Posted on 05/28/2009 5:34:54 PM PDT by xzins
WASHIGTON – It would take the Army time to "shift gears" if it needed to fight against North Korea, Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey said Thursday.
Right now, the Army is focused on the counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, but North Korea’s recent saber rattling has raised the prospect that the Army might be called upon to fight a conventional war.
"I have said publicly for some time that if we had to shift gears, it would probably take us about 90 days or so to shift our gears and to train the folks up that were preparing to go to Iraq and Afghanistan to go someplace else," Casey said after a speech at a Washington think tank.
That doesn’t mean that it would take at least 90 days to send reinforcements to U.S. troops in South Korea, Casey said.
"We would move forces as rapidly as we could get them prepared," he said.
Casey declined to say how fast the Army could mobilize to meet a threat from North Korea, but he stressed the Army is "combat seasoned" and can move quickly.
"The mechanical skills of artillery gunnery and tank gunnery come back very, very quickly," he said. "The harder part is the integration — that really brigade level and above of massing fires and effects in a very constricted period of time as opposed to what you do in a counterinsurgency over a much longer extended period of time."
Looking to the future, Casey said he expects conflicts this century to look a lot like the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the Israeli war with Hezbollah in 2006.
Regarding the latter, Casey noted that the key lesson the Israelis learned was that they were too focused on irregular warfare.
"They were working so much in the West Bank and conducting counterinsurgency-like operations that they lost their combined arms skills, the ability to integrate fires in air and tanks and artillery," he said.
The U.S. Army needs to be prepared for the "full spectrum" operations ranging from offensive, defensive and stability operations, he said.
Casey expressed confidence that the U.S. Army can fight and win a conventional war against North Korea given its experience in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"I’m not afraid of putting this force in the field against anybody," he said.
1. BOMBS:
The USA A-bombed Hiroshima in 1945, but in 1950, when Truman fired MacArthur over the Korea question, can anyone guess how many atomic bombs the USA had, 5 years later?
THIRTEEN. 13 bombs in 5 years. From the richest country in the world.
2. DELIVERY MECHANISMS:
The north is probably using “shotgun” style bombs (not implosion) —they require LOTS of Uranium —maybe 100 pounds at least. All together, those primitive weapons weigh...2500 pounds, I’d say.
After they load them on missiles IF THEY CAN, I doubt they could reach US bases in Japan —warhead weight on a missile MAKES A HUGE DIFFERENCE in how far that missile can fly —one size does NOT fit all.
The debris that came down near Hawaii? Those were very small parts —stuff that was considerably smaller than Apollo 11.
The DPRK weapons are almost certainly large, unweildy BOMBS at this point. That means that to threaten the South, they would have to be FLOWN south —on an airplane.
At the outset of war, SK/US airpower would be robust and would GUARANTEE a shoot-down. If they held back the nuke attack until later in the war...I doubt there would be a DRPK field remaining in a state permitting for safe take-off.
All the comments about Seoul getting wiped out via arty are 100% correct —it could not be prevented. SEOUL and other major SK cities would be destroyed —yep!
But my point is that AT LEAST NOW DPRK *nuke* threats against SK are, while worthy of consideration, not quite as inevitable as we have been led to believe. At THIS point, SK would not disappear in blinding white flashes in 5 minutes, nope...
In 5 years? All bets are off —my guess is that DPRK warheads would be considerably smaller, more numerous, they would be reliably mated to missiles, and those missiles might even be mobile, making their detection considerably harder.
That’s it.
Great points, but these sophisticated, small shells —do you know how many tests those required, to get them right? How many tests were there between 1945 and 1953 —we must have been doing...5 tests per WEEK at that time? I’m trying to look it up now..
Ditto. South Korea’s military is not shabby. With US airpower, naval power and coordinated close air support, the North Korean army better win in 24 hours or else it will be caught in the open and destroyed. The big question is what will China do if the North Korean army is destroyed and retreating with the South Korean, Japan and US forces chasing it northward?
I was thinking April 1916 (?)
The NK Army knows it can't win, it's goal could only be to inflict as much damage as possible, which it could easily do. With so many individually bunkered artillery pieces within range of Seoul, that city (and any other within range) will be quickly reduced to rubble.
Sometimes I think that we forget that technological advances are attained ....not just through development but can be acquired....via other means....like stealing, buying, or being gifted them.
The Chinese could give the NKs all they need to build Davy Crocketts, if not just plain give them already built.
Has south Korea known for years their their neighbor is an AH that could cause them trouble? If so, why have they not prepared for this themselves?
Yeah..hmm...the thing that has me worried is that we are SOOOO committed in the Middle-East right now. Anyone know where the B2’s are right now? My guess is Diego Garcia, or Guam? I don’t know if they can be staged right from Japan, or even SK..?
How many B1’s do we have?
I guess basically ALL the carriers are now hauling-ass to Korea?
No, you’re probably right that this is just another game of chicken with the west. Still, it does seem like we’re at the threshold here with another nuclear test, far more sophisticed missile launches, and now a revocation of the cease fire and Kim allegedly looking for a successor. It all makes for an unstable situation. I don’t think China will jump in headfirst, but they could easily extend their long crooked finger in a covert way. There is another possibility too. The U.S. is bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq. If you add North Korea to the mix, and put the squeeze on U.S. oil, say maybe having Iran send some ships into the Strait of Hormuz (happened this week), and Venezuela stopping production, it provides the perfect timing for China to grab Taiwan, and we all know they’re crazy enough to do that.
That sound like a plan. ; -)
By the time 0booooomb0shiite hemmed & hawed his way to some semblance of coherent response, S Korea would be pulverized into submision. Secondly, some 40-45,000 U.S. troops would be dead or captured as POW’s as a result of Zero’s waffling & hesistancy & unwillingness to mount a massive retaliation with the first shot fired from N Korea. Thirdly, because Zero is basically anti-American & anti-military, the captured Americans would likely never be returned and he could care less.
The gap in hardware for them is far worse than it was in the Soviet era.
If the North ever comes across that border there will be a lot of people saying Rumsfeld was right. He wanted to build the leaner, more air mobile military that we would need to deploy quickly into the theater.
The Davy Crocket, while interesting was pretty much a self immolation weapon. Fire it, fry yourself. The warheads having more range of damage than the rocket range.
Now there is a lot more technology that goes into a nuke than just the warhead, and it becomes ungainly. I rather doubt the NPRK has the capability to develop some of the essentials needed.
There is also problems with contamination. Tritium, Helium gas and a couple of other elements are byproducts of Plutonium degradation, and reduce the volitility of the warhead. NK's first detonation was a fizzle, probably because of this. Do they have a reliable weapon now? Looks that way, but it's possible they don't have the capacity for the fine machining necessary to manufacturing a true deliverable type of warhead.
Frame by frame, only 5 of him I think.
And so are we. We're cutting or I should say gutting, our conventional, Big War Big Opponent, capability, in favor of learning how to root out guys who couldn't even drive a camel, let alone a main battle tank.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.