Sky Captain wrote:Are their ICBMs actualy a credible threat against US? North Korea is too poor to afford large number of missiles to saturate defense systems. Few missiles they could launch together should be no real problem for US missile defense systems to intercept.
Besides North Korea leadreship should know perfectly well if they launch a nuclear attack against US or US ally there will be no more North Korea left. Even crazy dictators want a country to rule, they dont want to be in charge of an ash fields.
Ah, but do we want to conquer North Korea badly enough to risk having a couple of missiles slip through our ABM network and blow big smoking craters in downtown Los Angeles?
Frankly, no.
Which means that the North Korean nuclear deterrent still has a good chance of working as intended, unless we are 100% confident in our missile defenses or willing to gamble.
Which means that the North Korean nuclear deterrent still has a good chance of working as intended, unless we are 100% confident in our missile defenses or willing to gamble.
The American ABM system is virtually catered to this threat, I'd express 100% confidence in this scenario.
Against four or five missiles, sure I'd agree on 100% confidence. The US national system isn't setup to handle much more then that and its best tracking sensor is being inactivated for cost reasons.
It seems the media is now being fed RUMINT via certain North Korean business officials in China that two more nuclear tests and another 'satellite' test are planned this year. Obviously, take this with a mountain of salt, but it only makes sense. Having gotten away with the last two tests, and been successful no reason at all exists not to complete proper testing of missile and nuclear warhead design.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
I would be very reluctant to assign 100% confidence to any weapon system that hasn't been tested under field conditions. Unless we actually test the system against, say, a spread of 5-6 ICBMs launched from bases in the western Pacific and it shoots down all the targets, and does so dozens of times on repeated tests, we don't have enough data to be absolutely confident.
Would the ABM system give me more confidence in the face of a North Korean threat? Yes. Would it give me enough that I'd feel secure ignoring the North Korean nuclear deterrent and proceeding to attack North Korea? Not really, no- not unless they were the ones initiating the war.
From the point of view of North Koreans who don't want to start a war, but want security against a random foreign invasion, that's pretty good.
We have 30 operational GMDs right now. Using a standard look-look, shoot-shoot, look-look, shoot-shoot, that's enough for shooting down 7 incoming ICBMs with absolute confidence, 2 GMDs being in reserve of that requirement. Firing 2 interceptors at each missile instead of 4 would increase the shootdown to around 15 ICBMs, though with our confidence interval of a successful intercept falling toward about 98%. That still gives us a relatively large likelihood of no missiles at all getting through, and of the one that does hit failing to detonate or missing so widely as to not cause casualties (since the malfunction rate might have been as high as 33% for early nukes). Collectively that means that the DPRK needs greater than 20 ICBMs to have any realistic chance of doing damage to the US mainland, and if the objective is to overwhelm the system and punch through to hit 15 targets, you'd need around 60 missiles (since in a saturation attack we'd probably fire a single interceptor at each incoming ICBM for 80 - 90% hit rate). That would be enough to hit every major urban area on the west coast at least once, but a lot of the west coast is going to be out of range of this thing. On the other hand the warheads are so weak and the target cities so large that something like LA can soak like 20 of these warheads and still be a partially functional city the next day -- they still built stuff in Hamburg after the firebombing level, at least, is what I mean to say.
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If North Korea wants deterrent then capability to blow up Seoul or Tokyo should be good enough. Even without nukes it is highly unlikely that anyone would attack North Korea because they have capability to do large amount of damage to Seoul with artillery and short range missiles. A short range missile with nuke launched against Seoul possibly would be more dangerous than ICBM targeted at LA because reaction time for any interception would be short. And saturation attack is far easier with hundreds of relatively cheap missiles.
Even if all they have is few nukes too large to fit on ICBM in case of potetial war with US such nuke could plausibly find its way aboard container ship going to US with more chances of succesful delivery than unreliable ICBM. So it still is a valid deterrent.
Assuming they're all deployed to places where they can intercept the missiles, that's good enough- If we do indeed have those 30 missiles, with their ~80-90% hit rate, parked in Alaska or along the West Coast in the right position. Any missiles not based along the correct great circle path are out of consideration- which is a problem, given that within 5-10 years we'll need defense installations to deal with Iranian missiles too.
Given your description, yes the numbers work out- though I'd be a lot happier if someone actually tried a realistic test of the system, in the sense of "fire ten ICBMs simultaneously and see if the missiles actually DO get them all."
