy, costs, and what the end-game should look like in the first place.[/QUOTE]
- Assuming all you said was true (and it's not), you have just made the best case argument against diplomacy as its own means to an end! In other words, had the world tried diplomacy many years ago (as it had) and admitted in the face of intransigence that obviously North Korea was never going to ever see reason and join the civil community, had we just gone in there then, we could have easily ended decades of posturing, stalemates and saved countless billion of dollars and lives!
- Breaking the cycle of endless, futile diplomacy for its own sake, which has failed for 50 years in the face now of certain threat, that isn't the sign of a madman, that is the sign of a pragmatist! Perhaps, finally, the ONE sane leader the world over.
- Oh and, wars are not fought and won based on costs vs. rewards, sometimes they are fought even with no good, desirable outcome in sight because there is just no other way. Which brings us right back to point #1.
- The clear sign of insanity is to meet your term of a madman and DO NOTHING but keep trying the same old things that haven't worked once for half a century and continue to tolerate and ignore the matter and hope that somehow, now, this time it works!
Sinpo class Submarine. Recently built too so at peak performance, if its built off the Romeo-design then it's not much noisier than modern Nuclears. But no where near as quiet as modern Diesels.
Wrong. They have one. Experimental. If that is the quality of the information you are using to base your analysis on, it is easy to see why you are clueless.
NK doesn't invest in an air-force it sees it as a waste of money, and it is for their strategic purpose. They invest in anti-air capabilities, not strategic bombing abilities.
Couldn't answer the question? They fly a 1950 designed POS.
If the 3 US Troop ships cannot pack 10,000 troops on it, its even more useless than if it could. So you're not exactly winning points for yourself here.
We don't have troop ships. Another gap in your knowledge.
The strait of Korea never is deeper than 600 feet, for instance, so the strait can be closed. And it is the most heavily trafficked strait in the world.
You didn't answer the question. What type of mines can be used there that would close that strait?
What kind of ships so blue water are that useful?
Cruise missiles.
Missile frigates won't have the fire power to stop massive ground battles. Air craft carriers? 3 of them at best? Not much fire power either.
Your knowledge of a carrier's firepower is underwhelming at best. Each carrier can do significant damage all on its own and probably carries more firepower than we expended in WWII.
Their ground troops are apparently disease-ridden and starving. They won't last more than a few hours.
Conventional bombing isn't ignored at all, it's all lumped into the problem of sortie turn around times.
Carrier aircraft have much shorter times. You downplayed their significance also. We also have land-based aircraft all over Japan and Okinawa. You ignored them also. Those bases can support aircraft that are now based further away.
The US just doesn't have the ability to bring enough conventional fire power to bear in North Korea. Turn around times are massive. And the forces involved aren't huge armies in open deserts with no cost to lost-time.
Their command and control would be decimated in the first wave. How long do you think they can hold out?
All of South Korea could be devastated in a single sortie turn around time
How do you figure that? Another baseless claim?.
Carrier Aircraft do have a shorter turn around time compared to GUAM which is many many hours. But it's still not a large air-wing in comparison to the forces involved. I've already stated that clearly..
Sinpo class Submarine. Recently built too so at peak performance, if its built off the Romeo-design then it's not much noisier than modern Nuclears. But no where near as quiet as modern Diesels.
Wrong. They have one. Experimental. If that is the quality of the information you are using to base your analysis on, it is easy to see why you are clueless.
NK doesn't invest in an air-force it sees it as a waste of money, and it is for their strategic purpose. They invest in anti-air capabilities, not strategic bombing abilities.
Couldn't answer the question? They fly a 1950 designed POS.
If the 3 US Troop ships cannot pack 10,000 troops on it, its even more useless than if it could. So you're not exactly winning points for yourself here.
We don't have troop ships. Another gap in your knowledge.
The strait of Korea never is deeper than 600 feet, for instance, so the strait can be closed. And it is the most heavily trafficked strait in the world.
You didn't answer the question. What type of mines can be used there that would close that strait?
What kind of ships so blue water are that useful?
Cruise missiles.
Missile frigates won't have the fire power to stop massive ground battles. Air craft carriers? 3 of them at best? Not much fire power either.
Your knowledge of a carrier's firepower is underwhelming at best. Each carrier can do significant damage all on its own and probably carries more firepower than we expended in WWII.
