How the hell has North Korea managed to build a massive military stockpile?

News.com.au ^ | April 19, 2017 | Charis Chang news.com.au

[2ndDivisionVet]

FROM the outside North Korea looks like an impoverished state cut off from the rest of the world.

But during its weekend procession, the isolated regime managed to put on an impressive display of its rockets and military strength, in defiance of growing American warnings about its military capability.

While many have the impression of North Korea being a poor country that can’t feed its own people, Leonid Petrov told news.com.au that it had large stockpiles of natural resources that it used to fund its weapons research.

“North Korea is a mountainous country that has huge natural resources including deposits of high quality coal, gold, silver, uranium, iron ore and rare earth metals,” said Dr Petrov, a visiting fellow at the Australian National University College of Asia and the Pacific.

He said North Korea had exported its minerals to allies such as China and the Soviet Union for decades until the collapse of the communist bloc.

Since then it had been more proactive in international trade, although the tightening of sanctions has seen its export ability curtailed recently.

Dr Petrov said China in particular had maintained trade in North Korea and was keen to keep a monopoly on its rare earth metal trade.

“So China buys everything North Korea is prepared to offer (of its rare earth metals),” he said.

These metals are important because they are used the production of many 21st century products like mobile phones, computers, LCD screens and cars....

[Yosemitest]

"And if that happened, the mice could have been at the bottom of the mountain even before the plane arrived. "

"WHAT IFs" are so much fun ...


They could have been on the aircraft ... BEFORE the crash.

Consider this:

The Clinton administration orders a Compartmentalized Intelligence Security Mission, and briefs the pilot before the flight that a "Spec Ops BlackWater Team" will go with them for a "No-Coordination Parachute Mission" in Southern Croatia, and are not to be documented on any paperwork, anywhere.
The jump is to be made from the rear door and the crew will need to close the aircraft door after the jump.
Before the flight the aircraft has already been 'set up' for the compass to be off by a few degrees.
One of the "Spec Ops' team has to be in the cockpit to update the pilot and copilot of minor corrections just before the jump, but the passenger attendant doesn't have a "need to know" about those adjustments, but is to close the door after the jump.
That one "Spec Ops" member in the cockpit, takes care of business while the other members of that 'team' prepare and do the jump,
and then he rushes to the back after finishing off the cockpit, and makes his jump as the last member of that team.
The passenger attendant closes the door and goes to his seat for the landing.
The pilots are now incapacitated, and the aircraft crashes into the mountain.
The team, now descending on square parachutes maneuvers the chutes toward the direction of the aircraft that has crashed.
They land, bury their chutes, or take them up the mountain to the wreckage and throw them into the fire, and them 'complete their mission' ensuring that Ron Brown didn't survive to tell his story.

How's that for a "what if" ?

[Redwood71]

Accelerated free fall (AFF) jumps occur between 10,000 and 13,000 feet, while static jumps can be as low as 3,500 feet and the plane is typically travelling at between 80 and 110 mph when the skydiver jumps. The minimum stall speed for a 737-200 with controlled flaps of around 40 degrees and moderately loaded is around 150 MPH. If they tried to drop the speeds to get the airspeed down to a jumping capacity, they’d have stalled and hit the ground when they tried to jettison the jumpers.

Additionally, while in the air, the average exit hatch has about 3 to 4 tons of pressure holding it in place. Even on the ground, once the pressurization is turned on, there’s maybe 400 to 800 pounds of pressure. So if a hatch was going to be opened anywhere on the aircraft in flight, it would have had to have been blown and there was nothing in the NTSB report about an explosion to release the hatch. And they can get a lot from bent metal and outward burns if they had been there.

I think someone was on the flight to fall on their sword for the Clintons. And it isn’t the first time. They were there to kill Brown and whoever was necessary, and shoot the pilots and fly the aircraft into the mountain. It just seems strange to me that an aircraft can veer and hit the biggest mountain in the area. Why not a smaller one? It was made sure it happened.

And if the compass that they already said was older was going to fail, how did it happen at that point and not any time during the flight when it would have been noticed? Someone changed the ascent during approach by that 5 degrees.

rwood

[AFreeBird]

Slave labor. Be the inspiration for Mooch’s school lunch program, only on a national scale? Iran probably helped.

[Yosemitest]

"And if the compass that they already said was older was going to fail, how did it happen at that point and not any time during the flight when it would have been noticed?"

Hand-held GPS. Even a modern iPone has apps for pilots that work off of GPS and are very accurate.
But I think that mountain was in that 400 feet broken layer or that 2,000 feet overcast layer. and not visible except for airborne radar detection.
That measurement is the base of the cloud layer from ground elevation, not sea level, and if it was taken by an automated system, the measurement is only for directly above that machine.
I hate automated weather reporting machines, and I think they are a flying safety hazard.
I'm a real believer in an actual person using controllable equipment to measure the conditions, and to actually look out their windows and watch the weather, to formulate those reports.
But that's a whole other subject, and government budgeting wants to reduce labor cost and go to automation, so there's more funds they can waste or embezzle.

The other "What if" would be a 'chase plane", but you'd still have to have a way to throw the plane off course.
If you look closely at those after crash photos, you notice the tail section of the aircraft was in pretty good shape, and someone did survive the crash, but died later in the hospital.
So it's possible someone else might have survived it, in that tail section.
But that really is "grasping for straws".

[Redwood71]

“So it’s possible someone else might have survived it, in that tail section.”

Possible yes, but a real gamble to make sure the “accident” needed to be assured. The only way I think they could have had time to do their cleanup before anyone arrived would have been a chopper, placed, so they could get out after confirmation of a complete kill or someone on the way to dying like the TS. They were sloppy, though. They could have easily killed her with a rock and been fine. But hey, that’s where the words “good enough for government” could have been used.

rwood

[Paladin2]

The first intervention into NORK should be by the Fashion Police. Those hat wearers could be blown away by a light breeze.

[Paladin2]

We do have some, but mining and dirt processing in the US is suppressed by the Left.

However, the ARE rare.

[poconopundit]

“The Bear (Russia) and Red Dragon (China) have been drawn into an economic battle space controlled by the Eagle (Trump-USA).”

Love it.

[DoodleDawg]

A total mystery, Clinton told us he stopped them.

According to the story Clinton did. Bush cancelled the agreement and they started back up again.