You might well take those odds cheerfully, someone like Skimmer or Shep probably would to... but I might not, asking myself: "Is it worth a single-digit-percentage chance of a hundred thousand casualties to attack North Korea?" That is not a trivial question; the answer is "yes" if the North Koreans are shelling Seoul, but "no" for a planned war of choice like the American invasion of Iraq. Bush might have reconsidered invading Iraq if there was a 5% chance of Saddam slipping a nuclear missile through our defenses and putting it on Manhattan.
And such a preplanned, deliberate war to 'take out' North Korea and its military is something the North Koreans are probably concerned about. I would be, in their shoes; the desire to deter that must be powerful.
That said, Sky Captain is probably right about one thing- aiming the deterrent at Seoul or Tokyo makes more sense, and they can mount bigger bombs on shorter-ranged missiles while they're at it.
I'm not so sure I agree about the container ship idea. That always struck me as questionable; the probability of success isn't necessarily much better than it would be with a missile, and the long delay in delivering the warhead hurts the deterrent effect.
North Korea threatens South with "final destruction"
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A North Korean flag on a tower flutters in the wind at a North Korean village near the truce village of Panmunjom in the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas in this picture taken just south of the border, in Paju, north of Seoul, February 15, 2013. REUTERS/Lee Jae-Won
By Tom Miles
GENEVA | Tue Feb 19, 2013 10:27am EST
(Reuters) - North Korea threatened South Korea with "final destruction" during a debate at the United Nations Conference on Disarmament on Tuesday, saying it could take further steps after a nuclear test last week.
"As the saying goes, a new-born puppy knows no fear of a tiger. South Korea's erratic behavior would only herald its final destruction," North Korean diplomat Jon Yong Ryong told the meeting.
Jon's comments drew quick criticism from other nations, including South Korea, France, Germany and Britain, whose ambassador Joanne Adamson said such language was "completely inappropriate" and the discussion with North Korea was heading in the wrong direction.
"It cannot be allowed that we have expressions which refer to the possible destruction of U.N. member states," she said.
Spanish Ambassador Javier Gil Catalina said the comment left him stupefied and appeared to be a breach of international law.
"In the 30 years of my career I've never heard anything like it and it seems to me that we are not speaking about something that is even admissible, we are speaking about a threat of the use of force that is prohibited by Article 2.4 of the United Nations charter," Catalina said.
Since the North tested a nuclear bomb last week in defiance of U.N. resolutions, its southern neighbor has warned it could strike the isolated state if it believed an attack was imminent.
Pyongyang said the aim of the test was to bolster its defenses given the hostility of the United States, which has led a push to impose sanctions on North Korea.
"Our current nuclear test is the primary countermeasure taken by the DPRK in which it exercised its maximum self-restraint," said the North Korean diplomat Jon.
"If the U.S. takes a hostile approach toward the DPRK to the last, rendering the situation complicated, it (North Korea) will be left with no option but to take the second and third stronger steps in succession," he said, without indicating what that might entail.
North Korea has already told key ally China that it is prepared to stage one or two more tests this year to force the United States into diplomatic talks, a source with direct knowledge of the message told Reuters last week.
"OFFENSIVE"
U.S. Ambassador Laura Kennedy said she found North Korea's threat on Tuesday profoundly disturbing and later tweeted that it was "offensive".
Poland's representative suggested North Korea's participation in the U.N. forum should be limited.
Impoverished and malnourished North Korea is one of the most heavily sanctioned states in the world.
It is still technically at war with South Korea after a 1950-53 civil war ended in a mere truce.
Washington and its allies are believed to be pushing to tighten the noose around North Korea's financial transactions in a bid to starve its leadership of funding.
Jon said last week's test was an act of self-defense against nuclear blackmail by the United States, which wanted to block North Korea's economic development and its fundamental rights.
"It is the disposition and firm will of the army and people of the DPRK to counter high-handed policy with tough-fist policy and to react to pressure and sanctions with an all-out counter-action," he said.
Jon said the United States had conducted most of the nuclear tests and satellite launches in history, and he described its pursuit of U.N. Security Council resolutions against North Korea as "a breach of international law and the height of double standards".
Neither Russia nor China, which are veto-wielding members of the U.N. Security Council, spoke at Tuesday's meeting in Geneva.
Before its nuclear test, North Korea was already facing growing diplomatic pressure at the United Nations.
The U.N. Human Rights Council is widely expected to order an inquiry next month into its leaders' responsibilities for crimes against humanity.
