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United States Begins Flying Stealth Bombers Over South Korea

Posted by samzenpus on from the nice-day-for-a-flight dept.

skade88 writes "The New York Times is reporting that the United States has started flying B-2 stealth bomber runs over South Korea as a show of force to North Korea. The bombers flew 6,500 miles to bomb a South Korean island with mock explosives. Earlier this month the U.S. Military ran mock B-52 bombing runs over the same South Korean island. The U.S. military says it shows that it can execute precision bombing runs at will with little notice needed. The U.S. also reaffirmed their commitment to protecting its allies in the region. The North Koreans have been making threats to turn South Korea into a sea of fire. North Korea has also made threats claiming they will nuke the United States' mainland."

19 of 567 comments (clear)

  1. The winner? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Can't we just measure Kim Jong-un and Obama's penises and get this whole thing over with already?

    1. Re:The winner? by Howitzer86 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      We are responding properly. NK barely has nukes and they are starting the brinksmanship game already. Not responding to that would be a mistake.

    2. Re:The winner? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Worked for Europe in 1938!

    3. Re:The winner? by Howitzer86 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      OT but I think WW2 is better served as an example of how well appeasement works.

    4. Re:The winner? by bragr · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That won't really work in this situation. Kim Jong Un isn't just some bellicose asshole sitting at the helm of North Korean and giving the world the finger because he feels like it. All the confrontations, defiance, and war mongering are instrumental, mainly to keep his hold on power. Take that away and his grip will start slipping. Once that happens he would have to escalate to something we couldn't ignore (probably war, or at least a large conflict), or he'd be replace by someone controlled by the military, which would quite likely go to war as well to solidify their new hold on power. No matter how you look at it, practice bomb runs are better than mass casualties.

    5. Re:The winner? by bragr · · Score: 5, Informative

      France and England gave Germany a lot of slack in the lead up to WW2. Europe suffered so many casualties in WWI that it decimated a generation and made most countries in Europe very war shy. Consequently, when Germany began openly flaunting the restrictions that had been place on it after WWI in the Treaty of Versailles, making demands, and annexing other countries, France and England compromised, made concessions, and offered little real resistance besides formal protest. They hoped by appeasing Hitler, they could diffuse the situation and avoid another full scale war, which worked well obviously because only 60 or 70 million people died during WW2.

    6. Re:The winner? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      F. U.

      Tell it to the little kid that was me 35 years ago. Smartest kid in the class and chubby. It started in first grade when I whizzed through vocab. Scaled up to ostracism, getting chased, being beaten. Got jumped by guys with knives but luckily ran away.

      The only thing that got people's attention was studying karate and breaking a big 6th grader's nose. Aside from that a glacier rock was my best friend at lunch hour. Sure I had some friends, other geeks. But it only really stopped after I got out of the public school system and commuted an hour away to a preppy private high school.

      If you want to know why America sucks at least one reason is because of the utter wasteland of stupidity that is the public school and community of people going to it for 90% of the people, and the system refusing to beat down bullies while they're young. Law of the jungle? Gandhi? Fuck that. I still have trauma from when I was that little kid. Maybe you just didn't get bullied enough. Tell it to kids (not me thankfully) who have gotten rolled up in gym mats, suffocated and died.

      I bet a huge proportion of slashdotters have been bullied like me. Fixing (neutering) bullies and rewarding fair play would do a lot towards fixing (neutering) our military-industrial complex and maybe even our money politics.

    7. Re:The winner? by SplashMyBandit · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Hmm. In Vietnam the US destroyed the Vietcong and withdrew. Nearly half a decade later the North Vietnamese continued their original aim, invade South Vietnam. In terms of South East Asia it was an eventual defeat for the US-led Free World. In terms of the overall strategic geopolitical situation it was a huge win. Communist expansion was stopped. Eventually, with no more victories Soviet Communism collapsed (although it did leave its evil seed in many Universities around the World).

