WTF is going in N. Korea? Two ego-maniacal asses beating their chests? Trump seems to have gotten a boost by firing those cruise missiles at Syria and is looking around the world for who else to bomb for another easy win. Will he provoke an actual war with N. Korea or is this just more talk like it's been for decades? The US would wipe the floor with N. Korea in a ground war but the concern is the damage the north could do to US allies S. Korea or maybe Japan with missile launches & bombings. The US has had trouble winning wars since Vietnam because our military is designed to fight armies & not guerrillas. Give them an actual army to fight and seeya Kim.
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North Korea brinksmanship
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Well you're talking about it, so I guess that's a win for him? I don't think anyone has ever talked themselves into a war before. Usually it requires an action that results in the deaths of citizens of said country or somebody really important. The US can't attack North Korea unless South Korea & Japan sign off on it, and the US would probably also want to make sure China is on board during any wartime and not backing their enemies which would delay any military action's success rate depending on whatever their end goal is.
Even if there's no nuclear weapons involved there's going to be a lot of people dying because the artillery in North Korea is already in range to fire. I remember seeing this mentioned in sci-fi but it's equally applicable here. Just because they're using lasers and you got a death ray doesn't mean that you won't die when you get hit by a more primitive weapon. The US Army won't lose but that doesn't mean you can stop the North Korean army from killing a lot of people before they're defeated. This isn't like Iraq where you can act from a safety zone and just bring your advanced weaponry to bare.
Yeah, the whole thing is complicated by the fact that N Korea has a gun to the head of S Korea. It's a hostage stand off.Don wrote:Even if there's no nuclear weapons involved there's going to be a lot of people dying because the artillery in North Korea is already in range to fire. I remember seeing this mentioned in sci-fi but it's equally applicable here. Just because they're using lasers and you got a death ray doesn't mean that you won't die when you get hit by a more primitive weapon. The US Army won't lose but that doesn't mean you can stop the North Korean army from killing a lot of people before they're defeated. This isn't like Iraq where you can act from a safety zone and just bring your advanced weaponry to bare.
I'm only casually informed -- but if push came to shove, South Korea is far better equipped than the North, no? It seems to me the issue is China and not wanting to piss them off with any sort of offensive.
Not sure how up to date/accurate this is.
There's a reason South Korea has mandatory military service for all males.
In terms of army North Korea is obviously outmatched, but defensive technology lags way behind offensive technology when it comes to war. Even without worrying about nukes, there's no effective system to defend against artillery. Most of the US equipment is for taking out high value stuff, so for example they shot 60 missiles at a Syrian air base and destroy some number of planes probably close to 60 and airplanes are expensive stuff so that's all good. Well, if you look at the artillery numbers, blowing 60 of them up is hardly going to make a big difference. Mass numbers of cheap stuff is a pretty effective way to deal with limited number of advanced weaponry. I mean a F35 only carries what, 4 missiles? That pretty much can only destroy 4 objects, and they're not even very heavy payload and while there are creative ways to make explosives more effective, quantity still counts.
US actually ran out of their JDAM smart bombs and stuff just bombing ISIS and we're talking about thousands of troops and no air/sea/armored presence. While the guys in the army are actually pretty safe in tanks/ships/planes, the same cannot be said for the civilians in Seoul and other cities that are easily within North Korean artillery range. Obviously any invasion into North Korea will likely be costly too, seeing that even ISIS was able to hold a city like Mosul for quite a while with a fraction of the resources compared to what North Korea has. The only way a war can end quickly is if the army loses morale and run but that seems unlikely given how North Korea is indoctrinated.
Also one lucky shot from a modern torpedo can sink an aircraft carrier, and the idea behind modern torpedoes is something you can find on the Internet so it's not exactly some secret. Iran was experimenting the idea with just sending a lot of cheap boats to attack US ships and hope one of them gets a lucky shot, and even if you lose most of the cheap boats they probably cost less than a typical missile so if you don't care too much about people dying, that's not really a bad trade. This is why the US is currently researching laser weapons not because lasers are powerful but that ammo for laser is dirt cheap and effectively unlimited.
US actually ran out of their JDAM smart bombs and stuff just bombing ISIS and we're talking about thousands of troops and no air/sea/armored presence. While the guys in the army are actually pretty safe in tanks/ships/planes, the same cannot be said for the civilians in Seoul and other cities that are easily within North Korean artillery range. Obviously any invasion into North Korea will likely be costly too, seeing that even ISIS was able to hold a city like Mosul for quite a while with a fraction of the resources compared to what North Korea has. The only way a war can end quickly is if the army loses morale and run but that seems unlikely given how North Korea is indoctrinated.
Also one lucky shot from a modern torpedo can sink an aircraft carrier, and the idea behind modern torpedoes is something you can find on the Internet so it's not exactly some secret. Iran was experimenting the idea with just sending a lot of cheap boats to attack US ships and hope one of them gets a lucky shot, and even if you lose most of the cheap boats they probably cost less than a typical missile so if you don't care too much about people dying, that's not really a bad trade. This is why the US is currently researching laser weapons not because lasers are powerful but that ammo for laser is dirt cheap and effectively unlimited.
