What happened to North Korea?

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Gaybutton
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Re: What happened to North Korea?

Post by Gaybutton »

I have a feeling if China, and possibly Russia, sees the same handwriting on the wall that I do and if they think a hot war is imminent, that's when they'll finally take more drastic steps to intervene - before half the world goes kaboom!

China and Russia did approve the UN sanctions. Maybe they'll feel it will take much more than that to put an end to this crisis before it escalates into something beyond any hope of control.
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Re: What happened to North Korea?

Post by Dodger »

firecat69 wrote:Those missiles would reach Seoul in minutes. After all, we're talking of a distance of less than 60 kms.
Maybe I should change my connecting flight.
firecat69

Re: What happened to North Korea?

Post by firecat69 »

There is no way to protect S Korea from N Korea possibly killing millions with non- nuclear weapons . That is really the problem. If S Korea did not exist , we could incinerate N Korea . We already know what a disaster a ground war would be in N Korea.

Hard to believe there is not an intelligent General in N Korea that could take Kim out but that appears to be the case.

I still believe Kim wants to maintain his families Potentate existence and will not risk a nuclear strike from the Moron Trump!
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Re: What happened to North Korea?

Post by Gaybutton »

firecat69 wrote:There is no way to protect S Korea from N Korea
I'm wondering if Trump even gives a damn about that. I believe whatever the most stupid possible thing The Great Deal Maker can do, that will be what he will do, or at least try to do.

I believe the key to solving the problem, if it still can be solved, is China. Whether China will or not remains to be seen.

Meanwhile both China and Russia both approved the sanctions. I don't see North Korea trying to threaten either of them. Of course not. Both countries could easily wipe out North Korea and neither has a stake in South Korea.

I think it's too simplistic to dismiss the sabre rattling - on both sides - as nothing more than empty tough talk. Wars have broken out over much less than that.

China has very good reasons to want to prevent North Korea from having nuclear bomb capability. See: http://us.cnn.com/2017/08/09/opinions/t ... index.html
fountainhall

Re: What happened to North Korea?

Post by fountainhall »

That CNN article is long but interesting. For those advocating that China turns the screw, the key paragraph is #12 -
Because China has traditionally seen North Korea through the prism of its broader strategic rivalry with the United States, however, some level of strategic trust between Beijing and Washington would be required to make this type of transition possible. Given the highly erratic behavior, strategic incongruity, and general unreliability of the US administration, reaching this level of strategic trust in the present context would be a tall order.
Like many, I thought that Trump had taken the first steps in developing a slightly greater degree of trust over that piece of chocolate cake. The Chinese do not appreciate open diplomacy. All is done behind closed doors. But then Trump publicly insults President Xi and China in one of his idiotic tweets. His Secretary of State and military chiefs know this was absolutely the wrong approach. If they can not rein Trump in whilst they engage in subtle behind-the-scenes diplomacy - talks that will certainly require secret agreements that the US will not act against China in the event of a unified Korean Peninsula and a gradual withdrawal of US troops from the peninsula – I have little hope that China will play ball with more than token measures.
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Re: What happened to North Korea?

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Re: What happened to North Korea?

Post by Gaybutton »

The talk about the USA's ability to shoot down missiles launched by North Korea prompts me to ask two questions:

1. What, if any, is North Korea's ability to shoot down missiles aimed at them?

2. If the USA launches missiles aimed at North Korea, would China try to shoot them down?
______________________________________________________________________________




Guam under threat: Can the US shoot down North Korean missiles?

By Ben Westcott, CNN

August 10, 2017

(CNN) - The United States is likely to "seriously consider" shooting down any North Korean missiles tests aimed at the waters around the US territory of Guam, but experts warn the technology isn't guaranteed to work.

Pyongyang doubled down on its threats to launch missiles at Guam early on Thursday, announcing a potential plan on state media for the "simultaneous fire of four Hwasong-12 (rockets)."

Adam Mount, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, told CNN the US military could use its THAAD defense system or Aegis destroyers to stop any North Korean projectiles. THAAD, or the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, is one of the US's main weapons against offensive missiles.

"If they had confidence from their readings that they would not hit US territory, it's possible they'd just let them fall into the sea, but I think they'd also take a very serious look at shooting them down," he said.

If the missiles landed within 40 kilometers (25 miles) of Guam, as threatened, according to UN law, they would fall within the United States' exclusive economic zone although not their territorial waters.

After North Korea's initial threat against Guam, the territory's Homeland Security Advisor George Charfauros told CNN he was confident of their defense systems.

"They've slowly developed their capabilities but we stand in high confidence with the US (Defense Department's) ability to not only defend Guam and the surrounding areas but also the continental US... There are several layers of ballistic missile defense."

But Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the Rand Corporation, told CNN it would ultimately be US President Donald Trump's decision whether to test their missile defenses.

"This is an experimental system -- we could potentially miss or hit, we don't know for sure. And even people who make cell phones, who have substantially more testing than THAAD does, sometimes have cell phones burn up," he said.

Mount suggested an attempt to shoot down the missile might be exactly what Kim Jong Un wants, as missing even one projectile would be an embarrassment for the US military.

How would it work?

The United States and its allies have two primary missile defense options to intercept a missile between North Korea and Guam.

In South Korea, a recently deployed THAAD missile defense system would not be able to intercept a launch toward Guam but could quickly detect the launch on its radar.

Guam itself is equipped with its own THAAD missile system, which could intercept any missiles launched from Pyongyang toward the island.
"The system's designed to engage multiple targets simultaneously, so that should be quite feasible to do," Bennett said.

However, Bennett added, it depended how far away the missiles were targeted, as the total range of THAAD was 200 kilometers (124 miles). "The closer you get to that, you're stressing the performance of the system," he said.