Their ground troops are apparently disease-ridden and starving. They won't last more than a few hours.
Conventional bombing isn't ignored at all, it's all lumped into the problem of sortie turn around times.
Carrier aircraft have much shorter times. You downplayed their significance also. We also have land-based aircraft all over Japan and Okinawa. You ignored them also. Those bases can support aircraft that are now based further away.
The US just doesn't have the ability to bring enough conventional fire power to bear in North Korea. Turn around times are massive. And the forces involved aren't huge armies in open deserts with no cost to lost-time.
Their command and control would be decimated in the first wave. How long do you think they can hold out?
All of South Korea could be devastated in a single sortie turn around time
How do you figure that? Another baseless claim?.
Carrier Aircraft do have a shorter turn around time compared to GUAM which is many many hours. But it's still not a large air-wing in comparison to the forces involved. I've already stated that clearly..
But we wouldn't keep our planes on Guam once the war started- we would base them either in Japan or in South Korea- depending on how effective NK was.
This thread covers 3 basic areas:
There is a concept most people over-look when discussing anything strategy related: Theory of Victory.
- HARTS
- KN06
- Submarines laying sea-mines
Spoiler Alert, the US doesn't really have a theory of victory in North Korea, but we can get to that later. However, this problem is significant because without a theory of victory there is no way to determine what the appropriate tactical and strategic responses should be. Arguably the US theory of victory in North Korea is to maintain a status quo. A theory of victory framework people often think of is "complete destruction of North Korea" which I suppose means reunification of North Korea on US-South Korean terms unconditionally.
That goes out the window, because China would not accept this outcome, they do have a theory of victory, and if I can post URLs I could link to the lecture sources about what North Korea and Chinese Theory of Victory are. The reason this is worth mentioning is their Theory of Victory is far easier to achieve than the US's. Theirs is to simply keep the Status Quo, which is easy enough, because it's the situation that exists now, and the only alternatives seem to box the US into wars it can't afford or is unwilling to fight.
Enough of that though, on to the meat-and-potatoes. Can the US win a war with North Korea?
Why are the 3 bullet points significant?
Because of this, I think the US cannot win a war in North Korea. Because this does not meet the criteria of any reasonable US "theory of victory". There is no middle ground where the US goes to war and North Korea conditionally surrenders like the Emperor of Japan, keeping their President Kim Jong Un, but losing their Nuclear Weapons, and returning to a Status Quo.
- HARTS - Hardened Artillery Sites. These sites form the nucleus of North Korea's visible strategy to deal with US-ROK forces. In brief, North Korean corps are 2x larger than US corps, and are half comprised of artillery units. What this means is that each corps is expected to act independently with a common objective, like links in a chain, regardless of any command or control in place. North Korea chose this operational strategy because they expected that their top leadership would be decapitated, a decapitating strike will not do anything though to stop North Korea's corps from acting independently and working toward their objectives.
The HARTS themselves form the stronghold around which these Corps and these Artillery units exist. They are frequently built, rebuilt and relocated, and they face away (to the North) from the DMZ. They are positional warfare (think WW1 trench warfare) on steroids. Their survivability against bombing is regarded as high.
Time and space is critical in warfighting, and HARTS buys a lot of time and space. The US for instance may have 500 fighter-bombers in theater. If a turn around time for their sorties is 1 hour, that's only 500 sorties an hour. If a HARTS can survive several hits, and if there are 10,000 HARTS, you can quickly see that these bombing sorties are INSUFFICIENT to deal with the amount of artillery shells North Korea can fire at South Korea and the DMZ.
This gives the North Koreans a significant advantage in forcing the US-ROK into a positional war, a trench war, along the DMZ.
These HARTS extend up the coast line, reducing the possibility of a meaningful amphibious landing. But will be further reinforced by sea-mines, which will be discussed in #3.
- KN06 - A more modern, S-300, phased array radar version of anti-Air missiles. This missile is arguably capable of tracking F-22, F-35, and possibly can be incorporated with civilian Air Traffic radars to track B-2 bombers also. The specifics on the KN06 are difficult to figure out (I just couldn't find good available sources on it specifically) looks like the general assumption is it will perform like the S-300, but that the phased array radar is the critical piece and it is difficult to tell but assumed that it is similar in capability of Nebo-M. But the Nebo-M system is a 3 part system capable of tracking B-2 stealth. Likely the North Koreans have the ability to track complex stealth targets like F-22, and F-35. But not to engage B-2s and would have to rely upon a different radar for that that is not integrated to their fire-control systems.