(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)
The Duchess of Zeon wrote:We have 30 operational GMDs right now. Using a standard look-look, shoot-shoot, look-look, shoot-shoot, that's enough for shooting down 7 incoming ICBMs with absolute confidence, 2 GMDs being in reserve of that requirement. Firing 2 interceptors at each missile instead of 4 would increase the shootdown to around 15 ICBMs, though with our confidence interval of a successful intercept falling toward about 98%. That still gives us a relatively large likelihood of no missiles at all getting through, and of the one that does hit failing to detonate or missing so widely as to not cause casualties (since the malfunction rate might have been as high as 33% for early nukes). Collectively that means that the DPRK needs greater than 20 ICBMs to have any realistic chance of doing damage to the US mainland, and if the objective is to overwhelm the system and punch through to hit 15 targets, you'd need around 60 missiles (since in a saturation attack we'd probably fire a single interceptor at each incoming ICBM for 80 - 90% hit rate). That would be enough to hit every major urban area on the west coast at least once, but a lot of the west coast is going to be out of range of this thing. On the other hand the warheads are so weak and the target cities so large that something like LA can soak like 20 of these warheads and still be a partially functional city the next day -- they still built stuff in Hamburg after the firebombing level, at least, is what I mean to say.
Also, this assumes that North Korea has the missiles AND is able to launch all of them. #1 priority for fighting a nuclear power, especially one that has demonstrably few qualms about using their weapons, is to seize or destroy the launch sites. I can guarantee that the US has been covering North Korea in every manner possible (moreso now where they're actually making threats and seeing some success in their tests) and probably has a good idea or even definite information on at least some of their locations. Should war erupt, the opening strike will likely include bombing every potential launch site they've identified before they manage to get a thing off the ground.
The bombardments probably wouldn't be too difficult should the sites actually be identified. The NK military is decades behind ours and the SK's, and probably wouldn't be able to effectively stop a cruise missile. The hardest part of any war would likely just be clearing out all the tunnels and bunkers after the opening invasion blows up the most obvious targets with extreme prejudice.
I'm sure their nukes are just for defense and peaceful purposes only.
At this point, I think conflict is inevitable. They've made a lot of posturing over the years, but now they at least THINK they have the capability to do what they want to do. With the government basically being an echo chamber of yes-men, there's probably nobody influential with enough sanity to get them to realize that they're basically ensuring that they get curbstomped in the next few years (maybe even this year). Any war with North Korea WILL end in their defeat unless they pull out something like the Death Star, or reveal that they've got a full modern army hidden underground and have just been pretending to have a bunch of 60s and 70s vintage equipment. The problem isn't the risk of a loss, but the economic and manpower costs of a war.
I think a lot of people are already poised to strike as soon as North Korea steps over the line. They just want to wait for them to act first to ensure that it's justifiable self-defense instead of letting anyone claim that we escalated it.
Wake up people, Kim likes his red wine and who knows what else. He does not want to be cinders, neither him nor his generals. DPRK citizenry consume this propaganda stuff, it is for internal consumption only.
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I don't believe North Korean leadership is that stupid to launch first strike. Saber rattling - yes, but actual attack unlikely. A North Korean nuke exploding in South Korea, Japan or US will be 100 % end to North Korea. They should know that. A nuke or two they could manage to deliver to US won't be end of US however that for sure would be end of North Korea.
Especially since any Nuclear Attack would have the United Nations in an complete uproar. Even if every on action Carrier didn't Steam straight for Korea, North Korea would be in massive international trouble. It would be national suicide.
It's obvious that they just want to have a bigger saber to wave around whenever they want free stuff.
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Isolder74 wrote:It's obvious that they just want to have a bigger saber to wave around whenever they want free stuff.
Works for everyone else.
I think it should be pretty embarrassing that anyone accepts the propaganda of an organisation like North Korea as a firm statement of intent or fact. Maybe people choose to accept the parts that support their pre-existing beliefs and only use the 'obvious internal propaganda' nature to dismiss the parts that don't help them.
Sky Captain wrote:I don't believe North Korean leadership is that stupid to launch first strike. Saber rattling - yes, but actual attack unlikely. A North Korean nuke exploding in South Korea, Japan or US will be 100 % end to North Korea. They should know that. A nuke or two they could manage to deliver to US won't be end of US however that for sure would be end of North Korea.
Maybe they're hoping that China will side with them (perhaps due to the recent tension with Japan).
At that point we wouldn't be talking about a costly but easily winnable war with North Korea. We'd probably be talking about a large scale nuclear war.
They are horrific, yes, but those camps hardly mean North Korea is going to launch a nuclear first strike. They rather demonstrate that North Korean leadership is entirely self-serving and wants to secure its power over the country - and with objectvies like that, nuclear first strike would hardly be a good course of action for reasons said above.
They are horrific, yes, but those camps hardly mean North Korea is going to launch a nuclear first strike.
I don't see anyone suggesting that. There's only one mention of the nukes in the article, which is the survivor stating that the nuclear deterrent is also meant to apply to their own people as part of their fear campaign.
