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Korea Tensions Lead To Delay Of Minuteman III Test Flight
An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. plans on delaying 'the test of the Minuteman III intercontinental missile' that was scheduled for launching next week out of the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The reported reason is to prevent 'misperception or miscalculation' by North Korea. North Korea has warned foreign diplomats that 'they could not guarantee their safety from next Wednesday' onwards, but the warning has not caused any plans for evacuation of any embassies so far."
kim jong un, the son of kim jong il who lately became known as kim jong ded, was recruited by the CIA during his switzerland university years and is acting together with the US to bring down the regime by triggering some sort of crisis.
I think that it's probably a move meant to give the North Koreans a chance to back down and declare 'victory' to their own people so that the crisis can end before things become unpredictable.
Even if the US wanted a war with North Korea this would not be the time. A war like that takes months of planning and logistics if it's going to go well. The US and South Korea could defeat North Korea over the next couple of weeks if necessary, but at what cost?
What's cheaper than and more efficient than fighting wars?
To not do it.
It's the responsible thing to do. This is not a video game or some retarded "never back down" action movie for teenagers. If a change of plans might help avoiding a war (or avoid adding to the fuel), good.
Yes, it would be much better to simply allow things to settle down and let the little tyrant continue the deathcamp conditions prevalent throughout NK.
Either that or we should let him have the first shot. Because that would be the responsible thing to do, right?
(Do we really want him firing off his dirty bombs into SK, Japan, or who knows where else? )
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Even if the US wanted a war with North Korea this would not be the time. A war like that takes months of planning and logistics if it's going to go well. The US and South Korea could defeat North Korea over the next couple of weeks if necessary, but at what cost?
If the US wanted a war with North Korea, the pretext would be far more important than the planning and logistics. North Korea would be able to do terrible damage to South Korea regardless of timing, so it'd look a lot better if the US came charging to the rescue against a North Korea that has gone bat shit insane than if the US was building up an invasion force that would be seen as another act of US aggression and backing Kim Jong-Il into a corner where he might as well strike first with all he's got.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I see the problem here and you're both right. Minuteman Three was developed in the 1960s, but the latest iteration Minuteman One Hundred and Eleven still needs to be tested... you don't think the military-industrial complex has been idling for these past four decades now do you?
You seem to underestimate 60+ years of uninterrupted regime propaganda.
I think that it's probably a move meant to give the North Koreans a chance to back down and declare 'victory' to their own people so that the crisis can end before things become unpredictable.
Even if the US wanted a war with North Korea this would not be the time. A war like that takes months of planning and logistics if it's going to go well. The US and South Korea could defeat North Korea over the next couple of weeks if necessary, but at what cost?
You need to look at the cost of not going to war as well.
Would you like to wait, perhaps, until North Korea is testing their Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile equivalents?
NK is a bully child in the playground. Fists can be ignored but when he pulls out a knife you have to do something about him...before he pulls out a gun the next time and starts shooting.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
You have to ask yourself...what is the cost of not going to war against North Korea now.
Do you want to wait to be certain that he has not only nuclear capability and also medium range missile capability but the ability to launch medium range missiles with nuclear warheads (which may not currently be the case) ?
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
"Kim..." ::CHOMP!::
"WHAT?"
"Eat your Snickers."
"WHY!?"
"'Cos you turn into a right megalomaniac when you're hungry."
"...Better?"
"Oppa Gangnam Syle!"
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Well, it's not very erudite, but flamebait? A little harsh, mods.
OP was not advocating 'testing' it on a NK target, for example.
(S)he's got a point; why should the USA, (I'm not from there), change its plans?
Pandering to NK has never worked. Ever.
A little quote. Stalin once said of international diplomacy
"Push the tip of the bayonet in. If you hit mush, push the bayonet through to the hilt. If you hit steel, withdraw the bayonet."
Time to show a little steel, methinks. Of course we don't want to provoke yet another senseless war, but showing that we're ready to respond in a very robust way to aggression is required IMHO. When I say "we", I mean all the democratic powers.