The effectiveness therefore is hard to determine, but the North Koreans are well trained. If their systems are effective, they will be used and used well.
This again, buys time and space for their decision process and their ground armies.
It blunts the impact of US-ROK air forces in striking North Korean targets especially command and control targets which are critical.
It rules out almost completely any chance at destroying North Korea's strategic targets such as Nuclear tipped missiles.
Us Air supremacy may be possible, but would take more time until the KN06 threat is dealt with.
- Submarine laid Sea-Mines. This threat is an overlooked mainstay of North Korean strategy. They have 50,000 mines that are modern, in the Korean War they used mines including deep sea bottom laying magnetic activated mines which were of Soviet design. Now they have a more robust and modern equivalent in mine technology that can be most certainly based on China and Russia designs.
The problem the North Koreans and Russians faced in the Korean war was laying the mines when the US had blue-water supremacy. They could effectively mine harbors and prevent invasions like at Wonsan, but they had trouble layering mine fields in depth.
It is self-evident that North Korea's reliance upon a submarine that can't be useful in anti-submarine and surface fleet engagements, but is great at creeping and very silent when running at only a few knots, that their Submarines are intended to circumvent this problem and lay sea-mines in open waters or maybe more strategically.
Such as mining the straits of Korea and Japan, and mining further out on the sea-beds in order to try and do as much threat to the US Navy.
North Korea probably considers that the US is much less likely to tolerate Naval losses than air or ground force casualties. Naval losses are so dramatic and singular, and the US has had barely any damage done by enemy action to its Navy since WW2 that losing a troop ship killing 10,000 marines to a sea-mine would be unfathomable casualty rate in modern US calculation.
Because of this, and experience in Korea shows, the US treats mines like nuclear weapons, and spends all its efforts on ensuring mine-sweeping is finished before moving in troop ships.
This is so significant that it delayed an invasion in Wonsan by 2 weeks, afterwhich the invasion was no longer necessary because of ground developments.
Putting it all together
So what does all this mean?
There's a lot of hear-say about what the US can do in North Korea, but the real facts on the ground is...not much.
Going to war in North Korea will be starting a WW1-type war, which was how the Korean war ended, stuck in trenches on the now-DMZ. The geography favors this. And the only way around this is to do amphibious landings, which North Korea has coastal defenses in depth, and multiplied by the effect of sea-mines, which they can lay more effectively using their Submarine's only advantage, stealth.
The air power is thus the US-ROK next best bet, but it is much more limited than it was in Iraq or in the middle east in general, where the US has complete supremacy. At least in the beginning of the war, the skies would be contested because of the KN06. Until those threats have spent their ammunition (North Korea has around 450 missiles), or those threats are destroyed, they will make sorties very dangerous.
There is not enough B52 and B-2s to make any meaningful conventional impact. Their sortie turnarounds are enormous, a B52 flying out of Guam will take 1 full day to do a bombing run.
North Korea has 10s of thousands of targets to bomb. So you can see how these turn around times are not useful in large scale action.
Conclusion
Since that theory of victory is off the table, it is arguable that given the above problems, the US cannot achieve its only practical theory of victory, total destruction of North Korea, with any reasonable cost.
The cost is so enormous, without factoring in variables such as Chemical, Biological, and Nuclear weapons.
North Korea can Nuke Guam, can Nuke Hawaii, this delays US response even further.
Can North Korean forces push into South Korea? If there's no positional war, can they push to Busan?
If they push to Busan can the US reinforce the Peninsula or will Sea-mines have too great an impact?
Etc.
These problems alone raise the costs so high, that the American people would not tolerate a victory and the US economy may not be able to suffer it.
This conventional problem alone is why North Korea has not been dealt with in 50 years, and why it won't be dealt with now except by a madman who clearly has no understanding of Strategy, costs, and what the end-game should look like in the first place.
USA would win easily
Nikki Haley thought "Bimono" was a country. That says all we need to know about your analysis.
Stupid response. If you want an actual conversation stay on point.
I don't give 1 shit what Bear513 has to say, which is in fact, nothing.
