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How effective would a CIWS be against conventional artillery? I'm sure Iron Dome would be overwhelmed, but what about batteries of Phalanx?

They used them against stuff in Iraq but that was rockets not shells. They tend to be faster and harder to hit. Also rockets have a far more obvious firing method with smoke plumes.

And Israel I believe considered but also there was issues with shrapnel falling from ammunition fired or something like that.
Batteries maybe but even they would need to reload, and burn ammo quickly.

Also they could be overwhelmed anyway.


They are testing a CWIS laser.
That might be more effective as well light speed + no collateral damage and "infinite" ammo long as got power.

There idea was layers from Davids sling and anti ICBM to Iron beam and Dome against rockets and shells.

NK's leadership wants to modernize their economy but that isn't really possible without access to international markets. The US wants NK to abandon its nuclear program. A diplomatic solution seems pretty self evident in this situation and the general picture of such a deal is pretty obvious. NK gives... cessation of nuclear weapons development/rockets. US gives NK a full peace treaty and normalized trade relations and a framework for integration with south korea in the future.

Obviously the details of such an agreement are complex but the general idea is not. Seems like it would be vastly cheaper than any military solution that has 0% chance for a positive outcome.

 Ouze wrote:
How effective would a CIWS be against conventional artillery? I'm sure Iron Dome would be overwhelmed, but what about batteries of Phalanx?

Phalanx is short range hold your breath final line of defense like a 2 mile range. So that's maybe a four grid coverage. Since its tube artillery and Artillery fires in Batteries or Battery 8-12 tube a battery it'll be overwhelm and a bit ineffective since a plotted artillery fire deals with a location plus immediate surrounding area of the location. It won't be one round fired per tube. It'll be 5-6 rounds and move the Hell out to the next firing position.

I do believe SK, China, US of A hoping for a regime change of some sort. No ones wants to go in NK because of the terrain. I feel better if China has Peace Keepers there since everyone would agree with that even when we support the humanitarian effort to help the poor SOB's there.

Red Phoenix is a good read.

As for the nuke capable missile they haven't gone ICBM yet. They have a better chance nailing Okinawa and Japan. Pusan will more likely be hit. If they accomplish that then we're forced to stage out of Hawaii which then becomes a more worth while target. Since the UN becomes involve in the conflict I feel Australia will take some fire. By then China rolls in with Armor and Airborne units to get a freaking handle on the situation or their farmlands becomes contaminated north of NK and SE China thereby putting a severe hurt on their agriculture production alone. Doubt this though. I feel China would more likely roll in and set up a puppet government and keep a secure border between "US" and them

 Jihadin wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
How effective would a CIWS be against conventional artillery? I'm sure Iron Dome would be overwhelmed, but what about batteries of Phalanx?

Phalanx is short range hold your breath final line of defense like a 2 mile range. So that's maybe a four grid coverage. Since its tube artillery and Artillery fires in Batteries or Battery 8-12 tube a battery it'll be overwhelm and a bit ineffective since a plotted artillery fire deals with a location plus immediate surrounding area of the location. It won't be one round fired per tube. It'll be 5-6 rounds and move the Hell out to the next firing position.

I do believe SK, China, US of A hoping for a regime change of some sort. No ones wants to go in NK because of the terrain. I feel better if China has Peace Keepers there since everyone would agree with that even when we support the humanitarian effort to help the poor SOB's there.

Red Phoenix is a good read.

As for the nuke capable missile they haven't gone ICBM yet. They have a better chance nailing Okinawa and Japan. Pusan will more likely be hit. If they accomplish that then we're forced to stage out of Hawaii which then becomes a more worth while target. Since the UN becomes involve in the conflict I feel Australia will take some fire. By then China rolls in with Armor and Airborne units to get a freaking handle on the situation or their farmlands becomes contaminated north of NK and SE China thereby putting a severe hurt on their agriculture production alone. Doubt this though. I feel China would more likely roll in and set up a puppet government and keep a secure border between "US" and them

Yes. And key targets. This NK. Maybe hundred + aimed at them in reality.
What hundreds of shells per minute raining down. All our fancy tech won,t save you from that.