BTW, that would also send a useful message to China, who would doubtless piss and moan, but ultimately accept it.
I wouldn't settle for less than both.
Try to placate him... until you can kill him.
You're both forgetting about China, who might have a few things to say about a large scale US military operation on their border...
North Korea has been waving their gun around for a long time. Even though you may not care about this from an American perspective, NK has for decades been fully capable of launching devastating attacks on major South Korean population centers (which don't require intercontinental long range missiles). Outside the perspective of "only American lives matter," NK's longer range weapons don't fundamentally change the diplomatic situation: they are still, as they have always been, capable of going out with an unacceptable suicidal bang, simply continuing the same decades-long tense standoff (in order to continue, on their side, receiving aid money/supplies as appeasement). NK's current round of bluster is really nothing new; and, while there is no certainty in dealing with madmen, there is also no positive reason to expect that NK's actual policies (of waving a gun with their finger on the trigger, but stopping short of anything beyond warning shots) have changed.
You seem to underestimate 60+ years of uninterrupted regime propaganda.
+5 Insightful?
Let me tell you as someone living in Korea that there is zero question here about whether or not North Korea wants to blow Seoul. I'll give you a hint -- they wouldn't drop bombs on Seoul even if the US was nuking Pyongyang.
While the North has been a separate country for a long time at this point, the people on the two sides of the DMZ do not at all consider each other enemies. The rhetoric from the North about destroying the South is firmly directed at the South Korean government.
People have a racial unity here that you can probably not even imagine. Here's an attempt at an analogy. Would the Israelis bomb a city of 100% Jews?
The North considers the people in the South to be essentially captive by a traitorous government that's being dictated behind the scenes by the US and other foreign influences. They want to 'liberate' their relatives and their people, not bomb them into dust because they don't like what they consider to be a minority of them who are oppressing the rest.
I know the story about the artillery within range of Seoul makes a good scare piece, but there's zero chance they will be wantonly killing all the South Koreans just because it's technically a separate country.
Long live the BSD license
Really? Are you kidding? Nobody gives a shit about NK except maybe South Korea and China until Dear Leader starts acting like a madman threatening to blow his neighbors away. We want him dead because it's scary to have a lunatic with nukes. When it was just the US and the good ole USSR staring at each other we pretty much knew that neither side really wanted to pull the trigger, they had too much to lose. Now you've got this syphilitic little shit that may just be crazy enough to pull the trigger and he's jumping up and down talking about nuking people. Yes, we'd like him dead.
The humanitarian side of it would be difficult regardless of when the war started. China might have to invade from the north and set up refugee camps inside North Korea to prevent millions of refugees from spilling over the border. Now you have to take care to not bomb the Chinese soldiers inside North Korea.
Not too many people outside China seem to get this.
The Chinese would probably be just as glad as not to see Kim and his posse jet off to Tenerife or someplace and leave the place to the South (see DDR, dissolution of). The Chinese would no longer have to be bothered with propping up a régime that has become an embarrassment if not outright liability to them; they wouldn't have to deal with (yes, potentially millions of) North Korean refugees (if anything, they'd probably like to move back about 10 million ethnic Koreans who already live on the Chinese side); and the South would be kept occupied for the next 20 years or so rehabilitating the North, they don't have any islands we think ought to be ours--so sure, let the US continue to be their good friend. Whatever.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
But the last whole century tells a different story. The rebulding of Europe and Japan after WWII went well in the areas which were under Allied control after the war, due largely to the Marshall Plan in Europe and US directed changes to governance in Japan. And S. Korea was in the same state as N. Korea at the end of armed hostilities in 1953 -- they have turned out rather well. Vietnam doesn't count in this analysis because the US lost that war and wasn't available to help rebuild. The Iraq fiasco to a large extent was due to incompetence in the Bush administration who ignored the analyses of the experts who told them how many troops, etc, would be required to maintain order after the fall of the government but didn't want to believe them.