This conventional problem alone is why North Korea has not been dealt with in 50 years, and why it won't be dealt with now except by a madman who clearly has no understanding of Strategy, costs, and what the end-game should look like in the first place.[/QUOTE]
- Assuming all you said was true (and it's not), you have just made the best case argument against diplomacy as its own means to an end! In other words, had the world tried diplomacy many years ago (as it had) and admitted in the face of intransigence that obviously North Korea was never going to ever see reason and join the civil community, had we just gone in there then, we could have easily ended decades of posturing, stalemates and saved countless billion of dollars and lives!
- Breaking the cycle of endless, futile diplomacy for its own sake, which has failed for 50 years in the face now of certain threat, that isn't the sign of a madman, that is the sign of a pragmatist! Perhaps, finally, the ONE sane leader the world over.
- Oh and, wars are not fought and won based on costs vs. rewards, sometimes they are fought even with no good, desirable outcome in sight because there is just no other way. Which brings us right back to point #1.
- The clear sign of insanity is to meet your term of a madman and DO NOTHING but keep trying the same old things that haven't worked once for half a century and continue to tolerate and ignore the matter and hope that somehow, now, this time it works!
Your argument is nonsensical.
It exists in a realm where you think the US chose to lose the Korean War because it is the master of the Universe. "We lost, because I willed it to happen!"
It's a form of extreme Trump-ist Narcissism on a national level.
The US lost because it COULD NOT WIN. It was DEFEATED by other powers, China, Russia and North Korea combined.
There is real power and force holding the US at bey.
This conventional problem alone is why North Korea has not been dealt with in 50 years, and why it won't be dealt with now except by a madman who clearly has no understanding of Strategy, costs, and what the end-game should look like in the first place.[/QUOTE]
- Assuming all you said was true (and it's not), you have just made the best case argument against diplomacy as its own means to an end! In other words, had the world tried diplomacy many years ago (as it had) and admitted in the face of intransigence that obviously North Korea was never going to ever see reason and join the civil community, had we just gone in there then, we could have easily ended decades of posturing, stalemates and saved countless billion of dollars and lives!
- Breaking the cycle of endless, futile diplomacy for its own sake, which has failed for 50 years in the face now of certain threat, that isn't the sign of a madman, that is the sign of a pragmatist! Perhaps, finally, the ONE sane leader the world over.
- Oh and, wars are not fought and won based on costs vs. rewards, sometimes they are fought even with no good, desirable outcome in sight because there is just no other way. Which brings us right back to point #1.
- The clear sign of insanity is to meet your term of a madman and DO NOTHING but keep trying the same old things that haven't worked once for half a century and continue to tolerate and ignore the matter and hope that somehow, now, this time it works!
Your argument is nonsensical.
It exists in a realm where you think the US chose to lose the Korean War because it is the master of the Universe. "We lost, because I willed it to happen!"
It's a form of extreme Trump-ist Narcissism on a national level.
The US lost because it COULD NOT WIN. It was DEFEATED by other powers, China, Russia and North Korea combined.
There is real power and force holding the US at bey.
Oh the United States actually could have won the Korean War.
We didn't win because the American people didn't want another WW2.
But at the time- with our industrial domination of the world- if we had geared back up to WW2 levels- we would have won- not even considering using nukes.
I don't necessarily think we should have done it- but certainly if the American people had been willing we could have.
China and Soviets of course didn't have to worry about such trivialities, but they wouldn't have been able to keep up with the U.S. after 2 years of serious combat production.
This thread covers 3 basic areas:
There is a concept most people over-look when discussing anything strategy related: Theory of Victory.
- HARTS
- KN06
- Submarines laying sea-mines
Spoiler Alert, the US doesn't really have a theory of victory in North Korea, but we can get to that later. However, this problem is significant because without a theory of victory there is no way to determine what the appropriate tactical and strategic responses should be. Arguably the US theory of victory in North Korea is to maintain a status quo. A theory of victory framework people often think of is "complete destruction of North Korea" which I suppose means reunification of North Korea on US-South Korean terms unconditionally.
That goes out the window, because China would not accept this outcome, they do have a theory of victory, and if I can post URLs I could link to the lecture sources about what North Korea and Chinese Theory of Victory are. The reason this is worth mentioning is their Theory of Victory is far easier to achieve than the US's. Theirs is to simply keep the Status Quo, which is easy enough, because it's the situation that exists now, and the only alternatives seem to box the US into wars it can't afford or is unwilling to fight.