There's too many incoming projectiles to shoot down. Defense against them is pretty impossible.
Any battle they gonna win the early stages.

Allied airpower and such can turn tide buy not for a while. Maybe days.
There's alot of tanks n guns to blunt.

And China probbly intervene politics or military. At least lining the river border with China with many thousands of troops to control/defend it., refugee/deserters.

It sounds like the only guaranteed military option is a nuclear first strike.

Not such a hot option for anyone involved, or anyone not involved either.

I'm gonna fall back to that earlier plan of buying them out

 Ouze wrote:
It sounds like the only guaranteed military option is a nuclear first strike.

Not such a hot option for anyone involved, or anyone not involved either.

I'm gonna fall back to that earlier plan of buying them out

Too many NK and too many guns to disable in short time. They gonna get some through if they throw ernough at the DMZ.
There not high tech but numerous. We could win. Of course just be bloody, and very destructive.

NKs artillery is way overstated. It will damage Seoul, but not annihilate it.

Evacuate Seoul first. Very difficult, but not impossible, to do. We can pay for any rebuilding after.

Then throw the works at them. They will fold.

If China helps from the north, then they can help decide the future of a unified Korea. If not, we get to park our tanks and planes and drones on the Chinese border.

 JimOnMars wrote:
NKs artillery is way overstated. It will damage Seoul, but not annihilate it.

Evacuate Seoul first. Very difficult, but not impossible, to do. We can pay for any rebuilding after.

Then throw the works at them. They will fold.

If China helps from the north, then they can help decide the future of a unified Korea. If not, we get to park our tanks and planes and drones on the Chinese border.

Surely doing nothing is preferable to an ungodly bloodbath isnt it?

 Ouze wrote:
It sounds like the only guaranteed military option is a nuclear first strike.

Not such a hot option for anyone involved, or anyone not involved either.

The current US plan is to hit NK nuclear facilities with stealth aircraft and then drop SpecOps to locate and destroy NK's AA capability. Once (if) those are neutralized, and NKs airbases destroyed (all 1500 of them) US airpower will pummel the North into submission while also somehow withstanding the inevitable ground assault where they'd only be outnumbered 4 to 1 in the BEST scenario. NK has about 2 million men in active service, but another 7 million in reserves. The US has 2 million in total, counting reserves, in all branches of the service. While South Korea can theoretically make up the difference in manpower, it would mostly be poorly armed and trained reservists. How many would be able to serve if NK starts with a massive chemical attack is also up to debate.


as far as NK's artillery capabilities just along the DMZ....




that's just every day explosives. Nothing sexy like NCB munitions. It's believed that they have enough chemical weapons to wipe out Seoul in the opening hours of the war. The biggest issue is which the NK artillery would focus on, US installations in range, or Seoul. If Kim focuses on Chemical weapons for Seoul, and more standard munitions elsewhere we're looking at a major change in the dynamic, and looking at possibly as high as 20k US casualties in the initial exchange.


I'll say something probably unpopular: the US does not have the capability nor political will to engage in a the sort of long, hyper-violent struggle that North Korea would be offering. You all might laugh about the quality of NK weapons systems, etc, but remember that any ground engagement between KN and US is most likely to be a situation where the US soldiers would be grossly outnumbered. Not Iraq outnumbered, Stalingrad outnumbered. And even after the US gets air superiority, you can expect a heavy rain of steel from their IMMENSE number of standard artillery pieces.

Sort of suggests that the Trump admin is going to hem and haw about this issue but end up doing nothing except sabotage any diplomatic efforts by South Korea's new president.

The problems with North Korea begin and end with North Korean weakness. Despite what their propaganda may claim, NK is well aware of their weakness, and in fact their belligerence is due to NK knowing how weak their position is. On any given day they work with the knowledge that if the rest of the world wanted NK to collapse they could make it happen within a week. And it wouldn't even require military action, economic blockade would collapse the country within days.

So they feel the only way they have any control over their own fate is to maintain some ability to counter punch. Hence the mass of artillery constantly positioned to hit Seoul. Hence the nuclear program and the push to develop a weapon that can hit the US.

