The American Spectator

USMC Mike| 6.5.09 @ 7:36AM

David Mathews...you are insane! Who do you think the North Koreans are..."Conservatives". If anyone crosses the DMZ it'll be the REDS...just like they did in 1950. Good article Mr. Wittman...NK action highly plausable considering that Hussein Obama's resolve is likely to be tested and the Kim regime may need a "glorious" military campaign to sustain itself. If a war starts in Korea this is one "Conservative" who won't be happy because my son will likely land smack in the middle of it. But he'll do his duty without a wimper. How about you David Mathews...if a war starts in Korea where will you be...probably safe at home.

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Bohred| 6.5.09 @ 8:08AM

Nice pics Dave. Did you take these? I haven't been back to Yosemite in years but it's still beautiful.
But look, Mike was not promoting war, but responding to your misunderstanding of Wittman's article. Wittman wasn't promoting war with the DPRK either, he was discussing possibilities if war breaks out.

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S. Ashby| 6.5.09 @ 8:38AM

The NK army hasn't mondernized much since the 1950's. The ROK army on the other had is a modern, well trained force. Warfare in the last 50 years is no longer a question of pure numbers, it' s question of bringing fire power to bear where you need it. An invasion and victory of the South by the North is by no means a foregone conclusion. The North are kidding themselves if they think the South will lay down and let them roll over the top of them this time.

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ARealist| 6.5.09 @ 9:03AM

The N.Koreans as well as the Iranians and Syrians realize that they have a once in 30 year opportunity to have a Jimmy Carter in the White House.
They would be idiots not to take advantage of this opportunity to do all they have been hoping to do and with the knowledge and certaintay that they face a ZERO threat of any meaningful retaliation.

If I were them I would act now, decisively and forcefully to achieve any desired nefarious goals.

They know the USA, the UN, the EU, China and Russia will do nothing, other than issue one of their hundreds of idiotic, pointless, stupid statements condemning aggression and urging a "peaceful resolution."
What crap.
Of course Japan will immediately obtain and deploy nuclear weapons , as well as rearm, to defend themselves. They too realize that the USA - under Obama's dictatorship and his hatred of all things USA - is no longer a viable ally.
And they would be 100% correct.

This movie is now in its 100th re-run.
We all know how it ends.

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Bob| 6.5.09 @ 9:03AM

Such a war would be a war the US Army is equipped and trained to fight. The Chinese would probably like to see the North Koreans taken down and wouldn't really help them. They would be ground into sausage-meat.

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Tim| 6.5.09 @ 9:23AM

A north Korean assault on South Korea could end up a lot like the invasion of Kuwait. A numerically huge force that enjoys initial success but is eventually cut to pieces, with the same question at the end of whether or not we want to occupy and rebuild.

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Paul D| 6.5.09 @ 9:27AM

Bob is right. This article overestimates the DPRK's chances.

In particular, the evaluation of our air losses is particularly obtuse. The DPRK's air warfare capability is probably their most obsolete military force and their weakest link. Our Air assets would probably neutralize what little capability they have in the first 48 hours.

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Tenn Slim| 6.5.09 @ 9:30AM

ALL
Usually I discourse between Cap and Soc. Not Today. I stand with the 1/1 Chosin USMC vets, wherever they are today. ROK units, USA units, USMC units, still stand on the blood soaked sands of the 38th line of hills. There has been enough shed there to float a CV. Indeed, the NK could do as the article suggests. It is entirley possible. To ascribe the article to a Conservative wish for more blood, is indicative of the immaturity of the writer. Anyone, over the age of 20, understands it is one thing to pontificate motives, while safe behind a monitor and fully another to stand in front or behind a tank, while engaging an enemy. War, wherever it occurs, is bloody, messy, noisy, and just h... NK rulers are simply seeking a historical readjustment. If indeed the old Generals, while drinking sake in thier villas, dream of a re do for the ROK, it most likely will be just that. A drunken dream.
Korean is a d....d hard place to live in, let alone engage in a fire fight.
end

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Tenn Slim| 6.5.09 @ 9:42AM

"The N.Koreans as well as the Iranians and Syrians realize that they have a once in 30 year opportunity to have a Jimmy Carter in the White House. They would be idiots not to take advantage of this opportunity to do all they have been hoping to do and with the knowledge and certaintay that they face a ZERO threat of any meaningful retaliation. "
Cap and Soc Socratic Discourse again.
Cap: We are getting a FP glimpse of the OBNA. Soc, it looks suspicously like the Brits 1938 view of the world. "Hope, coupled with naivette". What say you?
Soc: Understand our movement is world wide. The folks selected for the various televised speeches agree with the OBNA FP concept. We definetly don't need a "Man in the Street" veiw point. The audience applaud, on cue, correctly, and with enthusiasim. Control is the name of the Rhetoric game. AKA Saul Alinsky. Now, Cap, as to the full impact of the OBNA FP, it will take some time, but the ball has started rolling. Expect to see much more "Clearing of the Table, rhetoric", as the FP full court press continues. We know where we are going on this aspect. No learning curve here.
Cap: Allies, old and new, are watching. If, indeed, a new Order is being implemented, then the cycles of history surely will be repeated. In our opine, this is a cycle that need not to happen. As the above quote suggests, the opportunities for our demise as a Soverign Nation never appeared to be so good.
Soc: That is the goal!! Cap, finally, you are getting it. A continued Capitalistic USA is just not in the cards. We have the conn, we have the agendas, we have the MSM, Congress, Justice, and a good portion of a sleepy Electorate. With all this, it is a dream come true for us. Some 50 years of waiting in the wings is OVER!
end

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Stuart Koehl| 6.5.09 @ 9:46AM

"General George Casey, Army Chief of Staff, recently stated quite frankly that it would take ninety days to move forward an adequate force to block an attacking North Korean army. Using this official military assessment as their guide, there is no reason to believe the NK military leadership would hesitate to assure their Dear Leader of an effectively full occupation of the Korean Peninsula within that time period."

I've been a military analyst for more than thirty years. I have studied the North Korean army in detail--its tactics, equipment and capabilities--and I have to say, this projection is one of the more ludicrous I have seen. I understand that in a resource-constrained environment, service leaders and theater commanders have to propound the worst case scenario to ensure their fair share of the pie, but even a cursory look at the North Korean People's Army leaves one wondering "huh?"

The arms and equipment of the North Korean military are, overwhelmingly, Soviet-derived systems of 1960s and 70s vintage, lacking the kind of electronics, communications, fire controls and survivability features necessary on the modern battlefield.

To understand what this means, look at the disparity in combat effectiveness between Saddam Hussein's army and our own in Operation Desert Storm. Now consider that, as compared to North Korea's, Saddam's army was extraordinarily well trained and competent.

Kim's army hasn't been to war since 1953. Sure, it can beat up on unarmed truce inspection teams and kidnap Japanese civilians from remote beaches, but what has it really done lately? Worse still, it hasn't been able to stage realistic, large-scale exercises due to a chronic shortage of both fuel and cash. An army that doesn't know how to move formations larger than a battalion or regiment will degenerate into chaos when it tries to move divisions and armies. Finally, promotion in Kim's army, like promotion in Saddam's, is awarded for political loyalty, not military competence. Loyalty in such regimes is usually defined as telling the psychotic dictator what he wants to hear. Yet the first key to success in modern war is a free and open exchange of information between leaders and subordinates. The problem of political reliability is paramount for Kim--if he lets his army loose on the South, will it actually fight, or will it disintegrate on contact (or worse, turn on the regime)?

The one bright spot for the North Korean army is its special forces. North Korea maintains about 200 independent companies (about 100 men each) trained to infiltrate South Korea to attack command centers, lines of communication, logistic hubs, etc. They can move through the rugged eastern half of the peninsula either on foot or dropped from slow, low-flying An-2 Colt bi-plane transports (which are generally too slow to intercept--sometimes low tech beats high tech, hands down). But while North Korean special forces can undoubtedly sow disruption throughout the Allied forces, ultimately, they cannot win a war by themselves.

To do that, the North Koreans will have to insert large conventional forces into the battle, all the way from the DMZ to to Pusan. The odds of that are most unlikely. Here is why:

1. The terrain in the eastern part of the peninsula up by the DMZ is extremely mountainous and traversed by few roads. Mechanized forces moving through that area are limited to the roads, and thus present attractive targets to Allied artillery and airpower. There are numerous choke points where vehicles can only move one or two abreast, and if the lead vehicles are blocked, an entire regiment or division can be halted, even if opposed by relatively small numbers of tanks and infantry. But this region is ideal for modern attack helicopters using anti-tank guided missiles from pop-up positions. A squadron of a dozen or so Apaches can kill more than 120 tanks in the course of a single night. In short, the odds of North Korea making a major breakthrough on the eastern half of the peninsula are pretty slim.

So, what about the flatter, more developed western half, the so-called Seoul Corridor. Once upon a time this was ideal tank country, and we worried seriously about a North Korean blitzkrieg blowing through our skimpy forward defenses and cutting off the South Korean capital city. But, over the last two decades, Seoul has expanded so dramatically that the suburbs now extend all the way to the DMZ, and eastward to the mountains. The whole area has been built up into an urban megalopolis--and, as any tanker will tell you, the last place you want to go with tanks is into the big city. City fighting eats troops and is especially unfriendly to tanks, which are vulnerable to short range attack from all sides, as well as from above (the rooftops) and below (the sewers). Look at what badly armed Chechen guerrillas did to the Russian army in Grozny, and think about what highly trained and well equipped regular troops could do. A general rule says the attacker needs a numerical advantage of 3-to-1 in order to succeed, but cities are a defensive "force multiplier", so that an advantage of 5-to-1 or more becomes necessary. As the lead North Korean echelon gets bogged down in street fighting, the follow-on echelons will be stacked up in a massive traffic jam going all the way to Pyongyang. And while our troops are beating up on Kim's first wave, our airpower will be devastating his reserves. Even if, by some miracle, the North Koreans manage to break through near Seoul, they will have no follow-on forces to exploit the victory.

At this point, the momentum of the war would shift to the Allies, who could now mount a devastating counterattack against North Korea. Even assuming we do not go all the way to the Yalu (and thus risk Chinese intervention again), it is highly unlikely that the Communist regime would survive such a catastrophic defeat. Kim's rule is postulated on the myth of an infallible leader. U.S. and South Korean tanks rumbling towards Pyongyong is about as concrete a refutation of that myth as you can get. Kim and his followers would go the way of the Ceaucescus, a new clique of leaders would emerge, and would negotiate a cease fire with the Allies in short order. Reunification with South Korea would probably follow thereafter.

Kim and his generals aren't stupid. They can do the calculus as well as anyone, and they undoubtedly have come to similar conclusions. As regime survival is Kim's first, last and only priority, what, then, is his real game?

I would suggest Kim desires to maintain the status quo as long as possible, in the face of increasingly unfavorable conditions--military, economic and social. To do that, he must win concessions and subsidies from his enemies, especially South Korea and the United States. Yet Kim lacks the military wherewithal to defeat the U.S. and South Korea, so how does he gain any leverage?

He does so by holding South Korea hostage. As noted, Seoul has grown exponentially as South Korea has grown in prosperity, and today a majority of the South's wealth and population is concentrated in and around the capital city, which now has a population of 24.5 million--all of it within range of North Korean artillery batteries.

