Posted on 10/11/2006 7:03:38 PM PDT by Flavius
PLANS previously drafted by the Pentagon predict 52,000 US military casualties and one million civilian dead in the first 90 days of conflict if America attacked Pyongyang. The US leadership is looking at international economic and diplomatic sanctions against North Korea as its primary response to Monday's nuclear test.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
...and they're pretty cramped together, aren't they? Um so besser!
(Why Mojave? Have you transplanted to Nevada?)
I've been wondering just how many they have now. Surely when they did their test(s) they didn't use up all they had, one would think.
I've seen these wild extremes between people assuming the NKs get instanty annihilated by airpower in an easy war, and people under the rather silly impression the NKs would somehow roll forward a huge distance into South Korea in an unstoppable juggernaut (dumb on two levels - one, I honestly think it's people unaware of the existence of the ROK army, and two, if the DPRK ever thought they REMOTELY had a chance of success in such an attack, they would have tried it already).
The truth lies in-between. The terrain is rugged and the weather usually bad which impairs airpower, but I don't see a North Korean attack getting much of anywhere - the troop densities are very high and the ROK army is a far, far better force than it was in 1950. And GPS bombs are a true revolution in warfare the scope of which we haven't fully seen yet.
It would be a heck of a lot bloodier than either Gulf War and more difficult, but some of the extreme casualty estimates seem a bit silly (as they did back before GWI, which I was pointing out on the old GEnie BBS at the time - I was roundly ridiculed back in December before that war started for guessing the land war would last two weeks with less than 1,000 US dead).
Does anyone else see a clown in that picture...or is it just me?
I respectfully disagree. The North could put 2 million men on the southern border of North Korea, and we would not act until they fire or move on us. We would only use conventional means which would limit a ability to effect millions. In that theatre we would not use nuclear devices, unless they first used it on our soldiers, and maybe not until they attacked our homeland. That means conventional warfare.
So what other options do we have for massive non-nuclear bombs? Seems to me there were some pretty impressive ones used in Iraq; ones that would cause massive damage for quite a fair sized radius- I just don't remember how far out they'd go.
Everyone forgets that the Republic of Korea (ROK aka South Korea) has 600,000 men under arms, and another couple of million in the reserves. The ROKs are tough as nails, too, and shouldn't be taken for granted.
The South Koreans happen to have a rather effective army as well. I sense a tendency to build the North Korean soldiers up as being 10 feet tall here. They aren't. As for their missile program, that is useful largely against Seoul and not much further south than that. It wouldn't be the first time that city had been reduced to rubble. Nor need this be considered strictly in defensive terms - remember Inchon. The North will have to consider the obvious counterstroke against their own territory because we've done that sort of thing before.
Personally I don't think it will come to anything like this. The North no longer has Soviet patrons. And if the Chinese feel compelled to cross the border again they can keep the place. They don't want it.
Other thing to keep in mind is there isn't a single soul in the entire North Korean military with any actual real large-scale combat experience whatsoever.
That matters.
That would be based on a US go it alone which we will not do.
Hmmm... why wouldn't they use some of the leftover 48,000 that the DUmmies conjured up when we went into Iraq? These people think we have no memories.
MacArthur wanted to Nuke the Chi-Coms back to the stoneage and was handstrung about the Chinese by Truman.
We don't have that luxury with Islam. We're dicking around with religious fanatics not seen since the 7th century. Religious fanatics who want to kill unbelievers on scale of the Crusades, only they want to do it in the blink of an eye. With a radioactive fire that burns for a thousand years.
My grandfather wept as he told me the horrible things he saw in Nagasaki.
"In a nuclear war, boy.....you better pray to be vaporized, because shitting out yer intestines is a bad way to go out. You better not let 'em do it again, boy....People just shouldn't do that to other people......"
We don't carry neutron bombs in our arsenal anymore. They don't keep well.
Couldn't agree more. It'd be a pity to see the Itae-Won blown to smithereens...but then who could tell?
Which very likely may have ended up causing a US-Soviet nuclear exchange.
MacArthur is one of the most painfully overrated military leaders in US history. Like I said, prior to the controversy with Truman, he completely ignored large amounts of intelligence and warnings that Chicom troops were in North Korea in large numbers - and we ended up getting suprised, leading to the horrors of "Frozen Chosin" etc.
Just like he managed to lose his entire airforce in the Phillipines on the ground the day AFTER Pearl Harbor in World War II.
The figures probably were allied forces rather than merely American. There would be an immediate airlift of US forces too. So this may not be that unrealistic. North Koreans may be more disciplined than the Iraqis.
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