Posted on 08/23/2015 12:08:44 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Hmm. I hadn’t heard that before. We (the US) haven’t had Marine ground units at/near the DNZ for many moon’s. Additionally, the logistics of storing/handling/deploying such weapons (if they existed) would have been extremely expensive, not to mention politically sensitive.
Regards,
I must be getting old...
5.56mm
I don’t know if they were ever deployed to the DMZ, but SADMs (Special Atomic Demolition Munitions) definitely exist or existed. I have no idea what their status is currently.
I did hear an anecdote somewhere from a soldier who’d been on the DMZ of a big ration can full of food or coffee or something being delivered to an outpost that was known to be observed by the North Koreans. A great show was made of handling the can with deadly-serious care and under heavy, steely-eyed guard. A few days later, broadcasts out of the North accused the US Army of deploying man-portable nuclear devices to the DMZ. I hope the chow or whatever was good.
I’m being attacked by a school of FISH!!!
http://lair2000.net/Mermaid_Lyrics4/lyrics/I_Am_A_Pirate_King.html
Heck; there's friction HERE as well; and for the same reason!
Perfect! I wish I had the time to photoshop this into the picture of Kim in his toy sub with his mouth moving to the words in the music... And his toy admirals in the background for the chorus!
Back when, in 10th Marines, there was an acronym. "CSMO" Stood for "Colonel Says Move Out." It was understood that the Other Guy's countermortar radar was more than adequate to have targeted return fire on the way before your shells had landed. I'd be surprized if the DPRK and the ROK doesn't have every prepared arty position within range near the DMZ already registered. They've had 60 years to do it.
Back in the '70s, I had a 96 R&R in Taipei. It was my habit to explore on foot when in a strange town. If you took a stroll, you would start to see that every large building on a street corner seemed to have stepped gun slits, knee high, to cover all four corners. The rivers in town ALWAYS had 15 foot walls to create channels, and anti-tank ditches. Any bridges had pill boxes covering the approaches on both ends. The President's Palace sat in the middle of a 1/2 mile square concrete plaza, with absolutely zero cover any higher than a curb.
Considering that SK has had 60 years, I'd be willing to bet that Seoul has the same civic improvements. There aren't enough artillary shells in the world to prosecute all the tactical targets, even if there wasn't any return fire.
It will be the same off shore. Look up SOSUS, SOFAR, SURTASS. A MAD system on a sub hunter, these days, would be about as useful as carrier pigeons. Yeah, handy, but why bother? You plant them on the bottom, and they spike when anything passes over them. I'd wager that every square inch of sea bottom out to the 100 fathom line, off the Korean coast, is a net of hydrophones, magnetic detecors, pressure sensors. Just because the media doesn't know where all the DPRK subs are... I wonder if the DPRK Navy knows they are already Martyrs for Dear Leader?
This is all Popular Science articles. Nothing tippy top secret, here.
My dad got to spend some playtime in the Pusan Perimiter area between the invasion and Inchon. Things were mass confusion early on. They were glad about having the Marine brigade as a supplement to the Army in keeping the norks out. He had been overseas so long that the AF sent him back to CONUS war or no war. The bureaucracy marches on.
I worked for nine years with a retired Sgt Major who had been to Guadalcanal, Iwo, The Marianas and Korea, too.
The Reds were frantic to drive the 1st Division away from the Chosin and the other two reservoirs due to them operating the Japanese atom bomb facilities in the regional mountains that used the power from hydro plants for uranium separation. North Korea has low grade uranium bearing minerals so the Kims did not have to import.
The Nork reds are brutal subhumans.
PS, that retired guy knew Chesty Puller and didn’t like him.
As long as we keep moving, the Devil won’t get us!
Regards,
Most interesting. The submarine threat is real I think. They have some deepwater boats that would be a danger to commercial shipping in the open ocean and since the South is such a big exporter and relies so much on imports the norks would have a lot of targets. Also, I can imagine the commie skippers not being real selective on who they attack. These modern enormous ships might be able to tolerate a hit better than WW2 sized vessel but since the crews now are so small damage control would be a bear.
Hard to find anything about the nork merchant fleet but we could envision freighter sub combinations operating together off Hawaii, Panama or the West Coast prior to them attacking. I wonder how many merchants the Kims have with neutral registration and camo?
I’m sure hoping you’re right. I’m also sure we would not be telling what we’re doing .. as far as how we’re keeping track of the subs.
Thanks.
Most bulk carriers are a string of boxes, again with a double hull.
The three most vulnerable types are tankers, ferries and passenger ships. Tankers because of the cargo. Ferries and cruise liners are the worst, since they are one large open space, not sectioned off into watertight spaces, since hatches annoy civilians. Even with a double hull, they are top heavy. Cruise lines don't like ships that roll. Ferries have a shallow draft. Seasick passengers don't have fun. They use gyroscopes and fins to retain stability. Cruise line crews, based on what I've seen, don't respond well to emergencies.
The DPRK navy has only two classes of blue water boats. 4 ex-USSR Whiskey class boats, and 22 Romeo class, some Chinese built, the rest kit built by the Norks. They can reach our west coast on the surface, which means they would probably be picked up by our systems and 'prosecuted'. The question would be, "Why bother?"
Even running with a snorkel, diesels are loud, at least as subs go. The Romeo class is 140db, which is freight train loud. Electric motors are quiet, but range limited by the batteries altho range is probably 10 times or more what it was during WW2. (That's classified.)
Boiled down, the big boats will be murdered, the midgets might kill some local ferries or some bulk cargo ships. Either way, I doubt they will have a port to come home to.
Great info..
That’s the problem with subs. Everyone wants nukie boats, but the modern diesel electric boats are very quiet.
I was envisioning some of their subs operating in tandem with freighters wherein they were refueled by the freighter and used them as cover.
Kido Butai tried to avoid the main sealanes when they sailed in November 1941 and were fairly successful at avoiding detection. Hard to know how competent the Nork Navy leaders are at strategic thinking. They will lose a big war but could wreak a lot of damage before defeat.
You know, it would seem that the speed of modern vessels is likely near double the ordinary 40s steamer. Make them a little harder to attack.
The Yellow Sea averages about 150 feet deep so perhaps they just use their smaller subs there.
I’m interested in the firing range, the detonation radius, and the relative safety of the service member who fired them off.
Yield was adjustable up to about 1 KT. Special operations teams were trained for this. The teams were probably a write-off, since they were instructed to stay close and make sure that the gadget wasn't tampered with and did in fact go off as expected. Then they'd be really deep in hostile territory and on everybody bad's s**t list.
Good article here:
Thank you Riley. Quite interesting.
I read over half of it now, and will read the rest later.
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