Indeed, the artillery is one of North Korea's most professional arms, lavishly equipped with excellent guns. But most of these are towed, and, lacking mobility, towed artillery on the modern battlefield is dead meat (because modern counter-battery radars can detect shells in flight and back track them to their source in a matter of a few minutes, allowing counter-battery fire to rain death down on them). But Kim was cagey--he did not intend to use these guns as field artillery, but rather put them into hardened steel-and-concrete emplacements on ridge lines overlooking Seoul. These so-called "Y-Sites" (because they have one entrance on the northern side, and two alternate firing positions on the southern side) are resistant to all but a direct hit from a very large bomb. The firing emplacements are small and well camouflaged, making them difficult to locate and attack. Kim has, for decades, used the thousands of artillery pieces in the Y-Sites as a standing threat to the city of Seoul. Yes, you can bomb a city into rubble, but if you really want to pound a place into dust, artillery is just the thing--it's accurate and it's persistent. Airplanes deliver ordnance in "pulses"--they take off, drop bombs, return to base and rearm. Artillery delivers shells in a constant stream, two or three rounds per minute, for hour on end, as long as the gunners and the ammunition hold out. The result can be devastating, the casualties huge.

Faced with the threat of having their capital city destroyed with tens of thousands of civilian casualties and limited capability to respond, the South Korean government has been inclined to appease the North and to restrain the U.S. from "provocative" actions.

But that situation is changing, in part because military technology is rendering the Y-sites vulnerable to attack, and thus reducing their utility as a blackmail instrument. The advent of high resolution multispectral sensors, together with long-endurance unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) such as the Predator and Global Hawk, allows the U.S. to maintain constant surveillance over the area where the Y-sites are located, and to detect both their locations and any activity around them. If North Korea decides it wants to shoot, we will know they are getting ready. More to the point, once we are convinced they will shoot, we now have the capability, in the form of air-delivered precision guided weapons, to destroy the sites in very short order. Hardened though they may be, they are not so hard as to be able to resist a direct hit from a laser or GPS-guided 2000-lb. bunker buster. Once a site starts shooting, it can be destroyed before it gets off more than a couple of rounds. Destroying all the sites could be done in perhaps a couple of days. The damage to Seoul would be serious, but not crippling; South Korean civil defense measures would help minimize civilian casualties. South Korea apparently recognizes it no longer has to put up with the threat of the Y-Sites looming over Seoul--the U.S. has agreed to sell GBU-28 laser guided deep penetration bombs to South Korea, and though everyone imagines this would be to destroy Kim's nuclear weapons facilities, the Y-Sites are a more obvious and valuable target.

Having blown his wad, so to speak, and come up empty, what else can Kim do? He will have given the U.S. precisely the excuse it needs to destroy his regime, and as noted, there is little he could do to prevent it. As this becomes more obvious, the credibility of the North Korean threat recedes, along with North Korea's leverage over the South. Time is not on Kim's side.

What then of North Korea's nuclear program? Again, one has to view it as an attempt by Kim to maintain a degree of leverage over South Korea and the United States in order to wring out regime-extending concessions. But there is almost no chance that North Korea would initiate first use of nuclear weapons, because that would be, in a very literal sense, suicidal. President Ahmedinejad and the Mullahs in Iran may have eschatological pretensions, but the North Korean leadership is very much interested in staying alive and in power.

North Korea's nuclear ambitions pose two threats to the United States. First, North Korea is a proven proliferator of nuclear technology, as its recent project in Syria demonstrates. The North can transfer nuclear technology to other enemies of the U.S., thereby complicating our foreign policy and causing us to divert resources away from the Korean Peninsula. But a close blockade and inspection regime--recently joined by South Korea--is quite capable of preventing any major proliferation program from succeeding.

The second threat is posed by the marriage of nuclear warheads to long range ballistic missiles. Here, it seems clear that North Korean strategy aims to decouple the United States (not to mention other regional allies such as Japan) from South Korea, holding Tokyo or Los Angeles at risk in order to prevent any response to North Korean aggression against South Korea. Similar reasoning was behind the Soviet deployment of SS-20 intermediate range missiles to Eastern Europe in the 1980s. Our response then was the deployment of our own intermediate range nuclear force, extending our deterrent umbrella over our NATO allies without elevating the nuclear threat to the strategic level.

Today, we have the ability to provide extended deterrence against North Korean ballistic missiles using defensive technology. That is, completion of our National Missile Defense (NMD) system would obviate the threat of Kim's necessarily small ICBM force. Closer to the region, we already have Patriot PAC-3 missiles deployed in South Korea, which by themselves are very capable against short-range missiles. The deployment in the next few years of the Theater Area High Altitude Air Defense System (THAADS) will provide a long range "upper tier) interception capability, to defeat Kim's medium range missiles. In addition, both the United States and Japan have deployed the AEGIS Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system based on the Standard SM-3 missile, which, stationed off the coasts of North Korea, can provide a limited "boost phase" interception capability; i.e., destroying Kim's missiles while they are still climbing through the atmosphere, and still over North Korea.

Here, the Obama Administration has missed a trick by canceling development of the Airborne Laser (ABL) program, which is ideally suited for the Korean situation. A powerful chemical laser mounted on a Boeing 747, the ABL has demonstrated the ability to defeat ballistic missiles by burning through their thin-skinned booster rockets; each ABL has the capacity to destroy dozens of ascending missiles in a single sortie. Orbiting over South Korea or over international waters on either side of North Korea, a handful of ABLs would trump all of Kim's ballistic missiles in one move.

What we see, then, is not a North Korea intent on refighting--and winning--a second Korean War, but a failing dictatorship trying desperately to extend its miserable existence by getting its enemies to pay it to behave. One by one, though, Kim is losing his ability to gain leverage over the U.S. and South Korea as we develop the means to neutralize each of his offensive threats. Comprehensive ballistic missile defense would be the last piece needed to place Kim's regime in checkmate, at which point, North Korea can either resign the game, or sit staring at the board while we go off and do other things.

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USMC Mike| 6.5.09 @ 10:03AM

Hey David,
Bohred got it right...but you've got to get over this "Conservative" stereotyping thing. Yes, I'm a "Conservative" (i.e. god & country) but it may surprise you to know that I don't believe the U.S. should be the world's policeman nor do I want a war in Korea or anywhere else for that matter. So try to open your mind a tiny bit towards "Conservatives"...we're individuals too. Remember, "warmongers" come from all sides of the political spectrum... and I hope you're right about NO war. Nice talking with ya!

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Teleprompter Messiah| 6.5.09 @ 10:35AM

Stuart: Very interesting post.

My recollection is that we had a lot of equipment prepositioned in South Korea to make a rapid deployment possible. Is that still the case?

Moreover, couldn't our airpower assets throughout the region devastate and overwhelm the NK Army?

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Chuck| 6.5.09 @ 10:37AM

Stuart

AmSpec should pull your commentary from this page and post it on the home page. It is that rare and thoughtful analysis that deserves much wider promotion.

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Old Soldier| 6.5.09 @ 10:41AM

What S. Ashby / Bob / Stuart Koehl – Exactly! This article is a joke.

The NK's have zero chance of a successful conventional war. It would be a repeat of Desert Storm with no need for a build up.

For example, the NK’s use a version to the old T-62 while the South Korean Army uses a variant of the M1A1 tank – I saw that battle in person in ’91 – it’s like clubbing baby seals. South Korea is actually starting to build the K2 Black Panther that is at least the equivalent of the M1A2. NK is going to successfully invade with 60’s Soviet crap and no air support? Laughable.

Total air-superiority would take a day or two. After that we know what happens to the ground forces. One of the toughest US Army Mech Divisions and a massive, well-trained modern SK military would crush the NK invasion force in a week or so. Then ROK and US Marines (who train together regularly), along with the 82nd Airborne make a visit to Pyongyang.

The reasons South Korea does not invade the north are:
1. the Chinese
2. the cost of re-uniting with a brainwashed destitute country
3. NK WMD’s

The NK conventional military has nothing to do with it.

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Freya| 6.5.09 @ 10:49AM

Thank you, Stuart!

Took the words right out of my mouth. Given Kim's situation, a war is not completely out of the question, and with luck on their side, the NKs might enjoy some initial success, but their chances of seizing the entire peninsula are precisely zero.

I would also add that their air force would be wiped out in a few days. Aside from some MiG-29 fighters for air defense, all of their planes are twenty years out of date.

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Old Soldier| 6.5.09 @ 11:00AM

USMC Mike - back me up.

ROK Marines are legendary for being rock hard physically and mentally. If you plan to train with them, you had better be up to date with your PT.

South Korea, for it's size, is up there with Israel as the best defended country in the world.

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Bob| 6.5.09 @ 11:32AM

"It would have to be accepted that U.S. air assets would suffer serious losses in this effort to stall the NK offense and at the same time destroy their nuclear capability"

What is he talking about? There is not a shred of evidence to support this assertion, and mountains of data to essentially prove the inverse.

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Thomas| 6.5.09 @ 11:34AM

Stuart's analysis is impeccable.The North Koreans are not going to invade the South, unless the PRC forces them to do so. The leadership may be crazy, but they are not stupid. And their handlers, the PRC, certainly are not. The DPRK is doing what has proven successful for it in the past, a shakedown scam against a weak US administration. They make threats of invasion. They launch a few missiles. They run a nuclear test. They move a division or two to the North/South border and wait. The expectation is that the US will attempt to buy them off, yet again. In the meantime, they are selling "nuclear" technology to every tinpot country that sees a functional nuclear weapon as the road to power. And their Chinese masters not only allow this, but encourage it. If the DPRK is successful with their shakedown, it will relieve the PRC of some of the subsidy that they now provide to the DPRK. If the DPRK is unsuccessful, the US military response to their activities will provide the Central Military Commission and the People's Liberation Army of the PRC with information on the readiness of the US military to respond to military problems in the Far East. At least that is the plan.

The problem arises, however, if the DPRK actually invades the ROK. That could bring a significant military response from the US, in support of ROC forces. Should the southern forces drive deep into the DPRK, it could spark a military response from the PRC. Just as the situations in the Balkans, in 1914 sparked WWI, a similar situation in Korea could spark something similar in Asia. This is not of very high probability, but it is a possibility and can not be ignored. An even more dangerous possibility is that the DPRK will succeed and get their pay-off, thus ensuring a wide spread use of the same technique by other countries.

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Siegfried X| 6.5.09 @ 12:00PM

It's not the 1950's any more. The Soviet Union is gone, along with most of the communist satellites, and China has moved towards capitalism.

China and the US are massively economically interdependent. Any sort of western economic sanctions against China would be devastating.

It is entirely possible, and even likely, that China would rather see South Korea capture the entire country than continue having a mad man next door to them with nukes. Maybe not, but there are certainly trade offs.

So China would not support a NK attack, and NK needs China.

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Joseph Lawler | 6.5.09 @ 12:35PM

I've taken Stuart Koehl's comment and posted it to the blog. Read it here: http://spectator.org/blog/2009/06/05/the-threat-in-north-korea

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Daniel| 6.5.09 @ 3:37PM

North Korea is a Failed and Collapsing State. It cannot provide enough of even, the basic substances to give it's people an acceptable life. North Koreans are doing whatever they can to escape the Prison of the North. The realization of the North Koreans that they have been grievously left out of the advancements in obtaining the good life reflected by their South Korean brothers has brought the Country to a state of pending Revolution from within. The Saber Rattling is just, a last desperate attempt for the regime's survival and will not amount to anything more than a final Groan as the regime's structure collapses in a cloud of dust resulting, in the reunification and becoming one Korea.

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El Rey| 6.5.09 @ 3:44PM

If North Korea wants another war with the south, let South Korea defend itself without U.S. troops.

South Korea has far more wealth and manpower than NK.
American's can't be fighting everyone's battles for them all the time.

And you know mwhat -- nobody appreciates it.

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Thom| 6.5.09 @ 3:56PM

“all the German Army has left is old men and boys, no tanks, no fuel and no Air Force, all we have to do is push a little when the weather clears and they will collapse” Dec 15th 1944 Ardennes.

“the Japanese have never fought a modern Navy or Army. Whipping up on under strength Chinese pheasants and parading around in ships they copied from the British isn’t the same as fighting and winning against someone that knows how to fight……” Dec 6th 1941.

