According to a new report in the Daily Telegraph, the concerns about a US attack on North Korea are very well-founded, and the White House has “dramatically” stepped up plans for what it is calling a “bloody nose” attack on North Korea.
Apparently ignoring months of analyst warnings that there is no way to have a “limited” war with North Korea, the White House envisions a quick, damaging attack, potentially destroying North Korea’s missile test site, and some stockpiles, which would, according to officials, show how “serious” President Trump is.
This is seen by the administration as an option short of full-scale nuclear war, and the only such option available to them since they’re bound and determined not to engage in direct diplomacy with North Korea.
The Pentagon is coming up with “multiple options” for such attacks, and while they’re all relatively vague, they all seem based on the assumption that Kim Jong Un will be so impressed with how aggressive the US is, he will cheerfully submit to all of America’s preconditions without question.
In reality, analysts agree that North Korea would see any attack as the start of a full-scale war of regime change, and standing military orders are to retaliate against US targets with everything they have, assuming everything not used will be destroyed in the US strikes at any rate.
If those multiple options are properly war gamed, then the attacks will never happen, for the same reasons that proper war games prevented the attacks proposed during the Bill Clinton Admin.
I guess Trump doesn’t think N Korea thought of this surgical strike tactic already?
BUT when Trump attacks 3000 artillery pieces will open up on Seoul.
They don’t need nukes to kill everything within 70 miles of the DMZ.
“They don’t need nukes to kill everything within 70 miles of the DMZ.”
True. But they do need weapons that 1) have that range and 2) can survive for more than a few minutes once they open fire.
Which they have in abundance since they’ve been digging in for 70 years
Yes, they’ve been digging in for 70 years — at extreme range from Seoul for their even their longest-range artillery and non-ballistic missile forces. In order to effectually bombard Seoul, they would first have to leave their prepared positions and advance several kilometers across terrain on which the RoK/US artillery is already zeroed and under likely US air supremacy.
It’s estimated they have 700 artillery pieces and missile launchers with the range to reach Seoul. They don’t have to be accurate. A 10 minute barrage would be sufficient to inflict damage equivalent to say, 10 times the 9/11 catastrophe, and there’s no way the US or South Korean air forces could stop that.
Meanwhile their short range artillery would inflict serious casualties on ground forces on the boarder.
America and South Korea could hit North Korea even harder, yes, but that doesn’t make it worth it for Seoul.
My evaluation of the DPRK’s military capabilities is obviously much different from yours. My estimate is high three to low four figure casualties, mostly minor, among civilians in Seoul.
That may be true due to civilians taking shelter and fleeing the cities. However the damage to buildings and infrastructure would be severe, particularly those big multi-national corporate headquarters. The South Korean government doesn’t want to lose them.
And they don’t have to fire them all at once.
A steady rain of shells, not huge in number but coming every hour or so, would have the desired effect.
The sirens go off, everyone in the city runs for cover, a few guns fire a few rounds of shells, then go quiet. Repeat an hour later. The political pressure on the South Korean government from that would be huge.
The US releases some videos of missiles destroying that gun emplacement. Then the next hour, another gun emplacement opens up, maybe it takes a few cycles to get the direct hit to knock it out. Then, another previously unspotted gun opens fire. Then another. Then another.
As the commenter says, they’ve had 70 years to get ready. And building the same sort of 200 mm artillery pieces that is pretty much standard in most armies as heavy artillery isn’t a high-tech challenge. They’ll have a lot of guns in caves that can hit Seoul. And they don’t really need accuracy. Seoul’s a big target.
That would be psychologically powerful. But at the same time they’ll want to force a ceasefire as quickly as possible, so they’ll try and make the initial barrage as impressive as they can.
I’m pretty sure the South Korean government are aware of all this, so our best hope for peace is that they don’t let the Americans start a war on their territory.
They only have to fire a handful of shell per hour to achieve the goal of creating panic and confusion. These shells don’t have to have any degree of accuracy; random explosions and very accurately placed rounds are about equally effective when the goal is to create panic.
Ballistic radar systems use mathematical models to locate the firing source. Poor manufacturing quality of the rounds, and poor condition of the tubes, would actually be an advantage since these factors would significantly increase the error circle of ballistic radar used to locate them.
Ultimately the US and ROK would succeed in silencing these guns but not before a great deal of harm was done.
US will have air supremacy but, this was true in Vietnam. Supremacy did not stop massive amounts of equipment being moved every day down the Ho Chi Minh trail.
And the Soviets were considered totally incapable of launching Sputnik. Right?
It seems to me that you are overly naive.