The problem is this need by NK produces a more active defence by the US, with troops positioned in SK, and the deployment of anti-missile defences. Which is necessary given the NK threat, but also serves to make NK feel even more threatened.

There really, truly isn't a good answer for this. There is no action that can be taken to 'solve' NK that doesn't get millions of people killed. So what there is, instead, is containment. Which is a frustrating thing for people because it is a passive stance, and people like the idea of doing something.

But there is history to say that if you give awful nations time, they will sometimes fix themselves. The USSR dismantled itself - the new Russia isn't great, but it's a hell of an improvement over the old regime. South Africa reformed itself, and even dismantled its nuke program. Portugal, Spain and so on. It isn't perfect, but the alternative is cause millions of casualties now, in order to prevent the chance of millions of casualties later.

 whembly wrote:
I guess the big question, what is stopping NK and SK from signing a peace agreement with one another?

Is it simply nuke deterrance?

We would need some concept of what a stable Korean peninsula would look like before any kind of real peace treaty could be signed. The NK govt would have to reform massively before any peace treaty would be anything more than an empty symbol.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whembly wrote:
Don't think that'll work... lil' Kim is God-Emperor of North Korea.

Can't see him giving that up.

 JimOnMars wrote:
NKs artillery is way overstated. It will damage Seoul, but not annihilate it.

Evacuate Seoul first. Very difficult, but not impossible, to do. We can pay for any rebuilding after.

Evacuating Seoul would basically be telegraphing that "hey, we're gonna invade you guys once we get these civvies out". Which would probably be enough provocation to make NK hit first while they can cause some damage.

And even if NKs artillery is overstated, "annihilate" is still a quite appropriate term for what will happen to Seoul. Even their 50-60 year old artillery would cause massive damage to a densely populated urban area. A single artillery shell can easily collapse a skyscraper, and you'd have thousands of rounds getting fired into the city every minute.

North Korea would probably quickly run out of ammunition, and fuel for any vehicles in a drawn out combat, but for a short period of time they could definitely effectively raze Seoul to the ground just with artillery. It would probably be on par with any of the bombing done in WW2. Certainly the worst since then.

 Grey Templar wrote:
,,,thousands of rounds getting fired into the city every minute...

No, 1 round per sq. kilometer per hour.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
You'd mostly lose the bet of about the artillery (it moves around a lot, and what is static is so heavily dug in that MOABs would be required to take out single emplacements) Seoul would die, as NK has stated, and as best anyone can tell is serious, that they would flood the city with nerve and blister agents. So goodbye Seoul. Picture Aleppo and make it every last neighborhood, as civilian gas victims outpace the hospitals ability t treat them.

NK is believed to have mined under the demilitarised zone, and possibly reached Seoul. The hope that US military might could stop mass slaughter is a false hope.

I think that you utterly fail to comprehend the animosity between the Koreas at this point, or how savage and cruel the last war was. I do not think NK would surrender at all, as South Korea is already infamous in the north for their No Prisoners policy toward the north.

A friend of mine is a teacher. He used to play a game with his class where he'd roll a D100 for each student, and the number rolled was the year of the 20th century that that student would have to research their family history. So if the roll was 13 that student would go and find out about what their relatives were doing in 1913. He took the die and the game with him when he got a job teaching in SK. Played it once, a bunch of kids rolled not just the war years, but also the years after that. So they all went off, did their homework, and came back with stories of abandoning older family members as they fled the north, slow starvation during and after the war etc. And it wasn't like war never came up when he played the game in Australia, my friend had played this game for years and gotten students with family members who were fighting and even died in war in the years rolled. But the stories in SK were something else.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Their military technology is base is largely 1940's/1950's era in many respects, what newer stuff they have isn't anything they have spectacular amounts of experience using in practice or real world conditions, and they simply don't have the leadership or logistics systems so support that equipment, much less an actual war effort.

A lot of it isn't just 1940/50s tech, it is literally the exact same trucks and rail stock that Russia gave them half a century ago. It's a genuine question as to how much of their military gear can even works any more, let alone able to survive the rigors of war.