The professional German Staff knew they could not achieve Hitler’s goal of splitting the Allies by going through the Ardennes to the coast. They knew that “calculus” to the last liter of fuel and bullet…. Still they came and inflicted great damage on professional soldiers who had convinced themselves the war was over……

The Japanese High Command, particularly Admiral Yamamoto knew the industrial might of the US would bury them in a protracted war yet they came and didn’t give an inch on the battlefield for almost 4 years despite suffering better than 10 to 1 casualties. By the standards of the US Army the standard Japanese combat unit was both under armed and out dated in many ways. That was reflected in them not winning a single ground battle after the fall of the Philippines yet they fought on…. and never stopped attacking us by what ever means possible.

The North Korean artillery positioned north of their Capital won’t inflict tens of thousands of casualties; It will inflict hundreds of thousands of casualties on just civilians in a couple hours without using the any of the masses of chemical weapons and warheads the North has that we don’t.

By the time the first Allied Aircraft takes off in response to such an artillery barrage the damage will have been done and millions of South Korean civilians will be fleeing for their lives along the same lines reinforcements will be coming north. Somebody’s “calculus” is based on millions of South Korean civilians packed into a relatively small area aren’t going to get in the way….

The mountainous terrain of the Korean peninsula works against everyone equally but it is the South Korean and our Mechanized forces that depend on road movement the most. The 300-400 thousand Chinese forces that sneaked into the fight in the first Korean War were all light infantry (like the North Vietnamese) and did not depend on the road network for movement or advance. We just can’t bomb everything that moves from 19,000 feet and expect the tens of millions of civilians mixed in with this to not object a bit….

Somebody else’s “calculus” is based on both sides starting at the very same point in readiness and armed with perfect intelligence about the other’s intentions…despite all our modern intelligence apparatus the Iraqis still achieved sufficient surprise over the Kuwaitis to roll them up like a piece of wet paper. There was no where to hide in the “desert” yet all our air power assets could not find and stop a handful of SCUD launchers with conventional warheads for weeks.

We bombed Serbia for 81 straight days and nights and could not alter their ground operations enough to stop it. We had complete air supremacy from the get go. No one was pitching chemical armed SCUDs into population areas outside of Serbia while we were bombing them day and night with the best we had, much of which was already stationed at our bases in Europe. The North Koreans will do what ever short of a first use Nuclear weapon attack to achieve what ever goals they set for themselves. All we have is conventional forces thousands of miles away (with the exception of the Marine forces based in Japan) and nukes. We won’t use a nuke and they know that; They will use chemical weapons and we have nothing of the kind to respond with. They will use a nuke if we invade their territory.

Of course, everyone knows only nut cases like the Nazis and suicidal Japanese would possibly start a war we know they can’t possibly win….

The North Koreans have become completely rational, reasonable and predictable in the last 59 years except when they aren’t. Even that is predictable. The DMZ is the most heavily mined area in the world….you would have to be completely nuts to try to cross that…..

The only response to this article that has a relative certainty to it is the belief the North Koreans can’t win a conventional war (by the standards we define conventional war and winning).

I and the North Koreans both agree with that.

From the first Korean War the North Koreans could not win
:
US over 40,000 KIA/MIA
South Korea 58,000 KIA, 80,000 combined MIA/POWS
North Korea 215,000 KIA, 120,000 combined MIA/POWS
China 114,000 KIA, 21,000 POWs

Combined civilians KIA/wounded over 2 million.

There is as much chance of the North Koreans attacking the South as there was the Germans attacking the Russians on June 21, 1941. They would have had to have been nuts to take on the Russians…..and think they could win given the “calculus” of the time.

The Greeks couldn’t possibly stops the Persians either per the Persians.

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Richard Baker| 6.5.09 @ 4:42PM

I would love someone to show me where in history that a dictatorship has blunted it's aggressive tendencies because of economic "interdependence". The best statement about their true aims was from Lenin. He said that "The West will sell us the rope with which we hang them". It seems to be China's aim to generate capital to fund their military and pursue their historic objectives, as Communists do. The North Koreans are short-leashed by China and don't think that if China says No or Yes that the North won't listen. This recent saber rattling is just another part of the pursuit of Chinese Communist aims. Read what Mao and other Communists have written over the years. You'll find that they will wait a very long time to achieve victory.

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Dustoff| 6.5.09 @ 4:46PM

One thing is for sure, Kim can throw a bunch of bodies at S-Korea. He doesn't have to win. Just take a little land so that the world will either pay him off, or give him the attention he wants.
None of us will go full war. Nukes would ruin everyones day.

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Thom| 6.5.09 @ 4:57PM

Richard,
I would add that there will never be a peaceful reunification of North and South Korea because China will not tolerate a Capitalist state right on its border that they don’t control (ie Hong Kong, Taiwan ). Like the first war, China would not allow North Korea be occupied even if that meant they had to do the occupying to keep us out. Truly naïve people overlook that China and North Korea are still Communist ruled regardless of their economic systems. Communism equals dictatorship and no dictatorship likes competition at arms length. I’m impressed how many people are willing to let their conclusions drive their analysis in light of the number of times our intel has been dead wrong in the past….

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Stuart Koehl| 6.5.09 @ 5:02PM

"The North Korean artillery positioned north of their Capital won’t inflict tens of thousands of casualties; It will inflict hundreds of thousands of casualties on just civilians in a couple hours without using the any of the masses of chemical weapons and warheads the North has that we don’t."

So I guess all those South Korean civil defense measures--the bomb shelters, the drills, the evacuation routes, the medical triage centers--they were all a waste of time? Do you know how many tons of ammunition it takes to inflict just one casualty on a covered and prepared adversary?

"By the time the first Allied Aircraft takes off in response to such an artillery barrage the damage will have been done and millions of South Korean civilians will be fleeing for their lives along the same lines reinforcements will be coming north. "

This assumes absolutely no strategic warning whatsoever, but one of the major revolutions in military affairs has been the rise of persistent reconnaissance and surveillance systems linked to real-time command and control. Movements of large troop formations generates a signature and other "indicators", which can be detected, and the ROK government would take precautionary measures. In recent years, they have done a lot to overhaul and upgrade their civil defense posture.

"despite all our modern intelligence apparatus the Iraqis still achieved sufficient surprise over the Kuwaitis to roll them up like a piece of wet paper."

Given the odds, Saddam could have provided the Kuwaitis with copies of his op orders, and the Iraqis still would have won. Quantity has a quality of its own.

The mountainous terrain of the Korean peninsula works against everyone equally "

Actually, mountains almost always favor the defender, because they channel the attacker into predictable "movement fissures", which are easily blocked.

"but it is the South Korean and our Mechanized forces that depend on road movement the most."

It doesn't affect the defender as much as the attacker, and the backbone of any attacking NKA force would be armored and mechanized units. While the 200-odd independent special operations companies are quite capable of moving freely across country, most other NKA units are not.

" The North Koreans will do what ever short of a first use Nuclear weapon attack to achieve what ever goals they set for themselves. All we have is conventional forces thousands of miles away (with the exception of the Marine forces based in Japan) and nukes. We won’t use a nuke and they know that; They will use chemical weapons and we have nothing of the kind to respond with. "

Chemical weapons are interesting things--all they really do, from a military perspective, is slow the tempo of operations and weed out incompetent troops who slept through their NBC training. The U.S. and ROK troops have top-of-the-line chemical protective and decontamination gear, and they know how to use it. The NKA has 1950s-vintage Russian rubber suits, which limit mobility and induce rapid heat exhaustion even in properly trained troops. The North Koreans may be zealous (though that remains to be seen), but well trained they ain't. If they toss CW around, it will affect their troops more than ours.

Of course, it will inflict casualties on civilians not in shelters, and create a decontamination headache after the fighting stops, but we can prevent that simply by telling the North Koreans that all WMDs are created equal in our eyes--using gas or bugs is the same as using nukes, and we will respond accordingly. If there are, as you postulate, hundreds of thousands of casualties, then the pressure to respond massively will be irresistable. Using CW is just another way for Kim to commit suicide.

"The DMZ is the most heavily mined area in the world….you would have to be completely nuts to try to cross that….."

I expect that the NKA has very sophisticated tunnel systems under most of the DMZ, and that they have pre-cleared routes out of the mined zones into South Korea. But do understand that massed conventional forces in the presence of a modern "reconnaissance-strike complex" is really just an aggregation of juicy targets. If they play that game, they will die in large numbers very, very quickly.

The main thrust of your article seems to be people miscalculate in wartime. True enough. But we are not talking about wartime, rather the decision to go to war, which is usually made with great deliberation and weighing of the facts. Most of your analogies, therefore, are flawed.

The only one that has some merit is the Japanese decision to attack Pearl Harbor. A review of the Japanese documents reveals Japanese leaders quite aware of the material disparity between Japan and the U.S., but it also reveals a country provided with two unpalatable choices--either to accede to U.S. demands to withdraw from China, accepting reduction to second power status; or fighting a war they knew, rationally, they could not win.

They escaped the conundrum by inventing a third option--fight the Americans and win. They did that by convincing themselves the Americans would not fight, and would negotiate terms if presented with a fait accompli. Of course, the miscalculated a bit.

But North Korea is not in the same boat. North Korea's objective is not to improve its situation but to continue the status quo indefinitely. And North Korean leadership has proven remarkably cautious when it comes to its own survival. Their game is bluff--they like to raise with a busted flush, but every time they do, we wise up just a little bit more, and their freedom of maneuver is diminished just that much. As I said, soon there won't be any more wiggle room for them. Checkmate. Kim might not like it, but I am sure that there are enough of his generals and key henchmen with an eye for the main chance who will cut the best deal they can before the whole house of cards collapses.

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Richard Baker| 6.5.09 @ 5:12PM

To Who Profits:
Have you ever lived anywhere around the world? I am amazed when I read your output because I wonder who benefits from Big Government, the Welfare State, and dependent minorities. I'm also wondering why you so hate your own Homeland? Sport, life and reality are more than just a game as if you were in the unreality of college. Go around the world, as I have, and enlarge your reality beyond your inbred circle of like minded folks. For all your hatred of American business, where do you think jobs are created? Grow up, please, for your own sake. If you so hate this country, I'll pay for a one-way First Class airfare to anywhere you'd be happy. The only proviso is that you have to STAY.

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Chaz706| 6.5.09 @ 5:42PM

The ROK would learn well from seeing how the IDF defeated the might of the entire Arab world in 6 days.

I wouldn't be surprised if the ROK response came first with overwhelming air power pounding on their airstrips and airplanes.

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Thom| 6.5.09 @ 5:49PM

Stuart Koehl,
You are letting your conclusions drive your analysis. I don’t doubt for a moment that NK is a basket case and will ultimately collapse but that also makes them more dangerous not less. In a stand up fight I have no doubt who the winner will be but that fact is already figured into their “calculus”. They are not going to wave a flag to tell us they are starting now. All that pre positioned artillery can be brought on line in under an hour and you know that. You put a lot of misplaced faith in what the reaction of over 20 million civilians would be given the fire power pre positioned within striking distance. A very limited use of chemical weaponry would produce a panic like the world has never seen in Seoul. You also assume a repeat of the first war’s objectives and methods, not something I want to risk my life on. Seoul was a meaningless military objective in the first war beyond getting out into “tank” country. Seoul represents a wholly different situation today. It represents everything North Korea is not. Its destruction has merit in the minds of those that can’t deal with that. You said it yourself, they want to maintain the status quo when by all measures say that isn’t possible. Do you expect them to go peacefully in the night? Do you expect them to be the only problem on our plate when that moment comes? Do you expect them to act alone? They and Iran have a lot in common regarding maintaining the status quo and if one or both get a working nuclear capability that gives them more than just leverage or insurance against our occupation of them should their misadventure go wrong. You assume they are “rational” in the way we define that term. A dying beast will lash out with everything it has never the less.
One last point, if the NKs think they have achieved tactical surprise they will hit us everywhere with chemical weapons in the initial attack by what ever means possible. Why because we will not resort to a nuclear reply if they have a working nuclear capability. The collateral damage from the use of even tactical nukes is considerable. You can take that to the bank. We can say anything we want to about chemical weapons being equivalent to nuclear but it does not pass the smell test in world opinion and the NKs would think nothing about pitching one into Japan if we did even on a limited basis. Now consider who is President. It would violate “our values” to escalate and anyone with a shred of common sense would see that as an escalation, including the Chinese Communists north of the strikes….You need to think outside the box a bit Stuart the more grievous miscalculations of all have always come before the shooting starts and a whole lot of people that thought they had it all figured out found out they really didn’t.

