More On North Korea
Th following article is an op-ed on North Korea’s attitude toward the USA/.South Korea and the possibilities down the road.
From the article: Iran isn’t the only adversary the Trump administration has said it is ready to fight. The same day the Pentagon announced Iran’s Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani was killed, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said in an interview with Fox News that the U.S. “is prepared to exert military force if needed” against Pyongyang.
But what do Esper’s comments and the confrontation with Iran mean for North Korea and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, as the U.S. seeks to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula?
So far, military and foreign policy experts don’t expect immediate or major changes from INDOPACOM in dealing with North Korea, nor do they believe that there is yet cause for concern that a similar situation in the Middle East will erupt in the Pacific.
“I think it’s business as usual, but proceed with caution,” Rick Lamb, a retired Army Green Beret command sergeant major, told Military Times.
“It’s the time-tested ‘Ranger Rule’ from the French and Indian War of 1754,” said Lamb, who was stationed in South Korea in the 1980s and served as a civilian adviser to Special Operations Command-Korea from 2015 to 2017. “’Have your musket clean as a whistle, hatchet scoured, sixty rounds powder and ball, and be ready to march at a minute’s warning.’ Lean forward…and hang on.” – article
As I indicated last week, Fatty Kim da T’ird has announced publicly that he is returning to his nuke missile testing program ASAP.
While he has not yet engaged in the harassment of South Korea the way his father did, his attempts to impress people with his missile program has alarmed the people of Japan, among others. The fact that he is, and has been for some time, nuclear-capable is a red flag that requires attention, as well as something that he can use as a bargaining chip if necessary. He is perfectly capable of making a deal with iran in regard to nukes and may see that as an alternate to dealing with the USA.
While he has yet to launch anything, his motivation is getting attention from the USA, the historical enemy of North Korea, above all else. When Trump vacated the meetings with Kim, without giving him what His Tubbiness wanted and without Trump getting what he wanted, it was a stalemate rather than an end to the talks. This grandstanding proposed show of force is just that: grandstanding and look-at-me! stuff.
The real concern is that since Kim is nuclear-capable, and he’s not getting what he wants from us, there is no bar to his negotiating for what he wants with Iran.
Category: Iran, North Korea, Nukes
If I were worried about anything it would be a deal to merge Korean heavy lift launch capability with Iranian nuclear knowledge to make a credible EMP threat. Doubt it would happen, and both countries would no doubt end up parking lots from conventional nukes, but would be highly inconvenient for US residents.
The scenario for Forstchen’s book, “One Second After.” And one that has been talked about but never really prepared for in this Country for decades. That was in the back of Reagan’s mind with his whole “Star Wars” SDI. We mentioned this the other day on a thread and discussed it awhile back. One of the more plausible “Doomsday” scenarios out there. People freak out now if the power is out for just a little while; imagine if the entire grid went down…and stayed down.
I personally don’t think that either country wants to be involved in a conventional type war with the US without the backing of either the Ruskkies or the ChiComs. The ROKs would lose a lot of people in Seoul, but would kick Kim daFattie Cheese’s ass. Swarms of cruise missiles would knock hell out of the Iranians and we would never put a single “boot on the ground.”
I still say we need to GTFO with everything/body we have in the ME, come home, and concern ourselves with defending American Soil and people from all of the mooslem sleeper cells that are scattered thru out our land. They’re here, you can bet your sweet bippie of that. When they scream “Death to America” they are talking about all of us. What reasonable person doesn’t take that as a threat?
Look at what NotPetya did to Ukraine. Something like that does not require an EMP, or heavy lift. When we wake up one morning and nobody’s EBT card works, this country will suffer in ways that I don’t think we can even imagine. NotPetya, in addition to taking out virtually all of Ukraine’s network infrastructure, took Maersk Shipping out for at least a week, and they handle 20% of global sea freight. The only way that Maersk was able to bring their Network back up was because one network domain controller in Ghana was offline at the time of the attack. It took out 100% of the Windows machine that it touched. EMP is definitely a threat, I just think that a worm/virus is more accessible and affordable. Plus, it can be made to be virtually untraceable…or it can be made to implicate an otherwise innocent party.
The NORKs have a history of assisting nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. They were hand-in-glove with the Syrians, aiding in their nuclear ambitions. Israel didn’t think this was such a good idea.
Ref: Wiki
The Norks are miles ahead of Iran in regard to missiles and nuclear stuff. The ROK detonated a half-megaton bomb in an underground testing sight, with a force that was picked up on USGS seismic sensors and alarmed the Chinese.
Kim Jong Un may seem to be a clown, but he was smart enough to give the go ahead a few years ago to someone at lower levels in his rocketry program who knew what was causing failures, and now we are seeing the results.
He may seem like a clown of sorts, but if the Chinese and the South Koreans take him seriously, that’s good enough for me.
North Kora is “DPRK” Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea. The Republic of Korea is the South.
ROK has no nukes, to our current public knowledge, anyway.
The DPRK has not detonated anything close to a half-megaton weapon. That required a multistage “thermonuclear” device, typically a Teller-Ulam design. Their best shot was -way- under 500kt. Usually estimated at 60-80kt, bunt possibly up to 280kt.
Note that a 60-80kt weapon is achievable with a “boosted” single-stage design, which is an implosion device with added neutron sources like tritium. (No fusion of the tritium, just harvesting of those os-so-useful surplus neutrons)
I am assuming they have attempted a multistage device, but likely have had “fizzles”, as there are some really challenging engineering problems to solve to get the things to actually go multi-stage thermonuclear kaboom.
The multi-stage weapons also default to “big” and “heavy” until one can refine the designs considerably. Making them deliverable by aircraft or missile is more engineering work.
On the other hand, you can kill a city and 70,000+ people with very simple 15-20kt weapons, as we have twice demonstrated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons_tests_of_North_Korea
If Kim had followed the path South Africa took, he could -easily- have built up a small stock of “little boy” gun-type U235 weapons, mainly for air delivery, but possible to missile deliver. SA had eight when the prior regime decided to get rid of them before the ANC took over.
That low-tech path would have been far cheaper and far more successful than going for more sophisticated stuff first.
Eight 15kt “little boy” weapons would gut the ROK. Or gut most of our nicer seaports, delivered by ship.
Behind that capability, perhaps selling the tech (or even a weapon or two), they build the bigger, more complex stuff.
And the U235 from that first generation can later be recycled for use in more sophisticated stuff.
Fortunately, gun-type weapons are not quite suitable to the use of Plutonium, or everyone would have the things by now.
I had completely forgotten that South Africa did have nuclear weapons at one point (read about it on Wikipedia). I believe they were the only African nation that was nuclear capable at one point IIRC.
WingSkipper86, aka Mark L,
Your derogatory, personally insulting comment adds nothing to the post, but says a lot about you. It has been deleted, and your ISP noted. You are welcome to join in the conversations here as long as your comments are relevant and mostly courteous. If this is too much to ask, you’ll just be wasting your time.
AW1Ed
There, fixed that for you.
That statement had “INCEL” written all over it, plus his animosity towards Ex-PH2. Add to that his control issues, anger issues, narcissism, etc. Reads like someone who would say, “Okay Boomer”.