Yet—
Any war is hard and your own people will die. So to go off to war—or a campaign—or even a strike—without considering the consequences, is gross malpractice.
The fact of the matter is North Korea is decidedly not an easy nut to crack or we would have cracked it long ago.
They have capabilities that need to be countered or eliminated.
A swift, rapid strike without far more forces in place than right now would not take out all of their capabilities and our military knows it.
For one, we need to have a huge stockpile of MOABs—and we do not. I hope the manufacture of these vital weapons is at the highest capacity right now!
We need to allocate a strike on every tunnel mouth and camouflaged valley we know about—and there are over 10,000 or so—and get them targeted and hit in the first 48 hours.
Now that is ideal and we wouldn't be able to do it with ALL our existing forces over the entire globe. So we need to prioritize the most likely targets to hit first. Our satellite capabilities would be prime resources here just as you mentioned—still— but--we cannot be certain until we strike. And any we miss will be used against us and our allies and civilians. Many people will die and the press will immediately begin their criticism.
Actually, the only way to really immediately neutralize the NORKs would be to use our own nuclear weapons and hit them with a mass attack.
I just can't see the political will to do so, even from Trump. Hell, the world is still bitching at us for dropping two on Japan, which has been proven to be justified thousands of times, but all the logic in world has no effect on them.
We could just ignore them and press on with such an attack, but we then have to be prepared for the aftermath.
Frankly, this nation just don't have the will. You do; I do, but the vast unwashed will be lead into the Thunderdome to demand the head of Trump.
Thanks, I'm not only proud of our troops and their specialized gear, I'm grateful to them, and wish to see them all return home alive and in good shape.
For one, we need to have a huge stockpile of MOABs—and we do not. I hope the manufacture of these vital weapons is at the highest capacity right now!
That's what I'm talking about. Retrain the capable ground troops to serve a mundane, but much safer stint, designing, refining, and building things that go boom. Others can guard overseas bases or our own borders.
MOABs have their specific applications, and I'd like to see one smack dab on a NK military base, especially an air-base.
First of all, I don't want to come off as an "armchair general" but having heard of our air superiority...I see no reason to commit our troops to combat, when it is no longer necessary. With our known technology, we can "see" them, and we can hit them...all from the air.
I was particularly impressed with the JDAMs and other "smart bomb" technology from "Shock and Awe" that could fly a bomb in the window of a building. Saddam Hussein would park a figher jet in a school yard, we could drop a 500lb concrete smart bomb, leaving only shards of shrapnel sticking up out of a hole in the ground, and at that, not even break a window in the school.
We could use cheap but fast unarmed drones to draw out fire from the nervous NORKs, and then paint their positions for destruction. Many of those positions could well be missile launch sites or artillery/AAC batteries.
We need to allocate a strike on every tunnel mouth and camouflaged valley we know about—and there are over 10,000 or so—and get them targeted and hit in the first 48 hours.
Even the concrete bombs would probably do a job on the "tunnel mouths" and a tactical nuke would take care of everything in any camouflaged valley. How do we know that those haven't already been used in previous actions?
any we miss will be used against us and our allies and civilians. Many people will die and the press will immediately begin their criticism.
I posted earlier, maybe on a different thread, criticizing the Koreans for building up Seoul as they have, within 35 miles of the DMZ, as it has been captured and destroyed many times in the past. They could have built their massive industrial, and hence population center as far away from the freaked out NORKs as possible...and on a favorable seaport or two. I now see that others have either echoed my comments , or have come to the same conclusion independently. Nevertheless, their insistence on hyper-developing Seoul was just stupid.
Did they simply take it for granted that the US would protect them forever?
Actually, the only way to really immediately neutralize the NORKs would be to use our own nuclear weapons and hit them with a mass attack.
Well, either that, or some "well trained" tac-nukes or nuclear "bunker busters"