“A few minutes” is recklessly optimistic. How long these artillery pieces will continue to fire depends to the degree to which they are concealed and protected and the resources available to attack them. Ballistic radar can locate them quite accurately but counter battery fire does not have the precision to destroy them with a single salvo if they are in hardened emplacements. Even laser guided munitions would be challenged to destroy well prepared positions. There is a large difference between destroying a building in the open and doing the same to a military emplacement on a mountainside.
Very likely the US preferred choice of 250 and 500 lb bombs would not be sufficient. Larger bombs would be more successful but fewer of these can be carried by strike aircraft.
The rather modest damage, and high failure rate, of the cruise missile attack on the Syrian air base provides some useful insight into the divergence between claims and the actual performance.
Ultimately the DPRK artillery can be neutralized but this is more likely to take days rather than minutes and some positions will continue to operate until they are physically overrun.
Failure is a certainty if the goal hinges on the best possible outcome of each step of the plan.
Well, hopefully we won’t find out how that goes. In this particular case, I’d rather be wrong and never know it than right and have it proven.
The best way to avoid war is to be realistic about the costs, the sacrifices and the outcome. I think too many people have too much faith in manufacturer’s claims of the effectiveness of their weapons and by overestimated abilities of the military (any military) to use these weapons to their predicted effectiveness.
Too little attention was paid to the near unique opportunity provided in Syria. People were able to see what a 100 million dollar salvo of cruise missiles gets you – not much.
Any war with DPRK is not be a bloodless affair where technology removes the need for both sides dying in large numbers.
More like months than days. With 20,000 artillery and missile batteries, many with heavy protection, others mobile and hard to track, it will take more than days to destroy them.
NK terrain is mostly hills and mountains with deep valleys. That kind of terrain mitigates against air power being effective, as was demonstrated in Yugoslavia where the US used massive air power and most of Yugoslavia’s military assets survived nicely despite overblown US/NATO claims of total success.
This report serves to illustrate the problem:
Operation Allied Force and the Role of Air Power
http://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/parameters/articles/99winter/tilford.htm
The Saker also has an excellent piece analyzing the problems with invading North Korea:
Debunking the flagwaving myths about an attack on North Korea
http://thesaker.is/debunking-the-flagwaving-myths-about-an-attack-on-north-korea/
The Saker article was excellent. All I could think about while going thru it was how many hundreds or thousands of US bodybags it would take to win that war. I hope Trump is not that stupid. I hope.
Let’s quit the efficiency of “Bloody Nose” for a moment. The UN would have no choice but condemn such an attack as a war crime. After all N. Korea is a UN member. Yes, it has ignored UN resolutions but it is not the only state which has done that.
The Syrian case demonstrates that “Bloody Nose” attacks tend to be followed by the devastation of cities and then “we will stay there militarily”. Indefinitely.
There is no middle road between negotiations and complete occupation of NK. Non-occupied NK can repair every destruction to its defense in time. It may take long but that will happen. With the help of China.
Closer to the truth is that candidate and later President Trump talked himself into a hole by blasting the Obama administration for having done nothing to prevent NK to obtain a nuclear arsenal and potentially the means of delivery. Now he must prove that his were not idle words.
Newsweek or Time ran a story back in the 90’s I believe about the artillery in the mountains above the DMZ. The report stated that they had tunnels, fortifications ect with thousands of conventional and rocket artillery. Like the Japanese WW2 fortifications on steroids.
Which North Korea has plenty of both, although there are limitations in rate of fire and logistics. NK theoretically can deliver half a million shells per hour on Seoul. But the actual rate will be much less.
However, it’s unlikely that NK will actually try to destroy Seoul in any event. They will target the SK and US forces first. You don’t waste time killing civilians when you have serious military forces to attack – unless, of course, you’re the US who specializes in killing civilians.
Of course, Seoul is the capital so it will come in for a lot of shelling due to government and military offices, etc. But killing all 30 million people is unlikely.
As for the artillery surviving, many of them are in deep bunkers and are rolled out to fire and will have hours if not days before they are destroyed. Given that there are almost 20,000 of them, do the math. There’s no way they will be destroyed soon.
The same applies to the one million man army and 80-200,000 Special Forces and 50-odd submarines.
No matter what, a war with NK will not be over in weeks, but rather many months. And that’s if China doesn’t enter the war, which they have already said they will if the US initiates an attack.
“No matter what, a war with NK will not be over in weeks, but rather many months.”
If by war you mean some kind of ground invasion scenario, it could possibly even take years.
If by war you mean destruction of the North’s nuclear and ballistic missile capacity as well as its offensive military capability at the 38th parallel and near-100% degradation of its command/control/communications/intelligence capacity, try hours.
You’re delusional…
North Korea is not Libya or even Iraq. It is many times larger in everything related to its military. The age of its military force is not even that significant a factor.