      In Iraq the US defeated Saddam, smashed Al Qaeda and the Mahdi Army. Installed a new democratic regime (very imperfect, but that is always going to be a problem in an Islamic country due to the political nature of Islam). The strategic mistake the US made was to withdraw and leave too few forces, and an even bigger strategic mistake was to accept an Iraqi Constitution where Sharia was enshrined. This was a fatal mistake that will haunt the Iraqi people (although it already affects the Assyrians, the Islamicist have nearly completed their ethnic cleansing of them ; and yet, the Obama Administration says nothing about the rights of freedom for all people).

      In Afghanistan a few hundred US Special Forces with Afghan Northern Alliance soldiers toppled the Pakistani puppet regime called the Taliban. Smashed Al Qaeda, killed jihadis that were drawn to the honeypot from all over the World. Made the same mistake as Iraq in allowing a Constitution with Sharia.

      The US never leaves the battlefield in defeat. The problem is they win well enough that they can't see the point in staying. So they leave (probably prematurely, but hey, it makes good campaign speeches even if it makes zero geopolitical sense).

      North Korea is not like Vietnam (Russia and China are weaker relative to US power than they were previously). Furthermore, the South Korean Army is much much better equipped than the North. In any fight the Northern regime will surely topple. China might like to intervene but in the age of tactical nuclear weapons their main advantage, massed infantry assaults, is not a strength.

      In short, learn proper history please (not the pop history that doesn't match the *actual* facts). The North Koreans would come apart even faster than the massive Iraqi Army if push comes to shove. The only real question is how much damage they could do to Seoul before they went down. Note also that the South apparently isn't that keen on reunification - the evil regime in the North have turned the country into a complete basket case that the South are not that keen to have to fix.

    8. Re:The winner? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I do not know but could he commit the British people to that level of death and destruction without having tried?

      If he had stood up to Hitler earlier, the level of death and destruction would have been far less, or perhaps zero. Germany was still very weak when the appeasement started. When Hitler sent soldiers into the Rhineland, they had no ammunition. If the Allies had put up even a token resistance, they could have stopped it. But by making concession after concession, they gave Germany time to build up forces. Even after the war started in September of 1939, Britain and France took little offensive action, and war settled into a "sitzkrieg". They gave the Krauts another nine months to finish off Poland, and mass their forces on the western front.

      At the time, WWI was called "The Great War" and WWII had not yet been named. When Churchill, who had opposed appeasement, was asked what the war should be called, he answered "The Unnecessary War".

    9. Re:The winner? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Don't underestimate North Korea's military. They might not have the most modern equipment but there are a lot of them and they are fanatical. Even though they would eventually lose it would be a very bloody war with a lot of close fighting.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    10. Re:The winner? by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      France and England stood by and LET Hitler take what he wanted

      And so did the USA. We knew about the holocaust long before we got involved. Hell, the service contract for the IBM concentration camp management machines was handled straight out of Armonk, NY. Well after we knew what was going on we were still selling aluminum to Japan, and fuel and other resources straight to Germany. The Bush family fortune is based on deliberately channeling funds to Hitler's S.S. There's plenty of blame to go around.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  2. Good luck with that by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 5, Funny

    "North Korea has also made threats claiming they will nuke the United States' main land."

    Given the success of their missile program so far, I think China should be more worried than the US - and that's assuming NK is aiming at the US.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
    1. Re:Good luck with that by mrchew1982 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Who do you think the stealth bomber runs are done to impress? CHINA!!! Sure, Kim Jong Un might know about them and use them as propaganda, and it might scare him a little that he can't see the things on radar, but my guess is that we're really trying to impress China. I'm sure that the island is right at the edge of their early warning radar coverage, and if we slip in and drop the payload without raising an alarm (with a bomber that we designed in the 70's no less...) China will sit up and take notice. The Chinese are the only ones in a position to twist Kim's arm hard enough to make him stop acting like a four-year-old, the Chinese are the ones that we are trying to scare.

    2. Re:Good luck with that by v1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      they've gotta be getting to the point where even China isn't going to take their crap for much longer. They WERE trying to destabilize the region. NOW they're trying to destabilize the entire world.

      I see NK like some punk little child that goes around trying to start trouble everywhere he can, that always runs back and stands next to his big brother whenever anyone gets fed up with his harassment. This makes him bold beyond common sense, kicking and spitting on the others around him that would otherwise break his face. And Big Brother has got to be getting sick of it by now.