Enough of that though, on to the meat-and-potatoes. Can the US win a war with North Korea?
Why are the 3 bullet points significant?
Because of this, I think the US cannot win a war in North Korea. Because this does not meet the criteria of any reasonable US "theory of victory". There is no middle ground where the US goes to war and North Korea conditionally surrenders like the Emperor of Japan, keeping their President Kim Jong Un, but losing their Nuclear Weapons, and returning to a Status Quo.
- HARTS - Hardened Artillery Sites. These sites form the nucleus of North Korea's visible strategy to deal with US-ROK forces. In brief, North Korean corps are 2x larger than US corps, and are half comprised of artillery units. What this means is that each corps is expected to act independently with a common objective, like links in a chain, regardless of any command or control in place. North Korea chose this operational strategy because they expected that their top leadership would be decapitated, a decapitating strike will not do anything though to stop North Korea's corps from acting independently and working toward their objectives.
The HARTS themselves form the stronghold around which these Corps and these Artillery units exist. They are frequently built, rebuilt and relocated, and they face away (to the North) from the DMZ. They are positional warfare (think WW1 trench warfare) on steroids. Their survivability against bombing is regarded as high.
Time and space is critical in warfighting, and HARTS buys a lot of time and space. The US for instance may have 500 fighter-bombers in theater. If a turn around time for their sorties is 1 hour, that's only 500 sorties an hour. If a HARTS can survive several hits, and if there are 10,000 HARTS, you can quickly see that these bombing sorties are INSUFFICIENT to deal with the amount of artillery shells North Korea can fire at South Korea and the DMZ.
This gives the North Koreans a significant advantage in forcing the US-ROK into a positional war, a trench war, along the DMZ.
These HARTS extend up the coast line, reducing the possibility of a meaningful amphibious landing. But will be further reinforced by sea-mines, which will be discussed in #3.
- KN06 - A more modern, S-300, phased array radar version of anti-Air missiles. This missile is arguably capable of tracking F-22, F-35, and possibly can be incorporated with civilian Air Traffic radars to track B-2 bombers also. The specifics on the KN06 are difficult to figure out (I just couldn't find good available sources on it specifically) looks like the general assumption is it will perform like the S-300, but that the phased array radar is the critical piece and it is difficult to tell but assumed that it is similar in capability of Nebo-M. But the Nebo-M system is a 3 part system capable of tracking B-2 stealth. Likely the North Koreans have the ability to track complex stealth targets like F-22, and F-35. But not to engage B-2s and would have to rely upon a different radar for that that is not integrated to their fire-control systems.
The effectiveness therefore is hard to determine, but the North Koreans are well trained. If their systems are effective, they will be used and used well.
This again, buys time and space for their decision process and their ground armies.
It blunts the impact of US-ROK air forces in striking North Korean targets especially command and control targets which are critical.
It rules out almost completely any chance at destroying North Korea's strategic targets such as Nuclear tipped missiles.
Us Air supremacy may be possible, but would take more time until the KN06 threat is dealt with.
- Submarine laid Sea-Mines. This threat is an overlooked mainstay of North Korean strategy. They have 50,000 mines that are modern, in the Korean War they used mines including deep sea bottom laying magnetic activated mines which were of Soviet design. Now they have a more robust and modern equivalent in mine technology that can be most certainly based on China and Russia designs.
The problem the North Koreans and Russians faced in the Korean war was laying the mines when the US had blue-water supremacy. They could effectively mine harbors and prevent invasions like at Wonsan, but they had trouble layering mine fields in depth.
It is self-evident that North Korea's reliance upon a submarine that can't be useful in anti-submarine and surface fleet engagements, but is great at creeping and very silent when running at only a few knots, that their Submarines are intended to circumvent this problem and lay sea-mines in open waters or maybe more strategically.
Such as mining the straits of Korea and Japan, and mining further out on the sea-beds in order to try and do as much threat to the US Navy.
North Korea probably considers that the US is much less likely to tolerate Naval losses than air or ground force casualties. Naval losses are so dramatic and singular, and the US has had barely any damage done by enemy action to its Navy since WW2 that losing a troop ship killing 10,000 marines to a sea-mine would be unfathomable casualty rate in modern US calculation.