And a ground invasion won’t take years – or at least more than one – because China will enter the war first and force another armistice.
What WILL take years is the insurgency that will arise if the North’s military is conventionally defeated. Given the number of NK Special Forces and the militia reserve, not to mention the sheer number of the North’s military forces to begin with, the insurgency will be ten times greater than the ones in Afghanistan and Iraq and cost ten times as many US and SK lives.
hours? I seriously doubt it. Have you ever seen how effective digging in even under a few meters of earth is?
The most effective and destructive means of inflicting damage and death in war is and has been artillery.
NK knows that and that is why they have so many pieces of artillery in range of Seoul
“Have you ever seen how effective digging in even under a few meters of earth is?”
Yes, I have. Have you?
This is an anti-war site, not one that tries to come up with tactical solutions and strategies for what can only be a reckless, illegal, and immoral war. Absent a real negotiated settlement between North and South Korea, this is can only end badly for everyone involved… including US.
This is a shame, I didn’t think Trump was this suicidal…
I doubt it’s actually Trumps own idea, but I can see hawks presenting it to him in a way that Trump falls in love with it. Of all recent Presidents, Trump is probably more given to being seduced with proposals of military muscle-flexing and demonstrations of resolve.
Fortunately in this case the apparent discord & mistrust within the Republican Party and the Administration itself, having the President on side may not be the decisive factor for the Korea hawks.
I’m sure there is a faction in both the political & military leadership which is convinced they could get away with a hard one-day strike, that North Korean commanders on the ground and even General staff would initially hesitate to proceed with the full scale retaliation from a combination of shock & confusion and optimistic hope that the action was something less than the beginning of invasion. The potential secondary benefit of this would be an outraged Kim ordering purges on such a scale that would gut the NK military of experienced officers and maybe even even spark opposition from within the military.
There’s fair chance that such a gamble could work, but it’s criminally irresponsible because the consequences to the Korean people would be devastating if it didn’t go as planned. However the immorality of this may not be enough to dissuade hawks.
Any confidence in a military solution in North Korea is both reckless and
immoral. Most assessments suggest massive deaths in South Korea from conventional warfare, much less a nuclear war. Shouldn’t they have a say in whether or not their country is destroyed, or the Japanese for whom this conflict will be catastrophic as well?
The USA is a rogue nation on steroids right now. It’s hard to say what exactly is driving all this because it makes no sense economically or politically to alienate the rest of the world and turn the country into a pariah… except maybe for that smallest fraction of the one percenters who profit from the misery of others.
Well, that small fraction of 1 percenters own and control the government. Ivy League political scientists did a report a couple of years ago, and found that ordinary people had zero voice in decisions of their government. Political donors did have a voice of course, so they declared that America is an oligarchy not a democracy. And of course, its that tiny fraction of 1 percenters that really count as donors. A donor giving the ‘max’ of $2k to a candidate doesn’t count compared to Sheldon Adelson who gives tens of millions. Which is why Sheldon Adelson bought Trump’s Israeli policy and the voices of normal people or even the people who give a $100 to a politician don’t count these days.
Thus, the government works to make profits for that small fraction who gives big bucks. And the banks and the merchants of death find war to be so profitable that America is now in an endless war and an endless search to create new wars for bigger profits.
The funny thing is the corporate media keeps our attention on only North Korea or only Iran, acting as if war is coming soon in either place.
But not one of these amazing plans that supposedly gurantee victory ever notice that we seem to be barreling towards wars in both places at the same time.
Also what is funny is how the corporate media has turned a blind eye to both Trump and Saudi Arabia’s massive war crimes and crimes against humanity of Yemen. Now, if North Korea was doing this to South Korea, do you think Nikki Haley would keep her mouth shut? NOT.
This, like the “plan” to strike Iran, is a foolish action not deserving of the term “plan”. The plan leaves opponent with multiple options which the US military must respond to. The plan implicitly passes the initiative to the enemy. DPRK might do nothing, might bombard Seoul, might launch an ICBM, might invade the South etc.
A successful military action involves controlling the enemy by executing the plan which forces the opponent to respond in certain predicted ways. Punching a guy in the nose, who has a gun, to see if he will use it isn’t a plan.
You don’t need a plan to start a war but you do need a plan to win or end a war. Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq are examples of wars that were successfully started.
Indeed. It has long been known that states initiate wars against other states because they believe that they can win. “Bloody nose” does not do anything about fists.
If the U.S. preemptively attacks N. Korea, the probability is quite high that China will immediately invade Taiwan.
I don’t think China will immediately invade Taiwan, because that could lead directly to WWIII.
However, China can certainly threaten Taiwan in various ways and raise the tensions to distract the US and force the US to consider the possibility as part of its war planning for NK. The US can’t ignore the possibility that China will invade Taiwan.