North Korea can level the area around Seoul fairly quickly, but not much else. I highly doubt the morale of the NK military forces is quite as stalwart as some are making it out to be, particularly once bullets go flying.

I agree with you that is fairly close to certain that the NK military would fold fairly quickly. The problem is that they would level Seoul first, and while you point out they wouldn't achieve much else, that in itself would be enough to make this one of the great humanitarian disasters.

 sebster wrote:
The problems with North Korea begin and end with North Korean weakness. Despite what their propaganda may claim, NK is well aware of their weakness, and in fact their belligerence is due to NK knowing how weak their position is. On any given day they work with the knowledge that if the rest of the world wanted NK to collapse they could make it happen within a week. And it wouldn't even require military action, economic blockade would collapse the country within days.

So they feel the only way they have any control over their own fate is to maintain some ability to counter punch. Hence the mass of artillery constantly positioned to hit Seoul. Hence the nuclear program and the push to develop a weapon that can hit the US.

The problem is this need by NK produces a more active defence by the US, with troops positioned in SK, and the deployment of anti-missile defences. Which is necessary given the NK threat, but also serves to make NK feel even more threatened.

There really, truly isn't a good answer for this. There is no action that can be taken to 'solve' NK that doesn't get millions of people killed. So what there is, instead, is containment. Which is a frustrating thing for people because it is a passive stance, and people like the idea of doing something.

But there is history to say that if you give awful nations time, they will sometimes fix themselves. The USSR dismantled itself - the new Russia isn't great, but it's a hell of an improvement over the old regime. South Africa reformed itself, and even dismantled its nuke program. Portugal, Spain and so on. It isn't perfect, but the alternative is cause millions of casualties now, in order to prevent the chance of millions of casualties later.

 whembly wrote:
I guess the big question, what is stopping NK and SK from signing a peace agreement with one another?

Is it simply nuke deterrance?

We would need some concept of what a stable Korean peninsula would look like before any kind of real peace treaty could be signed. The NK govt would have to reform massively before any peace treaty would be anything more than an empty symbol.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whembly wrote:
Don't think that'll work... lil' Kim is God-Emperor of North Korea.

Can't see him giving that up.

There's a reason Kim Jong-un has committed all those brutal, high profile assassinations - his position is under constant thread of being usurped, and so he maintains a constant paranoia, and a willingness to use absolute force at any moment. That's not a fun way to live.

Of course, if he truly believes it is his right to rule per the mandate of the heavens, then the horribleness of the role doesn't matter. But no-one knows if that's true. It certainly didn't appear true from what people reported of his time growing up in the west. That doesn't mean it isn't true, because the one constant thing to come out of interviews with people who knew him while he lived in the west is that no-one really knew the slightest thing about him.

So you know, the offer might work.

The current state is favorable for China... that is, having NK being a "thorn" to the West.

NK is way more problematic for China that it is for the US.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BigWaaagh wrote:
Offer a $1b bounty on fat boy's head...that's right, $1b and $10m to each NK General that surrenders himself and his unit upon his death. $100m for every Nuke. Buy the melon-fethers off the old fashioned way. This would be chump change compared to the cost of an outright hostility with NK.

Seb: The problem is if it doesn't topple the regime instantly, and it is unlikely to do so instantly, then you have a NK where the leadership now fears even more political threats from the generals. This would prompt even more dramatic acts of political violence from Kim. More instability is not the answer to this puzzle.

 BigWaaagh wrote:
I'm pretty sure the absolute, very first act by any internal group interested in the partaking in the "Kim's Gotta Go" Publisher's House giveaway would be instant, dramatic regime change, so guessing what might happen "if" that doesn't occur is irrelevant. "more dramatic acts of political violence from Kim"...not if fat boy is dead.

Sure, if the decision is made by a group of powerful insiders to knock off Kim, take the money and hand over the keys to the US, then their actual plan would happen very suddenly. The issue is the time delay between the US offering up the money, and a group of generals deciding to take the money, organise their likeminded buddies. In that time Kim is gonna know he's under even more threat, leading to acts of highly public political violence*, and greater instability. Which may actually undermine his position even more, if people think he's gonna kill them anyway that might tip them in to acting.

