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[Phmcw]

...
Ok. Now I know why we always loose all wars. (Viet nam, Corea, Irak, afganistan...) .
You want to HOLD the contry. So you have to make war in a way that don't antagonize the civilians. (hint: slaughtering their troops is a bad idea, because it's slaughtering the children and brother of everyone left in the country.)

[DJ]

And yet they get shot down.  NATO had two planes down, and several more damaged during bombing of Serbia, and NK has a LOT more firepower than Serbia.

[Il Palazzo]

Kim Jong-il, watch out, the evil google earth sees your defences
An interesting article overall.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

Aren't the newest generation of stealth fighter/bombers even harder to spot, and too fast to hit on top of that? The ones generally derided as being "so awesome that there's literally nothing at all we will ever need that much awesome to deal with"?

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Aren't the newest generation of stealth fighter/bombers even harder to spot, and too fast to hit on top of that? The ones generally derided as being "so awesome that there's literally nothing at all we will ever need that much awesome to deal with"?

Said the caveman, holding up the first spear.

Haven't we lost at least one or two of every single weapon and vehicle we've ever put into a warzone?

[smjjames]

Aren't the newest generation of stealth fighter/bombers even harder to spot, and too fast to hit on top of that? The ones generally derided as being "so awesome that there's literally nothing at all we will ever need that much awesome to deal with"?

Said the caveman, holding up the first spear.

Haven't we lost at least one or two of every single weapon and vehicle we've ever put into a warzone?

Well yea, nothing is ever 100% unhittable, un-killable, whatever, except some DF megabeasts. Parts break down, miscommunication happens, someone gets a lucky shot, bad planning, etc.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

I don't believe those have ever been deployed in a conflict of any sort. See the "generally derided as 'so fucking awesome there's totally nothing we can use this for that wouldn't be anti-climactic and shit'" thing.

Also note that I'm being facetious here.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Do you mean the new stealth fighter jets that look just like regular fighter jets? Those haven't been deployed yet? I didn't know.

[Aqizzar]

If you're talking about the F-22, no, they haven't really been deployed.  I think the Air Force does have about a dozen of them, but thankfully the plug was pulled on funding.  Yes, I said luckily, because the war with the USSR it was made to fight will never happen, it didn't even really work at it's assigned roll, and against a target like North Korea wouldn't be any more effective than the US's standing arsenal.  Which in this case would be mostly cruise missiles, B-1s, and eventually B-52s flying at stratospheric altitude.

I don't why the North Korean military is being batted around like they rely on Flintstones technology.  They buy tons of weapons from Russia and China, and you can be damn sure that if the United States actually was involved in another war there, China would hand them all the classified specs they've stolen, as a lab-test of their weapons against US designs.  Or just for shits and giggles really, it is China after all.  The countryside is littered with weapons already - automated radar-guided SAM launchers and anti-tank guns, and probably more land mines than anywhere else on Earth.  Then factor in the tunnel networks riddling the mountains and God only knows what other traps a bored and paranoid military can devise, and manned by a fanatically loyal universal militia very familiar with both the terrain and evading the notice of military authorities.  Compared to the rest of the real world, North Korea is basically the Final Boss of invasion scenarios, precisely because they've been ruled for sixty years by paranoid dictatorships who've made a national industry of preparing for a Western-backed invasion.

[Cthulhu]

Seriously, why the hell are we talking about flak guns?  This is 2010, Somalia has moved past that. 

The real problem here is that we're talking about open war with a nuclear power.  A nuclear power that is completely insane.  I think we should consider diplomacy.  And by diplomacy I mean turn North Korea into glass.

[Dwarf]

The question is: Are NKs nuclear weapons, if the exist, prepared and do they have the necessary early warning system for nuclear retaliation?

Also, I suppose China would be pretty pissed with a nuclear bomb 'sploding so close to the border.

[smjjames]

Seriously, why the hell are we talking about flak guns?  This is 2010, Somalia has moved past that. 

The real problem here is that we're talking about open war with a nuclear power.  A nuclear power that is completely insane.  I think we should consider diplomacy.  And by diplomacy I mean turn North Korea into glass.

Yea, their unpredictability plus the fact that they are a nuclear power is why everybody is on edge about it.

[Footkerchief]

The question is: Are NKs nuclear weapons, if the exist, prepared and do they have the necessary early warning system for nuclear retaliation?

Nukes are probably not the prime concern in any planners' minds.  NK doesn't need them to flatten Seoul.

It's also not particularly relevant whether they can shoot down bombers, because:

The United States must assume, for the sake of planning, that U.S. airstrikes would be followed by massed artillery fire on Seoul. Now, massed artillery is itself not immune to countermeasures. But North Korea’s artillery  lies deep inside caves and fortifications all along the western section of the demilitarized zone (DMZ). An air campaign against these guns would take a long time, during which enormous damage would be done to Seoul and the South Korean economy — perhaps on the order of several hundred thousand high-explosive rounds per hour. Even using tactical nuclear weapons against this artillery would pose serious threats to Seoul. The radiation from even low-yield weapons could force the evacuation of the city.

That source is just the first one I found on a quick search.  It's common knowledge that NK has Seoul by the balls.  Stealth bombers and precision weapons are not magic, and they're especially not the kind of magic that can blast away mountains fast enough to prevent massive civilian casualties.

[Dwarf]

I was responding to Cthulhu's "transform them to glass" post.
For all we know, Kim-Jong Il is a madman.

[Footkerchief]

I was responding to Cthulhu's "transform them to glass" post.
For all we know, Kim-Jong Il is a madman.

Ah.  Yeah, the US nuking NK is itself nothing short of a deranged fantasy, mainly because SK has nothing to gain from it.