they’d better take out the SAMs first.
1. BOMBS:
The USA A-bombed Hiroshima in 1945, but in 1950, when Truman fired MacArthur over the Korea question, can anyone guess how many atomic bombs the USA had, 5 years later?
THIRTEEN. 13 bombs in 5 years. From the richest country in the world.
2. DELIVERY MECHANISMS:
The north is probably using “shotgun” style bombs (not implosion) —they require LOTS of Uranium —maybe 100 pounds at least. All together, those primitive weapons weigh...2500 pounds, I’d say.
After they load them on missiles IF THEY CAN, I doubt they could reach US bases in Japan —warhead weight on a missile MAKES A HUGE DIFFERENCE in how far that missile can fly —one size does NOT fit all.
The debris that came down near Hawaii? Those were very small parts —stuff that was considerably smaller than Apollo 11.
The DPRK weapons are almost certainly large, unweildy BOMBS at this point. That means that to threaten the South, they would have to be FLOWN south —on an airplane.
At the outset of war, SK/US airpower would be robust and would GUARANTEE a shoot-down. If they held back the nuke attack until later in the war...I doubt there would be a DRPK field remaining in a state permitting for safe take-off.
All the comments about Seoul getting wiped out via arty are 100% correct —it could not be prevented. SEOUL and other major SK cities would be destroyed —yep!
But my point is that AT LEAST NOW DPRK *nuke* threats against SK are, while worthy of consideration, not quite as inevitable as we have been led to believe. At THIS point, SK would not disappear in blinding white flashes in 5 minutes, nope...
In 5 years? All bets are off —my guess is that DPRK warheads would be considerably smaller, more numerous, they would be reliably mated to missiles, and those missiles might even be mobile, making their detection considerably harder.
That’s it.