      And just like in the neighborhood, china's the hulk of a big brother that is the only reason any number of others in the neighborhood don't tackle the punk and give him the pounding he so badly needs and deserves.

      So really the big brother is the only one that can effectively fix the problem, by finally picking him up by the hair, shaking vigorously, and screaming "ENOUGH!"

      I just hope that china is even a fifth as annoyed with him as the rest of the world is. Seriously, even China-style communism would do that country a world of good. I'd just love to see Jinping make a trip over to Pyongyang and sit the little dictator/delusional-god in a small chair and discuss making some minor adjustments to how NK is run.

      (contrary to some suggestions in earlier comments, this is not the sort of problem you can ignore till it goes away... the more you ignore little punks like this, the bolder they get. ignore them, and it will never end, it will only continue to escalate)

      --
      I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
    3. Re:Good luck with that by tftp · · Score: 5, Interesting

      There is a book where a supervillain delivers nukes into the US mainland inside of new cars. The A/C unit of the car is replaced with a nuke; then ships are filled with those cars and sent to US ports. The cars are perfectly functional, except that the A/C is not working - but who is going to test that? Not the dealerships; they are owned by the said supervillain.

      There is a lot of large machinery that can contain a nuke, or parts of a nuke. You cannot even take that machinery apart. Consider a large electric motor, for example... that is 10' or 20' in diameter. How would customs agents even power it up? it is absolutely impossible. But that mountain of metal can have plenty of space inside to hold contraband. The shipper does not even need to damage the product. If the container is inspected, the agents see what they expect to see - a bulldozer, for example. How would they know that 90% of its fuel tank is already taken by a contraband? How would anyone know what is hermetically welded inside the steel chassis of that machine? You cannot X-ray it; you have to destroy the product - and the agents will do that only if they have specific information.

  3. Perfect Analogy by Nidi62 · · Score: 5, Funny

    North Korea is like the baby chihuahua barking at you from across the street, behind a 6 ft chain link fence, and tied to a tree. It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic.

    --
    The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
    1. Re:Perfect Analogy by ScentCone · · Score: 5, Informative

      None of their recent threats have been at South Korea

      Other than the part where they talk about turning SK into a "sea of fire" and about "raining bullets on them" etc. Have you not been paying attention?

      --
      Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
  4. WW2 by manu0601 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You also have to consider a big difference between WW1 and WW2: fear of communism. While almost everyone in France was in a patriotic frenzy before WW1, there were a lot of people that did not want to fight Germany for WW2 because fascism was seen as a good protection against communism.

    Germany, Italy, Spain had fascists regimes. France spared a fascist coup in 1934 just because different fascists leaders could not agree with each others. Some where hoping that a war defeat would bring to France what a coup missed to achieve.

  5. Re:About those Russians by Etherwalk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That the Russians has a near unlimited supply of poor untrained peasants to fling at the enemy on mass does not say much for their strategy. If Germany had not made the bone headed move to invade Russia at the onset of one of the coldest winters in decades, the war would have turned out much differently. You also forget the AIR POWER that the Americans brought to bear on Germany's manufacturing cities and supply lines. Without manufacturing, the German war machine collapsed. It was American technological might that saved the world in WWII, not Russian brawn, which only resulted in millions more needless casualties on all sides.

    It was a combination. We can theorize left and right about what might have happened without any one of the great powers, or with slightly different deployments of resources. Britain might have been forced into a separate peace due to an inadequate food supply, for example; Russia might have lost soldiers more quickly than it could produce them without advancing sufficiently if the Americans hadn't bombed the hell out of Europe; America might have turned nuclear against Germany in 1946 if Hitler had never been stupid enough to attack Russia; America might never have declared war on Germany if Japan had attacked a year later and Britain had made a separate peace; The Russians might have failed in their advances if they hadn't tied factory production directly to the food supply for incentive purposes.

    There is so much anti-american sentiment these days that theories diminishing the importance of any American commitment are inherently suspect, IMHO. On the other hand, there is nationalistic propaganda that is often wrong, on all sides.