China is already making threatening noises over US military visits to Taiwan precisely to warn the US that it could take asymmetric action during a war with North Korea.
When America negotiates it expects the other side to give in to its demands before sitting down at the table. If the other side demanded the same thing we would laugh in their face. If America does a “bloody nose” attack on another country we expect no response and an immediate capitulation to all our demands. If another country were to do a bloody nose attack on us we would turn that country into a parking lot within days. So wonderful to be so g damn exceptional.
It is what it is. Kim will be given final warning before the limited strikes and also warned that any disproportionate offensive response will be matched with total war, meaning his personal death and mass destruction of his country. Russia and China will be briefed. Whether this happens before or after the Olympics is still up in the air, but it has already been decided upon.
You missed my point. Kim is irrelevant.
Typical American war planning. Remember how Iraq was going to be a ‘cake walk’ and how we’d actually pay for the war and make a profit from the oil?
The ‘experts’ of course did not predict that the Iraqis wouldn’t like having their country invaded and would organize an insurgency and that 13 years later we’d still be fighting the Sunni part of the country that had backed Saddam.
Typical. These pro-war war experts who live in mansions by promoting these wars never see the real result of their wars. Or if they do, they surely don’t tell the rest of us suckers that it won’t be a cake walk and that just giving someone a bloody nose usually just makes them really mad at you.
Maybe Nikki Haley is right for once to warn the US team not to go to the Seoul Olympics. (sarcasm!)
If you noticed, Nikki got shut down very, very fast on that one. Within a day or so she’d backtracked on that one.
Remember, America is ruled by money. NBC/Comcast have paid millions for the rights to broadcast those games. And American corporations have probably already paid for advertising and made plans to roll out new products using that advertising.
So, it didn’t take long for the real money and the real power to quickly tell Nikki to sit down and shut up on that one.
Hey, if you keep predicting it every day for long enough, you may eventually manage the stopped clock trick.
Hey, be nice to Ice Man. Its so kind of him to report to us what his daily propaganda briefings in his barracks are telling him. The Russians probably spent milions to find out what he’s telling us for free.
He would be a tolerable President if he would just learn to wear his muzzle when within range of press microphones… 2.25 cheers, out of 5 for, For President Trump…… Hip Hip Hurrah Hip Hip Hurrah. Hip Hip Hu………
Sounds like these are the same crack analysts who told us that the Iraqi people would love us and hold a parade where they all waved little American flags and thanked us for invading their country.
If you own real estate in Seoul, this would be good time to sell.
If you think you can make a profit buying bombed out and radioactive real estate in Seoul, just wait a few months.
Not only that, but the whole exercise is admitting that the Homeland is NOT defended from the attacks that COULD be launched from N. Korea if Kim was as stupid and ignorant as Trump is. All the “defense” spending is for aggression only.
A “Bloody Nose” must be done well before February 2018 otherwise numerous Olympic athletes will be endangered. It is probably already too late. “Bloody Noses” will have to be postponed until March 2018 or later when the athletes are gone.
You’re probably right. No one wants to fight a war in North Korea during the winter. Spring is much more likely – unless Trump thinks an attack over Christmas and New Year’s is a bright idea…
Considering the increasing number of North Korea soldiers risking their lives to cross the DMZ to freedom in South Korea, it seems foolish to attack North Korea rather than let the military forcibly take over the country from Kim.
When a dictator can’t feed his army and their families, the generals there know they won’t have the loyalty of their soldiers. Let NK collapse on it’s own socialism and poverty.
Capitalism and poverty . Just like the US.
And in return, N. Korea plans a smoking mushroom cloud attack. Sounds like a fair trade just to make yourself feel better….right Mr. Trump???
This will be one of Trump’s biggest mistakes ever! And, it would totally illegal under international law and U.S. Domestic law.
Putin and Xi need to step up and make it clear to that orange idiot that an attack on Pyongyang will be considered an attack on Beijing and Moscow. We need M.A.D. now more than we ever have before.
Yes, the U.S. needs to realize that if we are giving out war guarantees to nations brought into NATO it is to be expected that China and Russia can give out war guarantees as well.
America risks a black eye if a Korea operation goes south like all the other recent moves. The cap feather isn’t worth having unless North Korea changes into South Korea. Will the Chinese or Russians allow American bases north of the 38th parallel? Highly unlikely.
American could be fighting Russian and Chinese ‘volunteers’ before they clear the landing craft.
We live in the anti-world where idiots lead “states”.
As far as I could read before I hit The Times firewall, this story is unsourced. That means it is hearsay, unfounded, gossip. In fact we should call it fake news.
Antiwar.com should not be repeating this stuff. It is beneath you.