Alternatively, United States destroyers equipped with Aegis ballistic missile defenses could take down a missile at an even longer range, before it re-enters the Earth's atmosphere.

"The US might decide to put an Aegis system much closer to Guam to have two levels of defense, but that's a presidential decision," he said.
Carl Schuster, a Hawaii Pacific University professor and former director of operations at the US Pacific Command's Joint Intelligence Center, told CNN a single ship equipped with Aegis could probably take out two missiles.

Calling America's bluff

The United States has long trumpeted its ability to defend against missiles that threatened the country's territory, which might be what Pyongyang is counting on.

In response to North Korean missile tests, the US military has tested its missile defense system in May, and multiple times in July, although they later admitted one had failed.

But Mount said Pyongyang's threats to launch multiple missiles at Guam could be a deliberate action to call the United States' bluff on missile defense.

"It was no accident that North Korea threatened to launch four missiles, it deliberately complicates the decisions of US policy makers," he said.

If any of the four long-range missiles successfully made it through US defense, Mount said, it would be a huge victory for the rogue state.

"If the United States did try to intercept the missiles they would want to intercept all of them, because failing to intercept them all would send a message about the (US's) limited capacity ... those systems aren't perfect," he said.

Bennett said North Korea would be hoping for the US to fail, but even if the missile defenses failed it wouldn't be a disaster.

"This is a system that has never been called upon to shoot down a North Korean missile before. As a result, asking to do that for the first time, if it does, great," he said.

"If it doesn't, that means you might have some sort of software or system failure and better to find that out in peacetime rather than at war."

Story, videos, graphic: http://us.cnn.com/2017/08/10/asia/north ... index.html
fountainhall

Re: What happened to North Korea?

Post by fountainhall »

Gaybutton wrote:The talk about the USA's ability to shoot down missiles launched by North Korea prompts me to ask two questions:

1. What, if any, is North Korea's ability to shoot down missiles aimed at them?

2. If the USA launches missiles aimed at North Korea, would China try to shoot them down?
My 2 cents worth -
1. Zero.
2. No.

It's really quite amusing seeing the entire US media get so worked up about Guam. Reporters have flocked there, the island's defence capabilities have been analysed ad nauseam etc. Doesn't anyone accept that Kim is merely playing Trump at his own game? Never give away your plans is the mantra we have heard Trump spout for at least a year. So why would Kim deliberately announce he is going to attack Guam? It makes no sense unless it is total bluster. If he has some form of attack planned, I'll lay a lot of money on the table that it will not be Guam!

Besides, with the US having the means to destroy those missiles before they reach Guam, Kim will know that his chance of success will be very limited. North Korea has had considerable success in killing some of the South's cabinet, bringing down one of the South's passenger aircraft and blowing up one of the South's submarines. But these have always been surprise attacks.

Interesting article about the Kims and how they perceive themselves -
In a recent analysis of the regime’s motives, longtime North Korea watcher Andrei Lankov argued that North Korea is one of the world’s last absolute monarchies; its actions make more sense if you think of the Kims not as a modern regime, but as a conniving Renaissance-era dynasty. “Neither a Borgia or a Medici would have trouble understanding what happened in Kuala Lumpur [the recent murder of Kim's half brother], and would hardly find such behavior excessive,” he wrote.
https://www.theatlantic.com/internation ... ar/519960/
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Re: What happened to North Korea?

Post by Smiles »

Over the last years of North Korea spewing missiles all over the place -- ("just testing folks, just testing") -- I've often thought that the US was missing a great opportunity to test it's anti-missile missiles. The place would be perfect, way out in the ocean, no serious danger to any country, and could not be considered an out and out war threat -- "just target practice mate, just target practice". Mr Kim might well have gotten the point some years ago.

The real problem with these latest antics is that both Kim and Trump are kindred spirits ... i.e. both are dangerous demented idiots.
I really must go back and re-read Orwell's 1984. Big Brother Eastasia, meet Bigger Brother Oceania.
Oceania covers the entire continents of America and Oceania and the British Isles, the main location for the novel, in which they are referred to as ‘Airstrip One’.
• Eurasia covers Europe and (more or less) the entire Sov2iet Union.
• Eastasia covers Japan, Korea, China and northern India.

Unfortunately, there’s not much ‘super’ to these states except their size. All three are totalitarian dictatorships. Oceania’s ideology is Ingsoc (English Socialism), Eurasia’s Neo-Bolshevists and Eastasia’s is the Obliteration of the Self (one imagines some kind of buddhist-inspired fascism. If one can). These ideologies are very similar, but the people are not informed of this.

The three states are in a perpetual state of warfare – sometimes two against one, sometimes all three against each other. These wars are fought in the disputed territories, running from North Africa over the Middle East and southern India to Southeast Asia.

And yet…

And yet the war might just not even be real at all. It’s clear that the Oceanic media are one-sided and fabricate ‘facts’. A dissident book central to ‘1984’ suggests the two other powers may actually be a fabrication of the government of Oceania, which would make it the world government. Or, on the other side of the scale of thinkable alternatives: Airstrip One is not an outpost of a greater empire, but the sole territory under the command of Ingsoc, which fabricates eternal global war to keep its people (AKA: The Deplorables) permanently mobilised, scrutinised and on rations.
Cheers ... ( and just one more reason why I love living in Thailand )

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Re: What happened to North Korea?

Post by Gaybutton »

Smiles wrote:both are dangerous demented idiots.
That, for sure, is true.

I hope it doesn't come to that, but I can;t help but be reminded of:

"He's going to do it. Believe me, he's really going to do it."
- William Holden (Shears), 'The Bridge on the River Kwai'
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