Posted on 07/11/2003 8:34:05 AM PDT by dead
Maybe a few 1st strikes with a few MOAB's would help.
N. Korea is a Jonestown writ large. It has been nearly completely sealed from outsiders until recently. It had to be because N. Korean regime was founded upon a monumental lie. The myths surrounding the ruling family and the whole history of modern Korea are lies through and through. They have been also lied about atrocious conditions outside their border, especially S. Korea, where, according to their propaganda, homeless folks are overrunning the whole country.
All these lies are perpetuated in order to maintain the regime. The regime was founded on the big lie since its beginning. Kim Il-sung's credentials were vastly exaggerated to justify his position as a N. Korean leader. He purged just about everybody who knew about his real background, a two-bit guerilla leader of no real achievement except hitting a Japanese police substation during his exploits as a partisan leader. As a result, all Korean communists dispatched from Soviet Union and China to shore up the regime eventually were purged and killed. A lucky few escaped.
He was more and more obsessed with total control of his people at the expense of everything else after he saw the mighty Stalin trashed after his death, followed by Mao Ze-Dong suffering the same fate, about 23 years later. The two towering giants with absolute power cannot ensure their legacy. Kim Il-sung realized that he had to work harder to make sure this won't happen to him. That is why he installed his son as a successor. That also doomed the long-term prospect for N. Korea. The regime filled the country with mind-numbing propaganda and suffocating oppression. Only the total obedience is required to survive in this country. It turned into the country of complete yes-man and sycopants who are completely useless in efficiently running the country.
Kim Il-sung firmly secured his godly stature at the beginning of 80's, by eliminating the last small pocket of political challege to him. This was when his regime started to go downward. Things had been slowly deteriorating during the 80's. It accelerated in early 90's when both Soviet Union and China cut off their foreign aids. The country's economy nosedived. Panicked, N. Korean regime had to look for the new source of economic aids. That is why N. Korea precipitated the nuclear crisis around '93. It was not because America and her allies were about to invade. That is total BS. They need to secure a new source of economic aids.
The last N. Korean regime wants to do is to open up the country to outsiders. It would do as little as possible to secure its survival. Once fully exposed to the outside, it will not last. However, these days, information is tricking inside the country. The disastrous famine loosed the control over the movement of population, and information flows better than it used to. Ordinary folks lost faith in the regime. The vaunted propaganda has lost much of its power, even if people are still chanting it furiously. They do it to survive, not because they are really into it.
N. Korea can inflict a real damage. However, it is also to be noted that they always exaggerate their power by at least 10 times. N. Korean regime is the best blackmailer of the world. To defeat them, one should not buy into their brinkmanship.
The regime is now brittle if dangerous. Some freak accident from inside can lead to its demise. This can only happend when the outside pressure is sustained without wavering. Unless you go for a total appeasement, there is no path to orderly resolution. Even in the best case of near bloodless conclusion, it will give us a good scare.
The ground invasion of N. Korea may not be easy. However, repelling N. Korean invasion is not as hard as he said. Because the invasion force will be trapped in narrow invasion corridors. You are right.
That is true. Heavy S. Korean casualty followed by massive N. Korean casualty.
Maybe a few 1st strikes with a few MOAB's would help.
Wouldn’t do a lot of good. There are too many of them, concealed in solid bunkers. They have constructed thousands of caves and supply tunnels in the mountains to supply the guns, which can retract immediately after firing. They are scattered all over the hills, and we couldn’t even find them until they fired. We’d have to first find the gun, by waiting for it to fire, then take it out individually. While we get one gun, hundreds more will be lobbing bombs (and maybe more?) into the city.
Unless we nuke the hills, which we won’t, the artillary will decimate the civilian population until troops battle up there and take them out.
There's nothing quite like scientific, dialectical materialism.
The US Army has successfully shown an repeated ability with its THEL high-power lasers ( as of two years ago, link requires Acrobat Reader) to track and blow-away artillery shells in flight! Deploy a couple hundred of these to cover most of the ballistic paths to Seoul from the known cannon locations, and we will have an all new regional situation. In view of the 'use it or lose it' mentality alluded to in the article, I would get the system 100% deployed BEFORE the North Koreans catch wise of it. Tell the locals that we are putting in 'weather-tracking' installations. Lead Weather. Once the NK attack is launched and blunted, the US JDAMs can crush the tunnel entrances of all the artillery. Prioritization of so MANY targets will be a bitch though. Particularly since the NK Army won't be standing idle, but will be popping up behind SK lines through their tunnels, their own flanking amphibious assaults, and even driving straight down that stupid railway opened up between the North and South by the incredibly credulous Southerners...
November 5, 2002 History in the making … Today (1:55 p.m. EST) Army laser destroys artillery projectile in flight
White Sands Missile Range, N.M. – For the first time in history, a laser successfully destroyed an artillery projectile in flight.
Over the desert of New Mexico, at the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command’s High Energy Laser Systems Test Facility (HELSTF), the Tactical High-Energy Laser (THEL) demonstrator – Mobile THEL (MTHEL) testbed – tracked, locked and fired a burst of photons on an artillery projectile ... seconds later, at a point well short of its intended destination, the projectile was destroyed.
The event occurred as part of a new series of tests to determine MTHEL testbed capabilities. The artillery projectile is only one of the many target sets to be tested.
MTHEL testbed stems from the Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL), an Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD) program initiated in 1996. THEL tests during 2000 and 2001, which focused on the threat of rockets, proved highly successful, intercepting and destroying 25 Katyusha rockets.
Though their diameters are nearly the same, the artillery projectile measures about two feet in length rather than the 10 feet of a Katyusha rocket. The artillery projectile’s small size, combined with the lack of heat it gives off, makes it much more difficult to track.
The MTHEL testbed program, managed by the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, is a collaborative development program between the U.S. Army and the Israeli Ministry of Defense.
Satellite video footage will be available for downlink. Call for information.
For additional information, please contact the SMDC Public Affairs Office, William Congo at (256) 682-4816; Giselle Bodin at (256) 955-3889 or giselle.bodin@smdc.army.mil ; or Dottie White at (256) 955-1640 or dottie.white@smdc.army.mil.
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