Because of this, and experience in Korea shows, the US treats mines like nuclear weapons, and spends all its efforts on ensuring mine-sweeping is finished before moving in troop ships.
This is so significant that it delayed an invasion in Wonsan by 2 weeks, afterwhich the invasion was no longer necessary because of ground developments.
Putting it all together
So what does all this mean?
There's a lot of hear-say about what the US can do in North Korea, but the real facts on the ground is...not much.
Going to war in North Korea will be starting a WW1-type war, which was how the Korean war ended, stuck in trenches on the now-DMZ. The geography favors this. And the only way around this is to do amphibious landings, which North Korea has coastal defenses in depth, and multiplied by the effect of sea-mines, which they can lay more effectively using their Submarine's only advantage, stealth.
The air power is thus the US-ROK next best bet, but it is much more limited than it was in Iraq or in the middle east in general, where the US has complete supremacy. At least in the beginning of the war, the skies would be contested because of the KN06. Until those threats have spent their ammunition (North Korea has around 450 missiles), or those threats are destroyed, they will make sorties very dangerous.
There is not enough B52 and B-2s to make any meaningful conventional impact. Their sortie turnarounds are enormous, a B52 flying out of Guam will take 1 full day to do a bombing run.
North Korea has 10s of thousands of targets to bomb. So you can see how these turn around times are not useful in large scale action.
Conclusion
Since that theory of victory is off the table, it is arguable that given the above problems, the US cannot achieve its only practical theory of victory, total destruction of North Korea, with any reasonable cost.
The cost is so enormous, without factoring in variables such as Chemical, Biological, and Nuclear weapons.
North Korea can Nuke Guam, can Nuke Hawaii, this delays US response even further.
Can North Korean forces push into South Korea? If there's no positional war, can they push to Busan?
If they push to Busan can the US reinforce the Peninsula or will Sea-mines have too great an impact?
Etc.
These problems alone raise the costs so high, that the American people would not tolerate a victory and the US economy may not be able to suffer it.
This conventional problem alone is why North Korea has not been dealt with in 50 years, and why it won't be dealt with now except by a madman who clearly has no understanding of Strategy, costs, and what the end-game should look like in the first place.
USA would win easily
Nikki Haley thought "Bimono" was a country. That says all we need to know about your analysis.
Stupid response. If you want an actual conversation stay on point.
I don't give 1 shit what Bear513 has to say, which is in fact, nothing.
Didnt nk shoot missiles onto their own populace?
Sounds like it would be an easy win. We all just sit back and drink yager bombs
Sinpo class Submarine. Recently built too so at peak performance, if its built off the Romeo-design then it's not much noisier than modern Nuclears. But no where near as quiet as modern Diesels.
Wrong. They have one. Experimental. If that is the quality of the information you are using to base your analysis on, it is easy to see why you are clueless.
NK doesn't invest in an air-force it sees it as a waste of money, and it is for their strategic purpose. They invest in anti-air capabilities, not strategic bombing abilities.
Couldn't answer the question? They fly a 1950 designed POS.
If the 3 US Troop ships cannot pack 10,000 troops on it, its even more useless than if it could. So you're not exactly winning points for yourself here.
We don't have troop ships. Another gap in your knowledge.
The strait of Korea never is deeper than 600 feet, for instance, so the strait can be closed. And it is the most heavily trafficked strait in the world.
You didn't answer the question. What type of mines can be used there that would close that strait?
What kind of ships so blue water are that useful?
Cruise missiles.
Missile frigates won't have the fire power to stop massive ground battles. Air craft carriers? 3 of them at best? Not much fire power either.
Your knowledge of a carrier's firepower is underwhelming at best. Each carrier can do significant damage all on its own and probably carries more firepower than we expended in WWII.
Their ground troops are apparently disease-ridden and starving. They won't last more than a few hours.
Conventional bombing isn't ignored at all, it's all lumped into the problem of sortie turn around times.
Carrier aircraft have much shorter times. You downplayed their significance also. We also have land-based aircraft all over Japan and Okinawa. You ignored them also. Those bases can support aircraft that are now based further away.
The US just doesn't have the ability to bring enough conventional fire power to bear in North Korea. Turn around times are massive. And the forces involved aren't huge armies in open deserts with no cost to lost-time.
