[Farmer Dean]

I don’t know why they would deploy the B-1.One of our subs could smoke the whole miserable country before breakfast.

[SatinDoll]

Uh, I suspect we do not have enough nuke subs active and deployed.

[doc1019]

Visible show of force?

[mnehring]

I don’t know why they would deploy the B-1.One of our subs could smoke the whole miserable country before breakfast.

1. Redundancy.
2. Intimidation factor.

[chessplayer]

I don’t know why they would deploy the B-1.One of our subs could smoke the whole miserable country before breakfast.

---

Smoke what? Other than Pyongyang the country is rural. We gonna nuke a rice paddy?

[ought-six]

“I don’t know why they would deploy the B-1.One of our subs could smoke the whole miserable country before breakfast.”

Agreed. If we’ve deployed B1s it is simply for “show of force” purposes. Personally, I doubt there are any B1s in theater (and I consider Anderson AFB on Guam to be “in theater”).

[Victor]

"...I don’t know why they would deploy the B-1.One of our subs could smoke the whole miserable country before breakfast....."

Intimidation factor, maybe. You can't see a sub...but there's no mistaking a B-1 flying overhead.

[tanknetter]

I don’t know why they would deploy the B-1.One of our subs could smoke the whole miserable country before breakfast.

The B-1 is the USAF's JDAM truck. It can haul over 80 of the 500lb variety and each one can be GPS guided onto a different target.

I figured that given various sensor technologies (including E-8 JSTARS) we have most of the Nork artillery tubes sitting on the DMZ pointed at Seoul zeroed in. Four cells of B-1s could take out somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 (yes, that's one thousand) on the first pass.

If TSHTF in Korea, those artillery tubes are going to be the very first priority. I'd guess that there's an unstated threshold of Nork provocation were we'd go preemptive on them to significantly degrade the impact of a first and second salvo (because thanks to counterbattery fire there won't be a third) on Seoul.