"Here is how a preemptive strike on North Korea would..." Topic

… go down.

link

Amicalement
Armand

Possibly the biggest gap is any consideration of the Chinese reaction.

And the sky is blue… (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Reading this now -- I'm not only concerned about the military prospects, but the general fallout from the US launching it's own version of Pearl Harbor on another nation. With the added factor of So. Korea and Japan being caught, unasked, in the middle.

I can't think of a situation that would make NK MORE likely to launch a missile barrage than the fear it was going to be pre-emptively sneak attacked. I do not think there is wisdom in the current US policy.

For the record the US Secretary of State never said the US was contemplating a preemptive strike. He was asked a question by a reporter and answered everything is on the table. Everything, meaning all options, is always on the table. The only thing that has changed is the extreme nastiness of the press towards the current administration. I blame any warmongering on the press. Nothing like a war to drive up ratings on CNN which is no longer a legitimate news source.

Wellsaid USAFpilot. All options is always an option.

Same with questions like "Can you rule out…"

The answer is of course "no" as an option can never be ruled out…

Seems a very optimistic view…

And I'm not sure an air force with close on 1000 aircrat, however old, can be described as 'small'….

South Korea and Japan would have to be on board with it from the beginning, and openly assisting, or it would be a disaster.

Pretty sure South Korea would be thrilled to finally get rid of their idiot neighbor.

The challenge would be getting Japan onboard, and a couple more missile tests flying over Japan should settle that discussion.

When it comes to military hardware numbers is not a very important deciding factor. 1000 aircraft with poorly trained pilots is nothing but missile targets for modern aircraft with well trained pilots with good command and control.

Also it greatly depends on how many of those aircraft that are actually airworthy.

But I agree, 1000 aircraft on paper is not a small airforce but I doubt there are 1000 airworthy aircraft.

Attacking North Korea pre-emptively would bring China into the war and things would become very dangerous from that point onwards. Attacking North Korea by conventional means is impractical and would only inflame the region. If pressed too hard the North Koreans or more remotely the Chinese might resort to nuclear, chemical and biological warfare on the Korean Peninsula, banking on the faint hope that such an act might cause the US to pause or relent. If the US responded with its own nuclear strikes after its pre-emotive war on North Korea got out of control then the world would turn against it and it would become a piriah nation. The US has far more to lose than North Korea and marginally more to lose than China.

Best to avoid open military confrontation with North Korea and work to collapse the state from within.

Rod Robertson.

If NK was going to collapse then it's taking it's time doing so.
I should think those American chaps will have already considered subtle destabilisation. Bit tricky doing so in a militaristic paranoid dictatorship – I'd take a wild guess and suggest this may be why no internal led collapse has happened.

The obvious approach is to get China to apply pressure.
Which is what is being done.

That could well fail.
Political pressure hasn't had much effect on NK.

The US can hope for the best but it needs to plan for the worst.
China seems to be increasingly unhappy with the belligerence of NK.
If things worsen and NK looks like it's realistically going to attack USA then China might conceivably support US in some sort of military action.

Having just participated in Key Resolve ( link )….this article is so ridiculously optimistic it might as well be classified as war porn or science fiction.

And here's a good RAND publication about potential for a North Korean collapse: ( link )

My thoughts exactly Noble. The threat from all that artillery on Seoul seems downplayed as well.

It will simply take a very long while to hit several thousand artillery pieces – given youve got to take out the AAA and air force as well.

Even if that takes less than a day, that's a hell of a lot of metal hitting downtown Seoul.

TBH the way to stop the NK army might be to simply put a lot of MREs in their way.