But of course that's an even more unstable regime. And the more unstable the regime, the more likely they are to go out in a flash of ultra-violence against SK, Japan and whoever else they can hurt.

You might wanna clean up the quotes in your thread. I think you can delete everything about "Seb", that just seems to be my post repeated.



*I'm not sure what's next in the line of escalation? After flamethrowers, mortars, and nerve gas in foreign airports, what do you do to keep people paying attention? Sharks with frikkin laser beams?

...I dunno... I read an article a while back (google-fu is failing me at the moment) that essentially surmises that both South Korea and Japan, through backchannel, warned China that if they don't rein in NK, then they'll start investing in Nukes as well.

That seems like something that China would want to avoid if all possible.

 JimOnMars wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
,,,thousands of rounds getting fired into the city every minute...

No, 1 round per sq. kilometer per hour.

I suppose you have a source for this? because that is just a pitifully low number it can't possibly be true. Unless you're including all of South Korea and not just Seoul.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I suppose you have a source for this? because that is just a pitifully low number it can't possibly be true. Unless you're including all of South Korea and not just Seoul.

There's more than 2000 artillery pieces pointed at Seoul. The city is about 600km squ. So for that artillery to deliver one round per km squ per hour, each piece would have to have a firing rate slower than one round per three hours. So unless we're now speculating that NK artillery is a lower tech than the guns that brought down Constantinople, its fair to say that JimOnMars claim of 1 round per square km per hour might have been a touch low.

 Grey Templar wrote:
And even if NKs artillery is overstated, "annihilate" is still a quite appropriate term for what will happen to Seoul. Even their 50-60 year old artillery would cause massive damage to a densely populated urban area. A single artillery shell can easily collapse a skyscraper, and you'd have thousands of rounds getting fired into the city every minute.

Yup. Artillery was scary in WW1, and more scary in WW2, and people still use the same sort of guns to this day (though with upgraded ammo in many cases). NK has anything between 8500 and 12000 traditional artillery pieces.

Ofc, they don't actually have that many pieces that can reach Seoul. Maybe "only" 400 or 500 of the biggest 170mm ones, and they do have problems with low-grade ammo. But it's still hundreds of shells for every firing, and I can't quite believe they're so bad that they can only fire once per minute.

The best Finnish 155mm gun with a trained crew can fire 8 shells per minute. Or a 3-round burst in 15 seconds. And those could reach Seoul from the NK border with the right expensive high-tech ammo we have and the NK doesn't. Still, if the NK have all their biggest guns trained on Seoul that's a lot of shells in the air. And using modern artillery doctrine they can switch coordinates, do heavy barrages or spread out more with only a few simple orders passed out to every battery. They do have well-trained artillery crews, it's the ammo and equipment that fails them if they don't hit. After losing comms it will be less efficient, but they'll still be hard pressed to not hit that one big target they've been aiming at for 70 years.

Spetulhu wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
And even if NKs artillery is overstated, "annihilate" is still a quite appropriate term for what will happen to Seoul. Even their 50-60 year old artillery would cause massive damage to a densely populated urban area. A single artillery shell can easily collapse a skyscraper, and you'd have thousands of rounds getting fired into the city every minute.

Yup. Artillery was scary in WW1, and more scary in WW2, and people still use the same sort of guns to this day (though with upgraded ammo in many cases). NK has anything between 8500 and 12000 traditional artillery pieces.

Ofc, they don't actually have that many pieces that can reach Seoul. Maybe "only" 400 or 500 of the biggest 170mm ones, and they do have problems with low-grade ammo. But it's still hundreds of shells for every firing, and I can't quite believe they're so bad that they can only fire once per minute.