Unless China is funneling a lot into the North, its hard to believe that graphic is accurate. I mean...look at the spending. And the North is dirt poor.
Hell...if North Korea is that good at managing military spending - we should recruit their talent.
Hell...if North Korea is that good at managing military spending - we should recruit their talent.
Modern weapon is expensive because the people with the skills to make advanced weaponry usually require being paid a lot of money for their work. If you're a dictatorship you likely don't have to worry about your weaponmakers being properly compensated. North Korea weapons are likely less advanced which would make them cheaper to make in the first place. Russia has a smaller economy than several EU nations but its army is a threat to the entire EU and they're not exactly technologically inferior. A Tomahawk missile costs half a million dollars and it's not like there's some exotic material in there that's worth half a million dollars.
Current day weapons manufacturers are able to bump up their profit margins to insane levels because it's about the easiest thing in a society full of idiots to get spending approval on. Especially when there is an enemy people are afraid of. In the case of Sunni rebel extremist factions, most notably ISIS, they're getting pounded by the Syrian and Shiite forces.
Iran is a next good target to justify increased military spending. The Democrats had been making efforts in aiding in the liberalization of Iran by lowering sanctions and building treaties. This is counter-productive to the weapons industry which dropped from the ~745 billion to about 565 billion valued in 2013 USD under Obama. Having Iran, and the 90 million people living there, as a threatening enemy would mean greater justification to spend much more on the military.
Attacking easy targets in Yemen and Syria that would piss off Shiite cultured people is one method of making Iran and Iranians hate the US more, and increase the potential trigger for an attack.
Causing other countries to attack and break treaties is about the oldest trick in the book, next to prostitution.
It's not difficult to see what his goal is. This method has been around since the Delian league in ancient Athens where they would attack various city states in hopes that they could trigger other powers (the Peloponnesian league, in the major case) into breaking treaties. The US employed a similar strategy when the ambassador (April Glaspie) pretty much greenlit Saddam to attack Kuwait, conveniently in the closing period of the cold war.
I don't think North Korea is going to be a target unless pissing off China is seen as a good way to jack up military spending to even more astronomical levels, or spending on some other kind of industries the Republican donors have their hands on. It wouldn't be as good of a target as Syria or Yemen.
I don't want to attribute anything to Trump, because let's be real here, he's not the brains behind the party; aside from his frequent appearances of stupidity (he makes the Bush brothers look intelligent by comparison), he also lacks anything beyond the most basic functional literacy. Unlike Obama, Trump is a figurehead: his job is basically golf, signing documents he is incapable of reading or comprehending, and yelling stupid things on TV to impress bumpkins and other asswits.
Iran is a next good target to justify increased military spending. The Democrats had been making efforts in aiding in the liberalization of Iran by lowering sanctions and building treaties. This is counter-productive to the weapons industry which dropped from the ~745 billion to about 565 billion valued in 2013 USD under Obama. Having Iran, and the 90 million people living there, as a threatening enemy would mean greater justification to spend much more on the military.
Attacking easy targets in Yemen and Syria that would piss off Shiite cultured people is one method of making Iran and Iranians hate the US more, and increase the potential trigger for an attack.
Causing other countries to attack and break treaties is about the oldest trick in the book, next to prostitution.
It's not difficult to see what his goal is. This method has been around since the Delian league in ancient Athens where they would attack various city states in hopes that they could trigger other powers (the Peloponnesian league, in the major case) into breaking treaties. The US employed a similar strategy when the ambassador (April Glaspie) pretty much greenlit Saddam to attack Kuwait, conveniently in the closing period of the cold war.
I don't think North Korea is going to be a target unless pissing off China is seen as a good way to jack up military spending to even more astronomical levels, or spending on some other kind of industries the Republican donors have their hands on. It wouldn't be as good of a target as Syria or Yemen.
I don't want to attribute anything to Trump, because let's be real here, he's not the brains behind the party; aside from his frequent appearances of stupidity (he makes the Bush brothers look intelligent by comparison), he also lacks anything beyond the most basic functional literacy. Unlike Obama, Trump is a figurehead: his job is basically golf, signing documents he is incapable of reading or comprehending, and yelling stupid things on TV to impress bumpkins and other asswits.
Modern western weapons are relatively low margin compared to other stuff you can be selling in a capitalistic society. That said, a lot of that premium is wasted on defensive capabilities that rarely matters. Because defense lags offense way too much, it really doesn't matter if you've the state of the art or high school level labor working on your vehicle when you get hit by a bomb or a missile since the most likely outcome is still having your vehicle blown up. Airplanes designed for war have a considerably shorter expected shelf-life compared to commercial airplanes, and part of that is because you wouldn't expect any airplane that's actively used in a war to last anywhere as long as a commercial 737 that's just ferrying passengers.