Posted on 05/01/2017 1:33:59 PM PDT by RoosterRedux
The North Korean military's most powerful tool is artillery. It cannot level Seoul as some reports have claimed, but it could do significant damage. Pyongyang risks deteriorating its forces by exposing them to return fire, however, which significantly restricts their use. Less conventional methods of retaliation, such as sabotage or cyber warfare, are less risky but also limit the shock that North Korea would desire.
After a strike, North Korea's most immediate and expected method of retaliation would center around conventional artillery. Many of the North's indirect fire systems are already located on or near the border with South Korea. By virtue of proximity and simplicity, these systems have a lower preparatory and response times than air assets, larger ballistic missiles or naval assets. Nevertheless, there are several critical limitations to their effectiveness.
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All forms of North Korean artillery have problems with volume and effectiveness of fire, but those issues are often more pronounced for the longer-range systems. Problems include the high malfunction rate of indigenous ammunition, poorly trained artillery crews, and a reluctance to expend critical artillery assets by exposing their positions.
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Based on the few artillery skirmishes that have occurred, roughly 25 percent of North Korean shells and rockets fail to detonate on target. Even allowing for improvements and assuming a massive counterstrike artillery volley would be more successful, a failure rate as high as 15 percent would take a significant bite out of the actual explosive power on target. The rate of fire and accuracy of North Korean artillery systems is also expected to be subpar. This belief is founded on the observably poor performance of North Korean artillery crews during past skirmishes and exercises. Though inaccuracy is less noticeable in a tactical sense — especially as part of a "countervalue attack," where civilian areas are targeted — at the higher level an artillery retaliation rapidly becomes a numbers game.
Ineffective crews also rapidly curtail the potential for severe damage. Rate of fire is crucial to the survivability of artillery systems — the name of the game is to get the most rounds on target in the shortest period of time, lest your position be identified and destroyed before the fire mission is complete. Poor training translates to a greatly reduced volume of fire and a painfully limited duration of effectiveness.
What does that have to do with the fact that South Korea is at least 100X richer and stronger than North Korea?
They may well be 100X richer than North Korea, but they are not 100X stronger. The DPRK People’s Army is the largest in the world.
South Korea is well advanced over the North in technology. I wonder how many North Korean soldiers would stop fighting and loot a grocery store as soon as they saw food. ;-)
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I agree fully with your assessment.
Most of the stuff they display in their parades is obviously just big empty stove pipes with nose cones.
"The Nazis are a bunch of monsters. I intend to be just like them."
The dumbest thing the Krauts did in the Battle of Britain was switch from bombing the RAF and the early warning system to bombing London (and other cities). Their stupidity wasted resources to little military effect, and left Fighter Command free to come up and destroy them. So what did Harris do? Bombed cities. Burned out residential districts. AND IGNORED GERMAN INDUSTRY. He was wrong.
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