The best Finnish 155mm gun with a trained crew can fire 8 shells per minute. Or a 3-round burst in 15 seconds. And those could reach Seoul from the NK border with the right expensive high-tech ammo we have and the NK doesn't. Still, if the NK have all their biggest guns trained on Seoul that's a lot of shells in the air. And using modern artillery doctrine they can switch coordinates, do heavy barrages or spread out more with only a few simple orders passed out to every battery. They do have well-trained artillery crews, it's the ammo and equipment that fails them if they don't hit. After losing comms it will be less efficient, but they'll still be hard pressed to not hit that one big target they've been aiming at for 70 years.

Yeah the guns may not be the best, some may fall short, or go off course.
But I you fire ernough, easy for them then that's not matter if one gun explodes a minute, 10% of rounds dud. Because you still got a few thousand rounds incoming.
And yes, there more low tech but with propper maitence, that gear could work fine, and much of it is older, more reliable models.
These things do still work and even a ainciant now T34 85 will kill you dead as a Abrahams if it kills you.

Lastly. There air force may not be in as good shape and woefully outdated but still can drop old iron bombs, chemical or such weapons.
So air is also something to consider alongside there regular artillery

Relapse wrote:
In my my mind, I envision a group of world leaders dressed as Austrian nuns singing, "How do you solve a problem like Korea?"

Indeed. To quote Mel Brooks... " No conversions? Send in...THE NUNS!"

Policies that help motivate them to capitalize aka China and North VIetnam would probably be better.

 Sanguinary Guardsman wrote:
NK's leadership wants to modernize their economy but that isn't really possible without access to international markets. The US wants NK to abandon its nuclear program. A diplomatic solution seems pretty self evident in this situation and the general picture of such a deal is pretty obvious. NK gives... cessation of nuclear weapons development/rockets. US gives NK a full peace treaty and normalized trade relations and a framework for integration with south korea in the future.

Obviously the details of such an agreement are complex but the general idea is not. Seems like it would be vastly cheaper than any military solution that has 0% chance for a positive outcome.

NK is run by a paranoid lunatic, and look what happened to Iraq when the US realised they didn't have nuclear weapons. You're not going to get NK to give up nukes for anything, as in their view it's one of the only things holding back an invasion (that and the eradication of Seoul).

NK is using pretty old tech, manned by an army of half starved conscripts. Defection rates will be huge, so the way to go might be to trigger an uprising / mass defection. That may be possible without causing them to open fire on SK. I'm assuming there must be ways to make their artilery malfunction without blowing them up - water will stuff the explosives, and there should be a way to interfere with their targetting and communication systems. Make the artillery think NK has fallen and they'll probably run before firing a single shot; it's a serious gamble though.

Herzlos wrote:

 Sanguinary Guardsman wrote:
NK's leadership wants to modernize their economy but that isn't really possible without access to international markets. The US wants NK to abandon its nuclear program. A diplomatic solution seems pretty self evident in this situation and the general picture of such a deal is pretty obvious. NK gives... cessation of nuclear weapons development/rockets. US gives NK a full peace treaty and normalized trade relations and a framework for integration with south korea in the future.

Obviously the details of such an agreement are complex but the general idea is not. Seems like it would be vastly cheaper than any military solution that has 0% chance for a positive outcome.

NK is run by a paranoid lunatic, and look what happened to Iraq when the US realised they didn't have nuclear weapons. You're not going to get NK to give up nukes for anything, as in their view it's one of the only things holding back an invasion (that and the eradication of Seoul).

NK is using pretty old tech, manned by an army of half starved conscripts. Defection rates will be huge, so the way to go might be to trigger an uprising / mass defection. That may be possible without causing them to open fire on SK. I'm assuming there must be ways to make their artilery malfunction without blowing them up - water will stuff the explosives, and there should be a way to interfere with their targetting and communication systems. Make the artillery think NK has fallen and they'll probably run before firing a single shot; it's a serious gamble though.

Regarding giving up nukes... that actually happened in 1997-1999 with president Carter's mission to NK. The deal fell through since the Bush administration refused to honor the agreement. The deal was essentially a buyout. Regarding mental health... the last few missile tests by NK seem a bit too deliberate for a paranoid lunatic. Memorial day weekend, VE day, and the 4th of July? Seems pretty calculated to me.