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Thom| 6.5.09 @ 5:52PM

Richard, To Who Profits is already where he wants to be. It is only safe to say that stuff here...

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Richard Baker| 6.5.09 @ 6:30PM

Thom:
You're correct. Cowards hide on computers because they can remain anonymous. Doubt he'd have the stones to say that nonsense to a Soldier or Marine.

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Thom| 6.5.09 @ 6:35PM

Richard, I'm neither and same result. Telling him the loser in war doesn't profit would probably be lost on him.

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Blacque Jacques Shellacque| 6.5.09 @ 6:44PM

....are resistant to all but a direct hit from a very large bomb.

Quite doable.

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Thom| 6.5.09 @ 6:58PM

How many weapons, aircraft and days to take out all the Y sights known to exist? Can SK do this our will it take a massive call up and deployment of our aircraft from the US and elsewhere to get this done? My point being that the usefulness of these fixed position units is limited to a few hours or day at best. The numbers of guns alone I've seen reports on would suggest we had better start about a week for they do.....

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Stuart Koehl| 6.5.09 @ 7:04PM

"You are letting your conclusions drive your analysis."

No, I'm just taking a short cut through about thirty years worth of analysis.

"I don’t doubt for a moment that NK is a basket case and will ultimately collapse but that also makes them more dangerous not less."

It does, but only if we are so foolish as to allow the correlation of forces to deteriorate by doing something very stupid, like withdrawing from South Korea. That would effectively decouple South Korea from the United States, and signal North Korea that we really don't care what they do. As long North Korea has to go over U.S. troops to conquer the South, even if those troops are little more than a speed bump (which, by the way, they are not), the NKA will not cross the DMZ.

"They are not going to wave a flag to tell us they are starting now. All that pre positioned artillery can be brought on line in under an hour and you know that. "

Actually, unless all they intend to do is kill South Korean civilians and break a lot of windows, there will be indicators. A bombardment without an invasion would be like foreplay without penetration--exciting to a point, but deeply frustrating, too.

"You said it yourself, they want to maintain the status quo when by all measures say that isn’t possible. Do you expect them to go peacefully in the night? "

I expect that Kim and his successor will try to play out the game as long as they can, but at some point they will run into a brick wall. At this point, those whose devotion to the regime is more self-serving than idealistic (i.e., most of the leadership cadre) will begin looking for a way out that allows them to continue living in the manner to which they have become accustomed. Starting a war with the world's only nuclear superpower doesn't sound like the most viable option. Killing whatever Kim is running things and cutting a deal with the South does.

"One last point, if the NKs think they have achieved tactical surprise they will hit us everywhere with chemical weapons in the initial attack by what ever means possible. "

The only reliable means they have is artillery, which means they are limited to about 20-30 km south of the DMZ. Rockets and short-range missiles can be intercepted by PAC-3 missiles, as well as whatever Aegis BMD ships are off the coasts. Most of South Korea--including most U.S. bases--will be safe from chemical attack.

"Why because we will not resort to a nuclear reply if they have a working nuclear capability. The collateral damage from the use of even tactical nukes is considerable."

That's a pretty big "if". So far, they have managed one and a half tests, with no indication they have the ability to deliver a weapon.

"We can say anything we want to about chemical weapons being equivalent to nuclear but it does not pass the smell test in world opinion and the NKs would think nothing about pitching one into Japan if we did even on a limited basis. Now consider who is President."

This is the 21st century, the age of You Tube and video cell phones. South Korea is one of the most wired countries in the world. If the North Koreans use chemical weapons in a populated area, the grim results will play out in real time on television screens around the globe. The world won't bat an eye when we turn Pyongyang into a glowing, radioactive ashtray.

"You need to think outside the box a bit Stuart the more grievous miscalculations of all have always come before the shooting starts and a whole lot of people that thought they had it all figured out found out they really didn’t."

Your "thinking outside the box", however, sounds a lot like the uninformed hyperventilations that pass for conventional wisdom these days.

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Old Texican| 6.5.09 @ 7:14PM

Stuart, thank you for your insight!

GUYS

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Stuart Koehl| 6.5.09 @ 7:18PM

"How many weapons, aircraft and days to take out all the Y sights known to exist?"

Well, I am not privy to that intelligence information, but let's assume there are 1000 Y-Sites overlooking the Seoul corridor. Assume each one requires two GBU-28s or equivalent to get a .99 Pk (kill probability). That would be 2000 weapons delivered on target. If each GBU has a reliability of .90, then you need about 2,200 bombs all told. A single F-16 can carry two, an F-15E/K can carry four. There are some 170 F-16s in ROKAF. There are also some 72 deployed with USAF units in South Korea. These could account for about 240 Y-sites on their first sortie.

In addition to these, there are also some 40 F-15K Slam Eagles in ROKAF, which combined can deliver 160 bombs, eliminating about 75 Y-Sites on the first pass.

So, within an hour of the beginning of the war, Allied air would have destroyed about 315 Y-Sites.

Taking into account losses to North Korean air defenses, the second sortie, which would take place at H+4 Hours, would eliminate another 275, for a total of 590 targets destroyed. The third sortie of the day, at H+6 Hours, would destroy another 250, for a total of 840. The last sortie of the day (artificially constraining ourselves to just four sorties), would destroy another 220, giving a total for Day 1 of 1060 Y-Sites destroyed--sixty over our hypothetical 1000.

Once it becomes apparent that to shoot is to die, how long do you think North Korean gunners will continue their barrage?

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Bohred| 6.5.09 @ 7:21PM

Stuart that was a wonderful analysis. It should be published in Am Spec. I wish DM's letters would stay published, I do so enjoy the ripostes.

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Interested Conservative| 6.5.09 @ 7:28PM

As others note, this is excellent back and forth commentary. I have a specific question about one of Stuart's most recent observations - namely, the DPRK's tunneling under/through the DMZ.

Basically, haven't we (US Army, ROK, Japan, other invited guests - heck, the French and British with their chunnel experience) devised sufficient tunnel detection capability? How serious is the threat of any substantial advance via tunnels?

I concur that the terror/sabotage effects of the smaller, company sized units of the DPRK, let alone individual sabatouers, are likely the most serious military threats of extended advances. It would not surprise me if the ROK already has tunnel countermeasures in place, and classified or secret as needed. Let them dig, just watch them and have floodgates ready.

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Thom| 6.5.09 @ 7:43PM

Stuart, how many successful nuclear tests has Israel conducted? By your logic they can’t have a deployable capability. We tested one small one before we flattened two cities with what are considered tactical weapons today. If Iran does not test a weapon then no one in the Middle East has anything to worry about right?

I think killing a lot of what is within the 20-30 KM range of the DMZ in a surprise attack will have the desired affect for the initial phase. Their heavy stuff can reach much of present day Seoul. Their Air Force will be useless on defense thus its only use is in a suicidal first strike. If they are going to roll the dice it isn’t going to be a half way measure.

I think the NKs have a larger supply of short range chemical capable missiles than we have PAC-3s or anything else in the area by a long shot. Pyongyang has not military value to Kim. If we light it up it will be the first time in decades it has had lights of any kind. You are ducking the point, we have a no first use policy. If we escalate to nuclear first use then they will use what ever they have where ever they can including Japan. China will not sit still with a nuclear exchange on the Korean peninsula. We will be the aggressor in their eyes. Legalistic words can’t equate thousands, even tens of thousands dead from a mix of conventional munitions and chemical to a single nuclear blast, even an air burst which would be what we used if it didn’t fail to explode at altitude. One mishap resulting in a ground burst and all sorts of things take on a life of their own beyond our control. I don’t think that fits the definition of “uninformed hyperventilations” unless you want to apply the same standard to Israel’s fear as being unfounded? Do you?

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Old Texican| 6.5.09 @ 7:50PM

All Americans: enjoy, but pray for our country, and our friend Israel. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cMxJBenigY&feature=related

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Dean Vander Linde| 6.5.09 @ 7:56PM

Thank you for a very interesting article and many insightful comments. I fervently hope for the complete and utter collapse of the North Korean regime, the sooner the better. I am sure most of you have seen the famous footage of the giant Nazi swaztika at Nurnburg being blown to smithereens. May the same fate befall every symbol of that evil bastard Kim Il-sung. And if a war comes, nuking that festering boil of a city of Pyongyang would be the most successful urban renewal project in the history of mankind.

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Thom| 6.5.09 @ 8:00PM

Stuart,
“Once it becomes apparent that to shoot is to die, how long do you think North Korean gunners will continue their barrage?”
They have a lot more artillery pieces than that in the area but for illustration purposes, I’ll take your number. You just committed the entire ROKAF and what assets we have there (assuming no initial losses from those wonderful Special Forces you spoke of the North has) to a single mission that takes a day. In that time how many rounds can let’s say just 1000 6” plus guns delivery? Assume they know they are going to lose the guns and crews anyway and don’t hold back to conserve the guns? The Israeli Air Force is a lot larger than the ROKAF and spent 34 days around the clock trying to locate and stop small unguided rockets from coming in. These Y sites won’t be the whole package of possibles and the best laid plans do tend to not last beyond contact with the enemy. After 34 days of precision ordnance it took ground troops to shut down the rocket barrage. A little more sophistication in guidance and range and neither our PAC-3s or available air power there are going to shut this down quick enough and it is simply not realistic to think that one mission would get all the air assets for a day. We aren’t dealing with Iraqis hear after being bombed round the clock for 6 weeks….

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Siegfried X| 6.5.09 @ 8:07PM

" I don’t doubt for a moment that NK is a basket case and will ultimately collapse "

Well, what is your point then? I agree totally, that it is absolutely impossible for North Korea to win the war.

If your point is that North Korea could cause high casualties on their way to committing suicide, then I agree it is possible.

Why would they commit suicide though? Why would North Korea start a war they know they will lose?

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Siegfried X| 6.5.09 @ 8:11PM

"I would love someone to show me where in history that a dictatorship has blunted it's aggressive tendencies because of economic "interdependence". "

The Soviet Union collapsed because of economics. That's how we won the war.

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Thom| 6.5.09 @ 8:15PM

Siegfried X, why would they start a war they thought they couldn’t win? Ask them why they started the first one? Ask the Germans why they attacked Russia, ask the Japanese why they attacked us knowing what they knew as well as we did. You are applying your concept of a rational thought to an endeavor that is essentially the poster child for irrational behavior in the first place.

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Thom| 6.5.09 @ 8:19PM

Siegfried, “The Soviet Union collapsed because of economics. That's how we won the war”. What war would that be? I must have missed that one. The Georgians and Ukraine might disagree with your conclusion.