Their command and control would be decimated in the first wave. How long do you think they can hold out?
All of South Korea could be devastated in a single sortie turn around time
How do you figure that? Another baseless claim?.
Carrier Aircraft do have a shorter turn around time compared to GUAM which is many many hours. But it's still not a large air-wing in comparison to the forces involved. I've already stated that clearly..
But we wouldn't keep our planes on Guam once the war started- we would base them either in Japan or in South Korea- depending on how effective NK was.
K, that's a more reasonable response than some people, and I just think that Guam is too far to be tactically meaningful, it's a strategic asset, but the US does not have the forces to be aggressive/offensive, in place.
It has the forces enough to be deterrent against North Korea, but it hasn't put the forces it needs in place to win a war, only to ensure time-and-space to escalate one to astronomic costs. Leading to brinksmanship diplomacy.
Guam is a strategic asset, and is threatened by ICBMs.
But it's not an asset that can be used to support much at any given time.
Sinpo class Submarine. Recently built too so at peak performance, if its built off the Romeo-design then it's not much noisier than modern Nuclears. But no where near as quiet as modern Diesels.
Wrong. They have one. Experimental. If that is the quality of the information you are using to base your analysis on, it is easy to see why you are clueless.
NK doesn't invest in an air-force it sees it as a waste of money, and it is for their strategic purpose. They invest in anti-air capabilities, not strategic bombing abilities.
Couldn't answer the question? They fly a 1950 designed POS.
If the 3 US Troop ships cannot pack 10,000 troops on it, its even more useless than if it could. So you're not exactly winning points for yourself here.
We don't have troop ships. Another gap in your knowledge.
The strait of Korea never is deeper than 600 feet, for instance, so the strait can be closed. And it is the most heavily trafficked strait in the world.
You didn't answer the question. What type of mines can be used there that would close that strait?
What kind of ships so blue water are that useful?
Cruise missiles.
Missile frigates won't have the fire power to stop massive ground battles. Air craft carriers? 3 of them at best? Not much fire power either.
Your knowledge of a carrier's firepower is underwhelming at best. Each carrier can do significant damage all on its own and probably carries more firepower than we expended in WWII.
Their ground troops are apparently disease-ridden and starving. They won't last more than a few hours.
Conventional bombing isn't ignored at all, it's all lumped into the problem of sortie turn around times.
Carrier aircraft have much shorter times. You downplayed their significance also. We also have land-based aircraft all over Japan and Okinawa. You ignored them also. Those bases can support aircraft that are now based further away.
The US just doesn't have the ability to bring enough conventional fire power to bear in North Korea. Turn around times are massive. And the forces involved aren't huge armies in open deserts with no cost to lost-time.
Their command and control would be decimated in the first wave. How long do you think they can hold out?
All of South Korea could be devastated in a single sortie turn around time
How do you figure that? Another baseless claim?.
Carrier Aircraft do have a shorter turn around time compared to GUAM which is many many hours. But it's still not a large air-wing in comparison to the forces involved. I've already stated that clearly..
But we wouldn't keep our planes on Guam once the war started- we would base them either in Japan or in South Korea- depending on how effective NK was.
K, that's a more reasonable response than some people, and I just think that Guam is too far to be tactically meaningful, it's a strategic asset, but the US does not have the forces to be aggressive/offensive, in place.
It has the forces enough to be deterrent against North Korea, but it hasn't put the forces it needs in place to win a war, only to ensure time-and-space to escalate one to astronomic costs. Leading to brinksmanship diplomacy.
Guam is a strategic asset, and is threatened by ICBMs.
But it's not an asset that can be used to support much at any given time.
Guam is not actually 'threatened' by ICBMs- despite the warnings of the governor of Guam.
Guam is a useful staging point and of course where we keep planes staged- ready and available to move to Japan or SK or Taiwan as needed.
Again I will say- I think the predictions that the United States could easily win a war with NK are rather stupid- NK is not Iraq. But if we had a reason we could win a war with NK eventually- but I unless NK actually attacks the United States, I don't see that happening- though with Trump.....frankly who knows.
But the idea that NK could easily invade far into SK is also absurd. NK could do lots of damage to SK, and could possibly take Seoul, but beyond that its doubtful it could do more.
I find your position to be as absurdly unbalanced as those who seem to think that a war with NK would be a walk in the park.
