Posted on 05/01/2017 1:33:59 PM PDT by RoosterRedux
The author did not invent those terms. They date at least to the 1950s (or '60s) regarding the use of nuclear weapons against civilian, industrial, and infrastructure targets (countervalue) or against troop formations, airbases, naval harbors, and the like (counterforce).
I don’t really trust Stratfor.
Stratfors is always worth a read, but the focus on poor accuracy, high ratios of duds, etc. obscures that the NK’s objectives (unless they are even more delusional than I think) will be political rather than physical. The Tet Offensive was a battlefield disaster for NV communist side, but a political success. Nowadays, an incident with a couple of bombs and less than 100 casualties is considered Armageddon (which is reasonable for civilized people; the point is that publics are not prepared to absorb massive casualties that we can see on TV and internet in real time).
NK gunners only have to hit a giant city-sized target. Half of 100,000 artillery shells can be duds and still kill tens of thousands, collapse buildings with mass casualties, start firestorms, and create total panic and chaos. News media here and certainly in SK would wet themselves blaming Trump and demand capitulation to whatever Maximum Liter wants.
We have great military capabilities, but silencing every field gun, tank, missile, submarine, and who knows what, almost simultaneously is not realistic if we stick with conventional weapons. These folks have spent 60 years digging in and planning this battle. The question is whether the SK government and people will take massive pain until we can excise the source. Then what? Invade and occupy NK?
I think that we need to build a few more. A handful in the arsenal is not going to cut it.
Any such artillery employment is going to be in the face of nearly immediate ROK/US air supremacy, including 24/7 armed drone surveillance on station. 30 minutes into the war they won't have any major stationary launch sites left and probably no airfields either. Mobile launches are visible from space. Nowhere to hide.
I wouldn't try it, but then I'm more or less sane. Dumber things have been done, I suppose...
Why are we not factoring in half a dozen low yield nukes lobbed into Seoal and Japan? It would absolutely devastate those highly populated countries. Kim would do that if he felt cornered, I’m sure. We are dealing with a nuclear power here, folks.
“Its not like we have artillery pieces in position and ready for a fire mission. The situation is usually that we have soldiers sleeping in barracks, with their vehicles tarped in the motor pool.”
You think that if the US launches a first strike on the DPRK, that US soldiers in ROK will just be sitting around sleeping?
There’s lots of different attack scenarios, and I don’t know which one would be pursued. My suspicion is that the ROK won’t allow attacks from their territory, in order to reduce the odds that the DPRK would retaliate. If that’s the case however, if the DPRK does shell - immediately or later - then the US and ROK will return fire across the DMZ, with air support. If the DPRK goes into full invasion mode, the US and ROK will immediately counter, and it’ll lead to the taking of Pyongyang.
“They” can hit Seoul to the extent that their Koksans can hit Seoul. They have under 500 of those. Slow rate of fire, unreliable, difficult to avoid return fire.
Shelling a city is anything but “each hit takes down a building”. Look at how long it took Russia to flatten Grozny; cities don’t go down that fast. And with a mile or two of error, the most likely thing to hit in Seoul is a single-family house (check out satellite images of the city - they cover a much larger portion of the city than skyscrapers). Quite possibly not even that - roads, trees, parks, sports fields, rail lines, into the Han, etc.
If they shell Seoul, it’s going to be a brief terror attack that’s going to cost them dearly.
It is my understanding that this big artillery is on rails. No rails, no shoot and scoot.
But sure, if we launched a first strike, we would have our artillery in position.
Now, I mentioned before that the doomsday scenario had my unit driving through/over a tin shack housing area to get to position. This is because out 'battle plan' always envisioned a North Korean first strike - it never even occurred to us that we might strike first.
If you drive around the roads near the DMZ, you will find an almost comical assortment of road blocking strategies, that only Wiley Coyote could come up with, to block mobility. Again, this is because we have really only envisioned a North Korean first strike.
If we do strike first (IMHO a horrible mistake), it would be a massive demonstration of air power, doing plenty of damage...but merely leaving North Korea more broken than it already is. I just don't see the purpose of a first strike, unless there is a genuine nuclear threat.
There are too many places to bottle up forces, creating shooting galleries for our air power.
One would think so but remember that Bush 41 and 43 inherited the military that Reagan built. Trump has inherited the military that Obama has run into the ground.
Figures. I spent my military career training to hit my military opponents - only the enemy and the Air Force would plan to kill civilians.
I’m not yet sold that the North Koreans have miniaturized a high yield nuke enough to fit on a missile...and I don’t have a lot of faith in their missiles - ability to successfully launch and hit a target. Honestly, I think they’d have better success putting a bomb in a shipping container and smuggling it into a port.
That's good, but if you think a major war can be fought successfully without destroying the enemy's industry and civil infrastructure, think again. WWII is frequently held up on this forum as an example of fighting to WIN. The destruction of Germany's and Japan's industry, rail infrastructure, and Japan's overseas shipping was crucial to defeating those empires of evil. That said, I have no use for Arthur Harris' desire to kill Germans for the sake of killing Germans. It was a horrible waste of Britain's military resources which would more usefully have been directed against German industry.
In defense of the Air Force, I add that they have spent the last half century or more improving the precision of their weapons (including the nuclear variety) to make them useful for destroying specific industrial or military targets, rather than population centers.
This ain’t the 50’s, c & has come a long way. Target I.d. and ordnance on target is less than 2 minutes. Acquisition is accomplished by a fully integrated set of sensors from human to AWACS to satellites, spotter etc... it is all very robust and thoroughly field tested.
Thank you ... that’s my point.
Pre-emptive strike utilizing stealth B2s taking out communications, radar, and power with thermobaric bombs while the NORKs are sleeping.
” I just don’t understand why we wouldn’t have flights lined up on the deck with afterburners on destroying the artillery batteries. They pop up,”
The problem is that when ‘they pop up’ they are putting at least one round of artillery into one of the most densely populated cities in the world. And there are hundreds of thousands of them. So even if they aren’t super accurate the civilian casualties would be high. FAR too high for us to want to start the shooting.
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