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Thom| 6.5.09 @ 9:12PM

Siegfried, “Well, what is your point then?” Well the point is what has already been admitted to above. The Japanese had two choices by our logic but invented a third anyway knowing they could not win a protracted war against us. The Koreans have a similar mindset (and situation) as do the Chinese not to make too fine a point of it but they are quiet willing to lose 10-20 times the men than we are for things we don’t grasp. We morn over 40,000 or so killed in Korea and 58,000 Vietnam and just at the deaths in Iraq we suffered on D-Day like the world has ended for us while the Communist North Vietnamese and VC lost over a million to us and the South Vietnamese forces. Who controls Vietnam today? The Japanese lost millions to us, our total war dead was 292,000 fighting both the Japanese and Germans. The focus of this entire discussion has focused on what we believe is an unwinnable war for the North. By the numbers, by the detailed play books on this stuff developed over the last several decades they can’t…. But they can if they are willing to pay the cost because we have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt we won’t pay the price. That gives them “hope” and that was all the Japanese needed to roll the dice on the third option. What kind of resolve have we been showing in Iraq and Afghanistan the last 6-8 years in the North Korean eyes? The center piece of the resolve is gone and replaced by a person of questionable backbone and blatant willingness to appease rather than stick to a firm and unwavering position. In Asian cultures that is an invitation of the wrong type for adventure. Between cutting our defenses between 15-25% as advocated during the campaign, withdrawing out of Iraq before they have any semblance of a real military force capability to defend themselves from Iran, the North sees a door opening to be exploited. What we consider suicide matches our concept of that endeavor not theirs. If China backs them by preventing their defeat and occupation as last time that might be an acceptable risk they are willing to take if they can achieve tactical surprise. That will be tuff to do for sure but they’ve had 59 years to think about it and prepare. If we move on North Korea after such an adventure, perhaps China moves on Taiwan at the same time. Our carriers are vital to their defense of Taiwan and we are already one down permanently and will lose another in 2012 leaving us with only 9 deployable carriers. Half of those battle groups are weeks away from this theater of operations. We assume everything will be contained just to the Korean peninsula. I would not make that assumption. To the Asian mindset this is a very long game of Chess and plays by the rules until it no longer becomes a game. My concern is that a lot of factors are lining up around the world that make this scenario possible (more). Think Tank type analyses have proven to be completely right in the past but irrelevant because the options ruled out from the outset are in play. They’ve also proven to be completely wrong and not too long ago. More than once btw. That’s my take, not a prediction.

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Stuart Koehl| 6.5.09 @ 9:50PM

"Stuart, how many successful nuclear tests has Israel conducted? By your logic they can’t have a deployable capability. "

We aren't quite sure how many tests Israel has conducted--but they have conducted more than one, back in the 1960s, with the collusion of South Africa. Beyond that, Israel has a modern, high-technology economy and a surfeit of technically competent scientists and engineers. North Korea has none of these.

For Israel, building a nuclear weapon was a process that took quite a few years, but they had all the technology in place, and could draw on the experience of previous bomb design efforts.

From everything we have seen, North Korea is building simple shotgun-type Uranium devices, and their yields have not yet exceeded the 13kT of the Little Boy used on Hiroshima. A shotgun bomb (in which a slug of enriched U-235 is fired down a gun barrel into a block of enriched U-235 to create a critical mass) is almost foolproof--we never tested that design, except by dropping it on Hiroshima--but it is extremely large and heavy, and does not scale down very well. If they are at the same point we were in August 1945, their bomb is about 20 feet long and weighs 10,000 lbs. That's more than any of North Korea's combat aircraft can carry, and more by an order of magnitude than the throw weight of any Taipo-dong missile.

A plutonium-based implosion bomb can be made much smaller, but requires a lot of high technology parts and equipment--none of which North Korea has.

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Thom| 6.5.09 @ 10:12PM

Stuart, we only have to think they have the capability to be bound up by a no win decision loop. Somebody in high places thinks we will have to put a naval blockade in place soon.....that concern seems driven by a belief they are going to export what they have to those that have something they want in return. They aren't going to put a 10,000 warhead on any type of missile but they have several mid range types that are useless without a "nuke" on top. At what point does the bluff get real? Only they know unfortunately. There in lies the problem with something that small and powerful. We once thought the same of India and Pakistan. They wasted more bombs in a pissing contest of tests than many thought they had fuel for…. I still consider North Korea a proxy for China, a useful if not dangerous idiot for sure. No one knows what China is doing behind the scene here to pull our strings while they put their efforts somewhere else. I understand the game, Korea has two options but may choose a third. Not exactly an original thought in that part of the world.

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Stuart Koehl| 6.6.09 @ 6:06AM

"that concern seems driven by a belief they are going to export what they have to those that have something they want in return."

It's actually driven by their track record of doing just that. They have been caught building a nuclear facility in Syria, they have a close standing relationship with Iran, they used to cooperate with Libya on its nuclear program--all this is well documented, so it isn't supposition, it's just dealing with the facts.

"They aren't going to put a 10,000 warhead on any type of missile but they have several mid range types that are useless without a "nuke" on top. At what point does the bluff get real?"

When, at some point, they develop and test a plutonium bomb (only a plutonium device will do) and get the technology to
a) Miniature the warhead to a weight of no more than 200-300 lbs.
b) Produce or acquire ruggedized, precision fuzing devices (no point in lugging a bomb if it doesn't go off when it comes back down)
c) Develop the technology to make a reliable, ballistically accurate reentry vehicle; and
d. Make their missiles a lot more reliable than they are (it's OK if your missiles are only 80% reliable when the only thing you lose is a few hundred kilos of HE, but having a nuke fall into the sea, or worse, go off on the launch pad, when all you have is a dozen or so--that's just not acceptable.

"We once thought the same of India and Pakistan. They wasted more bombs in a pissing contest of tests than many thought they had fuel for…. "

To the best of my knowledge, India and Pakistan have conducted only about a dozen tests between them. And we still don't know that either country can deliver its nukes on anything other than an airplane.

"I still consider North Korea a proxy for China, a useful if not dangerous idiot for sure."

If the Korean War is anything by which to judge, the Norks have a nasty habit of doing what they want without telling their erstwhile patrons.

"I understand the game, Korea has two options but may choose a third. Not exactly an original thought in that part of the world."

Then they lose. Problem resolved. But be clear--there is no way Wittman's prediction that the North will overrun the South can come true.

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Mike| 6.6.09 @ 8:17AM

I know what you mean Siegfried even if Thom seems a bit confused. Recent history is full of examples of crazed dictatorships collapsing without a shot fired once their threats were neutralized militarily, economically and morally (thank you Ronnie, Maggie and John Paul).

I have always assumed that Kim's regime will eventually go out the same way (with a nice hanging) once it is effectively checked. But I never understood how you could neutralize hardened artillery positioned around a megalopolis - the costs of an engagement so aweful that the blackmail was always paid. The comments by Stuart were particularly helpful in explaining how recent military developments are starting to minimize, if not neutralize, that threat.

Apparently it is working too. Why else would the South Koreans agree to help us interdict shipments of missile and WMD technology?

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Michael L. Hauschild| 6.6.09 @ 9:10AM

The first casualty of war is the battle plan.

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Stuart Koehl| 6.6.09 @ 9:35AM

"The first casualty of war is the battle plan."

The actual quote (from Moltke the Elder) is: "No plan survives contact with the enemy".

That does not mean that one should not plan, only that plans should be considered as points of departure for necessary improvisations. Without a plan, one has no foundation on which to build; certain fundamentals cannot be extemporized, but if those fundamentals are in place, one can respond to changes in the situation on the ground like a jazz musician responding to a riff by another player in the band.

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Michael L. Hauschild| 6.6.09 @ 11:15AM

If someone tells you what time it is, it is not necessary in response to tell them how their watch was built.

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Thom| 6.6.09 @ 12:53PM

Stuart/Mike,
64 years ago we built three crude A Bombs for an existing B-29 design to carry, not the other way around. None of them would have survived contact with the ground and exploded. The assumption that every device has to follow our path after 64 years of research and world wide proliferation of that knowledge is a bit naive in my opinion. Assuming the North Koreas have gleaned nothing from their nuclear armed Communist cousins in Russia and China over these 64 years is also naive. Just because they can’t build millions of low cost I-Pods for their citizens doesn’t mean they can’t build a dozen or so “triggers” that work. An 8” artillery nuke and the Cruise missile warhead weight about the same. The former is a relatively crude 5 KT device given the available useable volume in the shell and the latter a bit more sophisticated 1970s technology and 30 plus times more powerful. Neither Israel, Pakistan nor India have the kind of aircraft that can deliver the kinds of weapons you think the North Koreans are absolutely limited to yet all the fore mentioned have “weapons” and some means to deliver them (according to consensus of world wide “experts”). I don’t put much stock in “consensus” things but a nuclear detonation is proof positive that they got the basics correct. The North’s so called “fizzle” test could have been 100% successful if you think long term here. I’ll leave it to you to figure out where I’m going with that. We’ve removed all our small tactical “nukes” from service because we’ve convinced ourselves they are useless on a modern battlefield and more trouble than they are worth. There is truth to that under our concepts of warfare but I think even a dozen 5KT warheads would delight the North Koreans or Iran. A couple dozen, three dozen would be icing on the cake for their purposes.
As for long range accuracy, you don’t need much accuracy to drop an airburst one into the middle of a modern Japanese city using 1960s SCUD technology and a short range missile with a converted Russian “nuke” torpedo warhead will do nicely.
The simple fact is we don’t know what we don’t know and we are basing our threat analysis off of our capabilities and history. The North Koreans have spent 59 years showing us only what they want us to see. What we know beyond that is at times rather dubious. The Soviet Union collapsed and broke apart and we were caught off guard by that. Russian still has capability far beyond what can simply be ignored and political alignments can change on short notice. What’s required to build, train and support an effective military force can’t. That we have been proven wrong several significant times in the last century and at least once this century isn’t trivial. Friends of mine spent countless hours flying Little Birds out in front of convoys shooting everything that looked like a rock along side the roads in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of those “rocks” exploded. The ones they couldn’t see buried did the killing. Crude improvised weapons were rather effective for the effort invested.
You’ve concluded the North Koreans can’t possibly win another conventional war and lined up a meticulous list of supporting evidence based on our capabilities and what we think their force capabilities are and methods. You’ve concluded they would be nuts to use a nuclear weapon in an attack and have no capability to deploy such capability and likely will not reach a point before they “collapse” to sum up my understanding of your positions. My point is that their history, culture and willingness to suffer far beyond what economic conditions brought the Soviet Union down stands across your assumptions. North Korea has been a virtual “sh..hole” for all of 59 years. The Soviets rose up after WWII and fell over a very long time. The North Koreans have never risen; they are the Stone Age with enough capability to build some kind of nuclear devices. Makes no sense to us for them to put so much effort, given their economic condition, into short and long range ballistic missile programs if they can’t put something on top of them that has a meaningful military impact. The best kept secret has no political advantages thus if they don’t pitched one of their long range missile out over the Pacific and explode a nuclear warhead to make a point I won’t be too surprised. None of the others in the nuclear club have ever done that either. We don’t know if a single Russian or Chinese ballistic warhead would survive reentry and explode yet I don’t hear anyone suggesting they probably won’t because they can’t match us in technological terms.
Almost 40 years ago I did an analysis on what the likely outcome of a ballistic missile nuclear exchange would be between us and the Russians. We are talking liquid fueled Atlas generation stuff here. We’ve talking a few dozen weapons on each side. The reality was rather stark. On balance, one third of the birds would either explode on launch or not make it out of the country of launch; one third would fall short making the Arctic region a very unpopular place to visit and the remaining one third would fall somewhere in the target country…. The real eye opener was the impact on Canada. The bulk of the damage done to them would not come from Russian ICMBs falling short but our nuclear armed ABMs of the time falling short over Canada. That reality was well known to both sides yet both sides built thousands of missiles and warheads knowing a first strike with ballistic missiles was anything but a sure thing so I think your concerns for what level of reliability would be required for the North to deploy a crude, by our standards today, ballistic missile system is misplaced. I don’t think their intentions are to conduct a first strike but I’m willing to admit I could be wrong. They do a lot of things I can’t rationalize. What that leaves is an insurance card or cover for a more conventional approach be it for political or military purposes. Either way, once they put a system in place we no longer have the luxury of basing our assumptions off of the narrow range of options we want there to be. We’ve been proven grossly wrong in our assumptions in Eastern Asia before, more than once. Lots of dead Americans resulted.
I know our capabilities and likely results when we start the game clock. I know our performance when some one else starts the clock pretty well too. Gen. Casey’s statements are accurate and happen to not be news. Can the North overrun the South under any set of circumstances? I don’t know, too many unknown variables in play. Would overrunning the South be the only viable outcome? I don’t think so. Would overrunning the South even be a viable outcome if they accomplished that? Not in my book and I don’t think I’m alone in that thinking. War and violence in general have a life of their own. Just because the North might overrun the Peninsula would not necessarily put an end to it anymore today than in 1950. The only thing that varies here is the cost of it. I’m pretty sure the North Koreans know what they are willing to pay to achieve what every their goals are. I’m not so sure we are sure what cost we are willing to pay to stop that.

