North Korean Nuclear Facilities, From 30,000 Feet

Harperdog writes "Niko Milonopoulos, Siegfried S. Hecker, and Robert Carlin analyze terrific overhead photos of North Korea's nuclear facilities, discussing the rate of building and what the photos show. Also points to options for dealing with North Korea and their energy needs."

Comments

Re:North Korea vs. Iran

[Runaway1956]

Obviously, you don't understand Iranian politics. The president of Iran has a bit of power. A little bit, that is. Real power rests with the "Supreme Leader", Ayatollah Khomanie (spelling). The Ayatollah draws his power from his circle of Ayatollahs, who run the country behind the scenes. The president is little more than a figurehead. Our own president in the United States has much more real power than the president of Iran.

Re:Is your parting line supposed to be a critisism

[Hognoxious]

Given the fact that Germany had to be pretty much completely invaded before it surrendered is a sure sign that while a) actually worked, it would not have cost more than employing the nukes.

Germans are not Japanese. Germans were willing to surrender (to Brits or Americans, at least). Japanese were not. When the US invaded Okinawa, even civilians made pointless attacks against US troops, while many committed suicide. Now adjust for the fact that Okinawa isn't considered a proper part of Japan, and is very small and you'll have some idea what would have happened on the mainland.

Re:And who did the invasion of Germany?

[dokc]

Germany was only partially invaded by the western allies, the russians did the lion share including the brutal Berlin battle. Japan's final battle by comparison was relatively peaceful.

Tell that to Russians who fought in Manchuria Soviet invasion of Manchuria

Re:North Korea and Burma

[CrimsonAvenger]

Yes, it would have been much more humane to kill twice as many by invading, or the whole lot of them by blockade.

We would probably have killed far more than twice as many invading. We were, after all, expecting more US casualties from invading than we inflicted in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

And we'd already established that we could inflict ten casualties for every one we suffered - air supremacy and armour, that sort of thing, are serious force multipliers....

Re:Is your parting line supposed to be a critisism

[hackertourist]

And the USA were already ready to invade the home-turf of Japan at that point, so the down-payment was pretty much already done.

Uh, no. There are two big differences. One is getting the troops to the Japanese homeland. The invasion of Germany was possible because of D-day. That was a pretty costly maneuver (in manpower lost and equipment), even though it was only a short hop across the Channel. Invading Japan would have meant massive amphibious landings supported not from the US homeland, but from small island bases.

Couple that with the Japanese willingness to fight to the last man, and the invasion would have been a bloodbath. So yes, a) was a valid reason.

Re:Is your parting line supposed to be a critisism

[QuantumRiff]

Leaflets were dropped for 2 days before the bombings by the CIA warning citizens that the cities were going to be destroyed, and many of them got out of town.

Re:North Korea and Burma

[Baloroth]

Operation Downfall. Estimated US casualties were somewhere around 500,000 to a million dead, conservatively. And the Japanese predicted the US's plan of attack precisely, so it could have been two to three times that easily. And five to ten million dead Japanese, which is around 6-13% of their population at the time. Again, that was probably conservative.