Your point about Iraq is pretty good though. Maybe invading other countries without cause is a generally bad idea? Who knew??!

The only way I see this being resolved is militarily. Kim, unlike his pops and grand-dad, doesn't seem to have any appreciation for China. He wasn't around when the Chinese bailed them out of the Korean War, and wasn't involved enough with politics before he took over the reigns. He also knocked off his Uncle so its pretty much him and the cult of personality around him.

And besides his Uncle, he's also knocked off his own brother. Real stand-up family man. If he doesn't care about his own family, he doesn't care about anyone else. And that's what upsets most people. He doesn't have a lot to lose but himself, so I don't doubt that if he could see the end coming, he would nuke whoever he could on his way out.

The only thing I can think that would work is for the South Korean and US troops advancing on the artillery positions within striking range of Seoul while the US takes Kim out with a surgical strike. Yes this means not just crossing the DMZ, but advancing fast enough before the North Koreans could get their act together. This all would have to happen really quickly, which I doubt could. But the hope would be that with the head of state out, it would cause confusion for the remaining guys in power on how to respond, giving the South and US time to work with whoever is left to work out some deal. The problem is, everyone would see the South Korean and US military buildup, and have an idea what was coming, and the North Koreans would mobilize troops too. But if you just killed Kim, I am not sure what the powers of be would do, so you have to physically move up to ensure the North Koreans can't retaliate with hitting Seoul, with artillery at least.

Speed is the issue. You would have to be quick enough to catch the Chinese pants down.

But the South really doesn't want anything to do with the North. They can't absorb all the North Koreans into the South's economy without major upheaval. And if the South Koreans aren't on board, well, nothing is going to get done.

What is crazy though, is that our problems with this now are nothing compared to where they will be in 15-20 years.

 jhe90 wrote:


Lastly. There air force may not be in as good shape and woefully outdated but still can drop old iron bombs, chemical or such weapons.

Indeed. Thats the other thing to consider. Many of those artillery rounds coming in won't be conventional explosives. They'll be gas and chemical rounds. Nerve gas in a city is going to kill a LOT of people who would have survived a normal artillery round.

Their air force would definitely be dangerous, but that's one area I wouldn't be as concerned about. Most of their planes would be going on a 1 way trip. They might drop some bombs, but they'd get shot down quickly. I would expect very few to actually survive the round trip to rearm.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 JimOnMars wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
,,,thousands of rounds getting fired into the city every minute...

No, 1 round per sq. kilometer per hour.

I suppose you have a source for this? because that is just a pitifully low number it can't possibly be true. Unless you're including all of South Korea and not just Seoul.

The post above with the map.

 Ouze wrote:
How effective would a CIWS be against conventional artillery? I'm sure Iron Dome would be overwhelmed, but what about batteries of Phalanx?

From personal experience of having 75+ rounds of indirect fire thrown at me in my last deployment, the 8 systems we had on our base caught maybe 30% of them. There was never more then 2 in the air at the same time as well.

It helps, but it's not a perfect system at all.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 jhe90 wrote:


Lastly. There air force may not be in as good shape and woefully outdated but still can drop old iron bombs, chemical or such weapons.

Indeed. Thats the other thing to consider. Many of those artillery rounds coming in won't be conventional explosives. They'll be gas and chemical rounds. Nerve gas in a city is going to kill a LOT of people who would have survived a normal artillery round.

Their air force would definitely be dangerous, but that's one area I wouldn't be as concerned about. Most of their planes would be going on a 1 way trip. They might drop some bombs, but they'd get shot down quickly. I would expect very few to actually survive the round trip to rearm.

Past the first wave yes. Once the Us and SK AA starts opening up and deeper airbases scramble to deploy to the DMZ line they gonna not have a easy time with bombing very deep into SK..

And yes. I mean anyone out exposed in those first few minutes be dead.
Anyone on DMZ bases are unlikely to do well.

This is so fethed up but you basicaly sacraficong anyone inside x miles of border with some deeper dire from tactical missiles and light ICbM.
Np way to stop that many incoming missiles, shells and projectiles.

Sometimes qauntity is impossible to beat by quality, least early on.