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Siegfried X| 6.6.09 @ 2:34PM

I think everyone agrees that North Korea could launch an attack. But the article we are responding to says much more, that NK could WIN. There is a big difference between the two.

The article is full of nonsensical fantasies like:

"If the 28,500 U.S. and 650,000 ROK forces currently on alert in South Korea were unable to repeat the 1950 success in holding a defensive perimeter, the DPRK could gain control of the entire peninsula without a single nuclear explosion. The next step would be a negotiated settlement"

Even with all the advantages they had in 1950, NK couldn't take over the whole peninsula. It is even more bizarre to assume that we would just give up even if we were pushed off the peninsula. We invaded a NK-controlled part of Korea during the real Korean war.

Anyone can write anything on paper. We could talk about the risk of Iceland taking over all the continental USA, and then us negotiating with them instead of recapturing it, but it would still just be fantasy.

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Thom| 6.6.09 @ 3:43PM

Siegfried X, I don’t think they can overrun the Peninsula but let’s deal with reality here. In 1950, the attacking NK forces were relatively small compared to their forces today and their total force is close to twice the size of South Korean forces today. The South Korean Air Force is about a third the size of the Israelis operating with similar equipment and several times the population. The same difficulties on the ground today existed on the ground in 1950. We achieved Air Superiority over the Peninsula for the most part. We had complete Naval Supremacy in and around the Peninsula. Our and the South Korean Force qualitative advantages have a little less meaning if they throw the first punch and catch us by surprise. Of course that is key to any chance of success on their part. Knowing what I know about their forces, dispositions and preparations I could devise a plan to increase their chances of success. I suspect they can do better than I. There are several factors working to their advantage in that regard. I’m not going to go into all of them but one is the relatively small area of the Korean peninsula south of the DMZ. In September 1950 they held everything but a pocket around Pusan measuring about 40 by 30 miles. Pusan is vital for our reinforcements. Do you think the North Koreans know that too? Have you looked at a detailed map of the Korean peninsula? Hasn’t changed since 1950. The numbers of places you can bring troops, supplies, etc in are limited in the extreme.

None of this means they can win but what you, I or anyone else thinks is irrelevant. It is what they think that counts and as I’ve said their history, culture and past behavior can’t be taken for granted because our “cave buster” GBUs can penetrate and destroy the contents of caves well beyond just ordinary GBUs which just collapse the cave entrance and accomplish the same end result in the near term at least. My concern here we are getting too impressed with our capability and overlooking that we have a relatively small force structure now, much of it tied down somewhere else and we had to fight some very nasty people in that part of the world before who we were convinced could not “win” against us. It is to our advantage here to remember we did not “win” the Korean War; the Vietnam War or even the first Gulf War. They were mere battles in a larger struggle in that part of the world that continues and we need to get out of this mindset that says “they can’t win” before someone demonstrates “yes we can”.

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Stuart Koehl| 6.6.09 @ 6:45PM

"64 years ago we built three crude A Bombs for an existing B-29 design to carry, not the other way around. "

Yes, and we were fortunate that the B-29 was capable of accommodating a bomb 10 feet long and weighing 10,000 lbs. If it did not exist, we would have had to build it, for a bomb without a delivery system is just so much exploding junk.

Furthermore, building that B-29 bomber--based on a 1939 specification for an aircraft with greater range and ceiling than the B-17--required a massive industrial effort on par with a modern country developing a stealth bomber from scratch. It took five years to get the first one in the air, and it took another six months to make them operationally effective, using all the resources available to the United States during a world war.

As for the bomb itself, that effort took five years, and the equivalent of close to $100 billion in funding.

North Korea doesn't have anything close to those resources.

"The assumption that every device has to follow our path after 64 years of research and world wide proliferation of that knowledge is a bit naive in my opinion"

Of course, North Korea doesn't have to follow our developmental path, but neither can it invent technology or manufacturing capabilities out of thin air. Every country must work with what it has, and North Korea is a country that has. . . nothing. So, all indications show North Korea to be following the most direct route to developing a working nuclear device in the shortest period of time, with the capabilities they have in hand. It would be rather stupid of them to base their nuclear program on the acquisition of critical components from a third party (e.g., China or Pakistan), as that would put them at the mercy of that country. From both an ideological and practical standpoint, North Korea is dedicated to the principle of autarky--which is why the country is a cesspit.

"You’ve concluded the North Koreans can’t possibly win another conventional war and lined up a meticulous list of supporting evidence based on our capabilities and what we think their force capabilities are and methods. "

They can't win, unless of course, we allow them to do so. My assumption is not even Barack Obama would be so feckless.

" We don’t know if a single Russian or Chinese ballistic warhead would survive reentry and explode yet I don’t hear anyone suggesting they probably won’t because they can’t match us in technological terms."

Well, I don't know about the Chinese, but the Russians did do an end-to-end test of a ballistic missile, including release and detonation of a live warhead, back when atmospheric testing was all the rage. It worked. We've tested a live warhead precisely once (a Polaris A1). But now we no longer need to do that kind of live testing, since we are capable of very high fidelity 6-DOF modeling and simulation. We can get away with that because we have a deep enough knowledge base to validate the models we use. So can the Russians, and possibly the Chinese. The British and the French rely on our models or derivatives thereof, plus the fruits of their own live test programs. However, nuclear startups like Pakistan, North Korea and Iran simply must do live testing, because they don't have access to the necessary data to rely exclusively on simulations.

"That reality was well known to both sides yet both sides built thousands of missiles and warheads knowing a first strike with ballistic missiles was anything but a sure thing so I think your concerns for what level of reliability would be required for the North to deploy a crude, by our standards today, ballistic missile system is misplaced. I don’t think their intentions are to conduct a first strike but I’m willing to admit I could be wrong. "

I did similar studies in the 1980s, but which time the reliability of our Minuteman II and III missiles was higher than 90% at the system level, meaning that the individual subelements were somewhere around .9999. Russian ICBMs, being mostly liquid fueled and on par with the Titan II, were considerably less reliable on a daily basis, but as they got the first shot, they had the opportunity to prep all their missiles ahead of time. SS-18 and SS-19 ICBMs converted to space launch vehicles proved to be highly reliable, on par with U.S. Titan IIs, which were good enough to be man-rated for the Gemini program.

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Stuart Koehl| 6.6.09 @ 6:56PM

This is the key point. The correlation of forces was about as good as it could get for North Korea in 1950. ROK forces were ill-equipped, badly trained and lacked discipline. U.S. forces were drawn from occupation troops in Japan, lacked critical equipment, and were not really combat ready. The North Koreans were equipped with T-35/85 tanks that could defeat the infantry anti-tank weapons and badly outnumbered the handful of M4A3E8 Sherman tanks we were able to get to Korea on short notice. North Korea actually had air superiority for the first couple of weeks, and the U.S. was limited, initially, to flying sorties out of Japan, limiting time on station. In addition, the North Koreans had both strategic and operational surprise.

With all those advantages, they should have been able, in the words of Patton, to go through us like crap through a goose. Instead, deprived of maneuvering space, their supply line overextended (despite that fact that an NKA division could get by on a scant 20 tons of supplies per day), the bled themselves to death on the Pusan perimeter. At which point, they were ripe for MacArthur's counterpunch at Inchon.

The correlation of forces today is much worse for North Korea--prohibitively weighted against them technologically, operationally, tactically and logistically. The world has changed since 1950, but for the most part, North Korea has not.

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Thom| 6.6.09 @ 7:16PM

Stuart, we were not “fortunate” that bomb fit the plane. It was designed to fit the plane for all the reasons you outlined about the time and investment into both the bomb and plane which cost 16 times what the B-17s did. A Lancaster could have carried either bomb if it had the range for which it did not. The B-52s were designed to fit the “bombs”.

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Stuart Koehl| 6.6.09 @ 7:20PM

"In 1950, the attacking NK forces were relatively small compared to their forces today and their total force is close to twice the size of South Korean forces today. "

While Stalin famously said that quantity has a quality of its own, in fact numbers today count for a lot less than they did half a century, or even just twenty years ago, particularly when one is talking about conventional, high-intensity combined arms warfare (you know, tanks, infantry, artillery, airpower, etc.). The weapons are far more lethal and highly complex, so that it requires highly trained troops to get the most out of them. A corollary to this is development of what the Soviets called a "reconnaissance strike complex" (what we might call "network centric warfare")--the networking of remote sensing systems in near-real time to long-range precision strike systems through an integrated command and control system. In effect, if a target can be seen, it can be attacked; and if it can be attacked, it can be killed. To avoid being seen, one must disperse, but if one disperses, one is vulnerable to defeat in detail.

If both sides have a reconnaissance strike capability, then both sides will disperse and rely on reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition systems to locate the key nodes of the enemy's reconnaissance strike complex and destroy it. Once that occurs, one can concentrate against the enemy, who has the choice of defeat in detail or concentrating and exposing himself to destruction by long-range precision fires.

Of course, if one side has a reconnaissance strike complex, and the other does not, then we can cut to the chase: conventional attacks are doomed to failure. That, in fact, is why most of our adversaries have chosen not to confront us with conventional arms: we have a reconnaissance strike capability, and they do not (and lack the wherewithal to build one).

If Kim were really intent on destroying South Korea, he would rely on real asymmetric warfare, instead of putting his money into a huge, but ultimately useless (for offensive operations) conventional army. Of course, the real purpose of the NKA is to protect the regime from its internal enemies, not from the U.S. or South Korea, so it serves Kim's purposes well.

"We achieved Air Superiority over the Peninsula for the most part. "

Air superiority meant something quite different in 1950-53 than it does today. Back then, we flew primitive jet or piston-engine aircraft with limited range and payload (typically 2000 lbs). These aircraft lacked radar and relied on visual target acquisition. Ordnance options were the same as in World War II--free fall high explosive and napalm bombs, unguided 5-inch aerial rockets, and .50-cal machine guns. Targets could, with few exceptions, only be attacked in daylight and good weather. Accuracy was poor, and the results limited. Nonetheless, during the period of active operations (1950-51), the U.S. was able to totally disrupt NKA operations, which is why they collapsed so rapidly after the Inchon landings. In fact, once the U.S. did manage to establish air superiority, the game was up for the North Koreans--they simply could not advance against U.S. forces. The Chinese intervention managed to hit U.S. forces while they were overextended, but again, our retreat to the 38th Parallel was successful mainly because of air superiority; and the inability of the Chinese to push us back further was again due to that air superiority.

"My concern here we are getting too impressed with our capability and overlooking that we have a relatively small force structure now, much of it tied down somewhere else and we had to fight some very nasty people in that part of the world before who we were convinced could not “win” against us."

Again, as far as conventional warfare goes, the age of mass armies is over. Huge conscripted armies are just casualty lists waiting to happen. To mass in the face of modern weapons is to die; dispersion and stealth are the only way to survive.

