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North Korean Nuclear Facilities, From 30,000 Feet

Posted by timothy on from the that-seems-like-a-nice-safe-distance dept.

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."

2 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. Re:North Korea and Burma by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 5, Informative

    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....

    --

    "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
  2. Re:Is your parting line supposed to be a critisism by hackertourist · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.