This is not new, but merely the logical consummation of a trend that began with the introduction of the breach-loading rifle in the mid-19th century. In fact, force densities have been declining at an accelerating pace since World War II, so that today the frontages held by a squad are closer to those held by a company in World War II; the frontage of a company equivalent to that of a battalion; the frontage of a battalion equivalent to that of brigade. In short, due to the increased range and lethality of weapons, force densities have declined by 66%, making one man today equal to three in 1950--assuming, of course, that this man is part of a modern, properly equipped and well-trained army.

Put another way, five M1A2 Abrams tanks can destroy an entire brigade of North Korean T-55 tanks, while the T-55s are incapable of damaging the M1A2s.

Quality has a quantity of its own, too.

"It is to our advantage here to remember we did not “win” the Korean War; the Vietnam War or even the first Gulf War. They were mere battles in a larger struggle in that part of the world that continues and we need to get out of this mindset that says “they can’t win” before someone demonstrates “yes we can”."

Let's hope our enemies continue to win such remarkable "victories"--a few more and there will be none left standing.

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Stuart Koehl| 6.6.09 @ 7:27PM

"Stuart, we were not “fortunate” that bomb fit the plane. It was designed to fit the plane for all the reasons you outlined about the time and investment into both the bomb and plane which cost 16 times what the B-17s did. A Lancaster could have carried either bomb if it had the range for which it did not. The B-52s were designed to fit the “bombs”."

Thom,

You don't understand. The plane did not exist when we began the Manhattan Project. It was mere serendipity that the parameters of the bomb(s) were compatible with those of the B-29 bomb bay (but just barely). It was not known if this was possible when research on the bomb began. But if it was not, undoubtedly the United States would have designed a bomber to fit the bomb, or modified the B-29 so it could carry the bomb (a fuselage plug to stretch the bomb bay, bulged doors to accommodate the Fat Man, etc.). And if that was not possible, we could have accelerated the B-36 Dominator, which was so large it could carry those 10-MT behemoths we were using in the late 1950s. Want to know how large early nuclear weapons were? Go look at the bomb bay of a B-52 next time the Air Force has an open house: it was designed to fit one bomb.

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Thom | 6.6.09 @ 8:43PM

Stuart, please don’t give me a history lesson on War College play books. General Tommy Franks has an appropriate saying for people who think they have it all figured out with regard to warfare and how it will turn out. I’ve studied warfare from Fredrick the Great on at every level for over 40 years. I’ve quiet aware of network centric warfare thinking. Such thoughts and our belief we can have one man do the job of three has kept us fighting rabble in Iraq for 6, Afghanistan for 8 years while said rabble moves around the country side planting IEDs pretty much anywhere we don’t have someone at the moment. We expend an enormous effort in man power and material trying to keep our supply lines in Iraq and Afghanistan open. 1 supply clerk, truck driver is not doing the work of three. Can our C4 tell the difference between a North Korea and a South Korean? I can’t. If you told me my platoon was equal to a full strength NK company given what each side carries I’d hand you an M4 and me and two others would back off 300 meters with AK-47s and see if you wanted to put that theory to the test? I’m pretty good with both but a man does have to know his limits in the scheme of things.

The Israelis took out the Syrians at over 3000 meters in 1973 and achieved kill rates of up to 13 to 1 but still almost lost on the Egyptian front because they got caught with their pants down around their knees and had to fight it out at relatively close ranges compared to the Syrian front. Add a few Russian AT squads mixed in and the Israelis got bled pretty well by that inferior equipment and under trained Egyptian crews. At the end of the day the Egyptian and Syrian losses were significantly more than the Israelis but nothing like the text book possibilities. Numbers became everything eventually in 1973 and Israelis losses were disproportionate to their population. That war expended more ordnance in 18 days then there was in NATO and the Warsaw Pact stocks at that time. We have not faced a front line force since WWII or one as large as the North Korean army. We have never undergone a full scale Russian style assault. The M1s advantages go away when it can’t keep the other guys gun outside its effective range and to the front. Korea is not the desert. A hypothetical engagement of 65 T-55s alone vs. 5 M1s isn’t likely to happen under any circumstances where the M1s can just stand off and take them out one by one outside their effective range. The M1 can take hits from their 100 mm gun but if the engagement range is less than 2000 meters or even 1500 to start the M1s are going to simply be beat to death and immobilized for their trouble. Same thing happened with the German Tiger II and to a lesser extent the Panther. Couldn’t beat it straight on with anything we had but you could immobilize it by damaging its running gear and turning it into a pill box. From the side even the M1 dies. As I remember we sent the T-26 to Korea to do battle with the T34-85s and found quickly that it was road bound and had to send the latest M4/76s in their place because they could operate off the road better. 68 ton M1s have their limits of where they can go. I don’t think Korea would be determined by who had the best tank just as it wasn’t in the first war. The M1 is a great tank but part of its protection comes from being able to move very well and fire on the move very well. Most of Korea is hostile to that on a good weather day.

I didn’t say the Koreans won, I said we didn’t win. The matter was not resolved and we and South Korea have made a huge investment in forces and capabilities to keep it from happening again but the other side seems to want an excuse to fight again. The people I know that have lived, worked and served in South Korea have a different take on your idea that numbers really don’t matter that much any more. 8,000 artillery pieces of all sizes opening up are going to have their say on lesser numbers of forces.

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Thom| 6.6.09 @ 8:58PM

Stuart,
The B-29 was based on an unbuilt prototype aircraft designed in the late 30s. The first contracts were issued in August 1940. The Manhattan Project design team spent two years working on the thing that went off in July of 1945 in our desert. The work on the “bomb” started after WWII for us started and well after the first B-29 prototypes were flying in Sept of 1942. The bombs (the first two dropped and the third waiting to go) were designed to fit in the B-29 without modification.

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Thom| 6.6.09 @ 9:19PM

Stuart,
Think about it a bit, two bomb designs, the Shot Gun Little Boy not tested and the Fat Man (tested) just happened to fit in the bomb bay of a B-29 and both bombs were within 8 inches of each other in length. You don’t spend $100 billion to develop such a weapon in time of war that you don’t have a platform for. Kind of works that way today I think.

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Stuart Koehl| 6.6.09 @ 10:07PM

Consider, Thom:

At the time the design of Fat Man and Little Boy was finalized, the B-29 had not yet been cleared for service, was plagued with numerous technical deficiencies, and was on the verge of being cancelled. Yes, they planned on using the B-29; no, they did not know the B-29 would be available. Undoubtedly, having put so much money into the Manhattan Project, and given its war-winning potential, had the B-29 failed, some other aircraft would have been modified to carry it.

Range wasn't as critical a criterion as you make out. The original target for the bomb was Germany, and had Germany still been fighting in the summer of 1945, Berlin might have been the object of the Little Boy's attentions. A Lancaster with a 10,000 lb payload could easily make Berlin, and a bomb bay capacious enough to hold the 12,000-lb Tallboy could certainly accommodate one of the early nukes.

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Stuart Koehl| 6.6.09 @ 10:10PM

"I’ve studied warfare from Fredrick the Great on at every level for over 40 years. "

So? You've got all of ten years on me.

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John| 6.7.09 @ 12:20AM

Wow.. Stuart and Thom... sounds like y'all both need a "tallboy"... aka long-neck...

1. Stuart is correct. There is little doubt that a Nork Attack south would evenually get jammed right up Kim's rear end...

2. Thom is also correct. The death toll, especially civilian, might be a tad on the high side. And the act of stuffing the attack where Kim's sun don't shine is not going to be so easy.

3. I stick to von Moltke like glue when such ops fights go down. Folks, no plan survives contact with the enemy. None... zero... whether they are worn down by Clausewitz's friction, or flat out fail, plans just sort of don't exactly work the way you wanted them to .

4. I also apply my old man's warning: (He was a combat veteran with an serious education from Uncle Sugar's Army School on the Hudson.) "You cannot predict what an evil madman will do, or when he will do it. You just need to know that he WILL do SOMETHING, and it will be EVIL."

A rational analysis of Kim's motives will always come up short since it is essentially antithetical to what Kim is. There Thom has a point. A large point. Kim is unlikely to spend time reading Stuart's impressive and very accurate analysis of ROK/US joint military capabilities.

The Mad Evil Dictators of History never spend much time analyzing how their enemies could potentially defeat them. Mostly they just do what the hell they want to do.

My surmise is that Kim has no real clue about our capabilities or the South Korean's capabilities. He is irrational. He seeing that his most hated enemy, the one for which his father made him swear to revenge, is now lead by a weak leader. He also see's Ho Chi Minh's analysis come to life. That nation's leader is backed by a populous without a "set".

Folks, THAT is DANGEROUS.

Hey!!! Y'all are stealing my territory. I am supposed to be the airplane nut, the LittleBoy and Fat Man were both built to fit into the bomb bay of the B-29 which was the only aircraft capable of carrying either one. One needs to separate the "bomb" from the bomb in the reality. The cases were designed after the bombs were.

Regardless of the B-29's limitations, fits, bad engines, problematic propellers, cranky pressurization, balky remote control gun turrets (which were deleted on the Atomic Bomb aircraft), the B-29 was going to be used, period. The war dictated it.

I would wager that somewhere in some secret file or some memo from Los Alamos or Chicago... some scientist/engineer passed word up the chain that "If" this was going to be done... the plane that was going to carry it had to be able to carry a certain payload in one bomb-bay. I bet the request showed up as a requirement having nothing to do with atomic bombs in the design.

But we won't know for a generation or so.

Look. Sherman said: "War is all Hell." He meant it. My old man was shot down four times in helicopters and he wasn't even a pilot. He flew missions in an F-4, O-1's, OV-10's, and AC-119's, and he was an Army officer. He designed tanks, commanded troops on the Czech border in the early 1960's.

He taught me much in the limited time that he had on this Earth, but the most imporant lesson that he drilled into me is that you have to be ready for anything, and expect that nothing will work right.

If everything works, and your plans were plus perfect... then you win. If it all goes to hell, then at least you had your seat belt on.

Discussions like this are gold. Thanks for keeping it civil. It was enjoyable and very useful. BTW, sadly the actual answer is somewhere in Kim's addled Evil mind. Scary- eh?

With much respect for both of you,

John
"You see .... some fellas just want to see the world burn..." -- Alfred the Butler in the last Batman movie when explaining the "Joker" to his "son".

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Tenn Slim| 6.7.09 @ 8:48AM

All
This weekend, the NKs Naval Gun Boats are out scouring the inshore areas for SK Fishing boats. And the beat goes on.
My Opine.
A NK invasion less nucs would be stopped cold, soon by ROK and USA folks. The tactics and strategies are interesting but we have to understand the Fog of War always turns Opines and Plans into dust. ANY artillery barrgage into SK will cause lots of confusion, death and destruction, for however long. The SK civilians have not suffered constant artilley rockets like the Israelies, nor do they have the experience to stand up to this.
So. Yep, the NK rulers do want to stay in power. Yep, they will play chess for as long as we play. So. does OBNA stay off the board, play the game, or go to Uniltaterilism deployement of the 6th Fleet, etc. Any choice, decsion or what not, has to pass the Code Pink Petitions for NO WAR ANYWHERE rule first.
"
If everything works, and your plans were plus perfect... then you win. If it all goes to hell, then at least you had your seat belt on. "
end

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CatotheElder| 6.7.09 @ 1:23PM

Thom and Stuart, you two have created a discussion which is unrivaled in thoughtful and detailed insight. These are the best posts I have ever observed in all my years of surfing.

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Thom| 6.7.09 @ 1:37PM

I’ll summarize what John said, the B-29 had serious operational problems its entire career in the Pacific to the extent we lost more to operational problems coming out of China than to enemy action but still it was the only aircraft with the range to make Japan with that pay load and back…. It was not an accident that an air craft design specification finalized in 1940 was the basis for what went in its bomb bay in 1945. No secret memos needed.

We didn’t have a working “bomb” until 16 months after Germany was no longer in the picture. We would not have dropped it on Germany short of them doing something that lowered them to the same level of scorn we held for the Japanese. The Imperial Japanese High Command earned their right to that bomb every day after Dec 7th, 1941.

The length of time one studies something is not a measure in and of itself of what one learns from that study. I make no “weight of paper” arguments. The best cavalry officer of the Civil War had no study time. His tactics were used to take down Afghanistan and Iraq using the least forces possible.

What I have tried to get across unsuccessfully it seems is that the “crazies” the world has faced since the beginning of time have been figure heads of a larger regime of like minded people that are held together by some kind of “glue” that is not tangible in the sense of what an analysis of capabilities can put a number on. I’ve illustrated a few examples (and the consequences of us not drawing the right conclusions) that seem to be discounted.

The Japanese were down to 18 months of fuel when they attacked Pearl Harbor knowing they could not defeat us in a protracted war…. Somebody on this thread who will remain nameless has already summed it up as saying they had two choices (by our reasoning) and they invented a third (by their reasoning). A lot of US military analysis got it wrong I would venture a guess. The American Navy concluded that all future surface engagements would be conducted at great distances, at high speed and during day light hours and proceeded to build our entire cruiser force around that belief. None of our light/heavy cruisers had torpedoes or did much practice for combat at night. The Japanese, having far fewer heavy and light cruisers had a different thought and the score card around Guadalcanal and Salvo Island at night in late 1942 speaks to who made the better decision. We overcame this problem with radar/technology and staying out of the range of what was an unguided TLAM in 1942. One Long Lance equal one US cruiser sunk with great loss of life. There were no long range running gun battles in the Pacific campaign.

The Air Cav units in the Drang Valley in 1965 slaughtered the NVA and somebody concluded we could win simply by slaughtering them every time they chose the place and time of an attack….. We did this even better over the next ten years and lost the war there. The NVA and Viet Cong decisively lost the TeT Offensive in military terms. The Viet Cong was destroyed. Our National Command structure did exactly what Meade did after Lee’s failure at Gettysburg in response to his withdrawal, nothing to follow up our success and to capitalize on their failures. Millions of hours of military analysis behind that decision.

No rational “General” would want to invade Russia given the distances involved, raw manpower the Russians had and past history of such an adventure. The German plan of attack was based upon the same assumptions of a quick victory ending before Winter….They exceeded their expectations right up to Winter and then spent the next three plus years paying for their mistakes to plan beyond their assumptions.

No rational “General” would throw away the last mobile reserves in the Ardennes in 1944 trying to do an impossible task (wishful thinking at best). Most of the Allied High Command agreed, except Patton and the German High Command of course.

The Confederacy could not win against the Union under any circumstances that can be conceived using the available material, manpower, etc differences yet the Confederacy fired the first shot and outmaneuvered the Union Army for most of the war with military leaders that had but 4 years of study and some experience. The Confederates could hardly be thought of as better armed, trained and equipped at any time during the war while being outnumbered three to one in raw manpower and 5 to 1 in resources. Which side gets studies the most in War Colleges today, the Union or the Confederates?

I could go on and on but the point is in each of the above examples, hundreds of thousands, millions of people on the side that could not “possibility win” found a rational for trying that you can’t analyze with a satellite based intelligence. The Spartans (and the other 7000 Greeks) that went to meet the Persians at Thermopylae had zero chance against what was at the very least over 200,000 Persians yet still they went. The Spartans knew they were going to die to the last man.

My sole point about North Korea is that there are human nature factors you can’t put on an empirical chart showing comparisons of military capability. If you could no one would every start a war they couldn’t possibly “win”. It is known with a certain certainty in that part of the world that their sense of “honor” bears on their behavior. 59 years of isolation and living in the “cess pool” speak to their resolve to bear it as did the North Vietnamese for 12 years under far worse conditions than we can inflict on the North Koreans today in a relatively short enough time to be decisive. If it takes 12 hours as Stuart’s calculations suggest for the available South Korean and American Air Force units there to take out 1000 known targets (holes in the ground), each of whom can put out 60 sustained rounds an hour, much more than that in the initial assault alone all the while consuming what ammo they have or burning out the barrels long before the last sortie is flown, I hope the North Koreans haven’t made that same calculation because there are thousands of such artillery pieces on that line with the same in MRLs. If the bombardment starts in the middle of the night (highly likely) using prepositioned equipment and forces over several decades (highly likely) the usefulness of those fixed assets will have run their course by day break. If I were trying to “check mate” all the fixed artillery I would not see the available weapons launched from the limited number of aircraft as a solution to what is a relatively short term problem. Like all fixed assets, they can all be defeated, including massive mine fields with enough time and forces but time is critical here. I’d like to think fixed position artillery within range of our mobile artillery has a faster solution to that problem than dedicating the entire Air Force to just 1000 holes in the ground over 12 hours. I’d like to think air power isn’t the only solution to the Y sites and thousands of major caliber artillery pieces and multiple rocket launchers up and down the DMZ. If we convince ourselves they can't possibly win, they have won half the battle before it starts.

We have a track record of underestimating our enemies when they attack us.

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Thom| 6.7.09 @ 2:18PM

Tenn Slim, Saddam invaded Kuwait because he thought he could get away with it, why would he (and all his supporters) think that? In my book that’s a pretty “brass” move but that might be business as usual in that part of the world. It ultimately cost the Iraqis people over a hundred thousand dead soldiers and Saddam and his sons their lives. He trashed any opposition he had in the county after we “won” the Gulf War and was well on his way to getting what he wanted from the Oil for Food program. As I’ve said previously I think we are becoming too impressed with our potential capabilities under conditions where we have absolute control of the air and sea space and not looking at this the way recent history says others view things. If the North Koreans think they have but two equally bad choices (as the Japanese did) they may invent a third as the Japanese did. It is not like promises of a workers’ paradise or a virginal heavenly retreat is sustaining these people for 59 years. There is something there we need to be very aware of that goes beyond the concept of a chess game.

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Thom| 6.7.09 @ 3:19PM

I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea here. I’m not trying to prove anyone wrong, certainly not Stuart. What I’m trying to do is by using historical “fact” demonstrate that much of our conclusions are based on our assumptions which for better or worse can not be eliminated or turned into a numbers game. The Spartans and our guys at the Alamo stomp on many of our assumptions here. That Asian mindset of which I have some insight (and training) has a wholly different set of metrics by which they measure success or failure. I may be insightful of it but I haven’t lived it. Beyond an antiseptic analysis of weapon capabilities and what forces and equipment we think they have we know very little about NK’s intentions or “calculus” of what they are willing to do to achieve their goals. We make a big mistake boiling down regimes like this into the persona of a single man. If Kim and associates were simply organized criminals as some suggest we could probably stroke them a fat check and safe passage to where ever and it would end that simply. I’m not struck by that being even remotely possible with or without China’s ok.

More over when a President stands before the world and says “they risk further isolation” he shows me he does not have a clue what he is dealing with here. That same logic gave the Japanese the last justification they needed to find that third “choice” which loosely translates into “death before dishonor”. Is it clear now?

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Ken| 6.7.09 @ 8:36PM

Gentlemen,
Let me first say that I have enjoyed reading the original blog and the posts/counter-posts. I am encouraged regarding the general civil tone and apparent thought put into the comments. The following are a few of my questions or comments:
1)My understanding of the B-29 program is that the development cost for the plane was about double what it cost to develop the atomic bomb. Possibly if the NK's could reach the technology level of 50's U.S., (280mm shell, Davy Crockett warhead), install it in a Mig-29 , they would then have a cheap and nasty cruise missile with active terminal guidance.
2)As for comparing strengths, technology on its own doesn't win battles, French tanks vs. German Pzkw. II, and repainted Czech tanks, France 1940.
French military on paper vastly superior to German military , but the result, France then occupied. Individual French soldier; good, individual French tank; good, individual French plane;good, French command / control ; not so good. But, ultimately, Germany lost the war.
3) Why, having plutonium for weapons, did NK pursue uranium enrichment?
4)In 1950 NK was in the thrall of Stalin. He apparently encouraged NK to attack SK. maybe to thwart a possible Sino-American thawing of relations, Stalin, no fan of Chicoms, (he materially supported Nationalist Chinese efforts in late 30's against Mao), had his own agenda. So maybe 59 years later there are different political factors in play. China might find NK useful as a stick against Japanese or U.S. interests. As far as them furthering our interests because they are a major trading partner, weren't they ramming U.S. planes over international waters in 2001?
5) Regarding predicting the plans, abilities, aspirations and potential of the Chinese leadership/people, William F. Buckley stated in an article written at the time of Nixon's approach to China,( paraphrased )" that the only product the Chinese have to export to the U.S. is boar bristles."

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Roy| 6.8.09 @ 2:15AM

I would basically expect an actual NK attack to result in the immediate and total destruction of NK. But before that happened they would have done a lot of damage to Seoul with their artillery, which we would prefer to avoid.

If China backed them up it could be a different story, but that is not where China's interests lie either. If I were China I would constantly provoke mini-crises to keep us scrambling but not provoke an outright confrontation until they could win it. For now they can't..but for how long?

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daniel| 6.8.09 @ 5:44AM

Stuart Koehl's comment strikes me as the most informative -and fascinating- collection of words I have ever read about the Korean situation.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

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Stuart Koehl| 6.8.09 @ 6:04AM

"n 1950 NK was in the thrall of Stalin. He apparently encouraged NK to attack SK. maybe to thwart a possible Sino-American thawing of relations, Stalin, no fan of Chicoms, (he materially supported Nationalist Chinese efforts in late 30's against Mao), had his own agenda."

Actually, it was Kim who convinced Stalin to allow him to attack South Korea, by claiming the U.S. would not fight to defend it. This has been verified by Soviet archival documents.

See: http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19931121&slug=1733003

"y understanding of the B-29 program is that the development cost for the plane was about double what it cost to develop the atomic bomb. "

That understanding is wrong. The Manhattan Project was the single most expensive program in World War II; by comparison, the B-29 program was small change.

In constant 2008 dollars, the Manhattan Project cost $40 billion (1942-45). Some other wartime expenses:

All bombs and munitions: $62 billion
All small arms: $48 billion
All tanks: $128 billion
All heavy artillery: $16 billion
All other artillery: $67 billion

"Why, having plutonium for weapons, did NK pursue uranium enrichment?"

Couldn't master implosion technology.

"Possibly if the NK's could reach the technology level of 50's U.S., (280mm shell, Davy Crockett warhead), install it in a Mig-29 , they would then have a cheap and nasty cruise missile with active terminal guidance."

Both the 280mm shell and the Davy Crocket spigott bomb (a true "nuclear hand grenade" with a Pk of 2) used plutonium, not uranium. Uranium bombs do not scale down very well, due to the large critical mass needed, and the necessity of accelerating the uranium bullet in a linear manner.

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Old Soldier| 6.9.09 @ 2:19PM

Great comment thread. I've read them all and haven't changed my mind.

I was on a USMC forward air control team in '91. We tore apart armored columns without suffering casualties – I saw it with aircraft, with arty, with naval guns (oh how I miss the battleships), and with our armor / infantry teams. When the better Iraqi units counter-attacked, we used all at once in a spectacular combined arms assault. Yes it was in the open desert but vision and air support was limited by the oil fires. Mountains, woods, cities, wouldn’t make much difference. Due to actions over the past few years, we have the best trained army in history for urban operations. Bringing infantry or armored vehicles into Seoul would be suicide.

In ‘91, I couldn't believe what was happening. In retrospect it was inevitable. Superior equipment, superior training, and initiative at every level of the British and American forces. We reacted and moved before the Iraqi's could make a decision. Once the NK supply and communication lines are shattered, it would be a mop-up operation. I don’t know how the individual NK soldiers will react – if they will simply surrender like the Iraqis, or fight to the death like the Taliban – but it won’t make much difference.

There may be a lot of civilian casualties in Seoul - unfortunate. There would be few American or ROK military casualties except perhaps for some urban infantry fighting.

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