Some things work to the point where if it ain't broke, don't fix it. The orignal designs are near-optimal for the intended role, and what few updates there are tend to be minor improvements. For instance the B-52s are another weapons platform that has been kept going for years longer than expected, and the A-10 may also end up extended as there's no good replacement able to do its job.
As for the missiles, solid fuel missiles don't have much in the way of moving parts. The missiles should be reliable provided they keep well in storage and minor maintenance done to keep batteries up and lubricants from drying out is adequate. Other parts shouldn't be too hard to update either, if the rest of the hardware is known, it should be fairly straight forward to design a "plug-n-play" guidance system update with any revisions in later maintenance packages. Basically scheduled test launches like this aren't really much as tests (we know the missiles typically work as intended), but more of a quality control measure in regards to inventory.
Come now, stop and think. What does North Korea have that can not be stopped at will, and don't you realize that those logistics have been worked out pretty consistently? Does North Korea have an Air Force? The answer is "NO", they do not. The few planes they have would be shot down within seconds of taking flight. Nothing they have compares with the US or South Korean planes.
Does North Korea have a Navy? The answer is "NO". They have a few small boats and subs, that like their military planes, would be neutralized within minutes of an engagement.
The few North Korean Soldiers on the border that lived after the first hour of engagement would be just like the Iraqi Army in Gulf 1 and 2. We would have more problems with refugees and surrendering troops than we would the N. Korean Military. ("We" being S. Korea more than the US)
We are not very worried about the few T72 tanks that NK has, so the only thing that may cost a few lives is the initial artillery fire. Air power would eliminate that artillery pretty quickly. Oh, and before you hype the short range rockets remember that those are worse than artillery. They are fire and forget with very poor range, extreme inaccuracy, and often don't even explode on impact.
The biggest rational fears are with the few scud missiles they have, which are inaccurate and slow. We have had Patriot batteries in South Korea from long before we saw them in the Gulf wars. Think about what they have been trying to hype on the News over the last couple days. "N. Korea has moved 1-3 medium range missiles to the east. Really, 1-3 missiles is a concern when they are scud type missiles? That is laughable if you stop and think about it! It would be sad of course if they were to hit someone with one and people died, don't get me wrong. But it is not a big military threat.
I have not quite figured out the game that's being played politically, but the hype of doom and gloom is grossly exaggerated. I have some speculations, but at present they are not very sound. Some considerations are "Why has China not stopped NK from threats?" China has that much power over NK, perhaps they want to be involved? Why has the US propaganda media (Fox/ABC/NBC) been hyping NK as a real military threat like they did the Iraqi Army? We know their capabilities, and have no reason to over play them unless our politicians (or perhaps more appropriately the people pulling their strings) want a war.
And lets not put this into terms like the propaganda machine might. We don't need to invade and capture North Korea to win and neither does South Korea. We take out anything in their military that "may" cause anyone else harm and leave them the fuck alone. Let the great leader sit in the sand box and cry because you took his shovel away for trying to hit other kids with it. If South Korea want's to drive up to the capital and make it official, that's fine but the US does not have too, and should not consider it.
There is no need for a long drawn out Gorilla war, and if we get into one it's our the politicians fault. Our politicians need to be dealt with harshly if that happens.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
No one seems to have pointed out that North Korea has no national means of detecting the launch of such a missile and it's doubtful that they have a radar that would be able to track the RVs when they hit around Kwajalein. I guess someone hanging around Vandenburg AFB (where we launch the operational readiness test flights; not an operational ICBM field) could phone Kim-jung Un and tell him we launched it but that's about it. Likewise, an ICBM launched from the U.S. at North Korea would follow a great circle ballistic trajectory that wouldn't take it anywhere near Kwaj. Nor would a missile launched from Vandenburg at Kwaj have a trajectory that looks at all like it's headed for North Korea.
Stupid diplomatic theater. Do something meaningless but make sure the world knows about it.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
which is the only reason north korea even exists
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
A war like that takes months of planning and logistics if it's going to go well.
You make it seem as if this hasn't already happened. We're still in a state of war with them. I'm stationed here on the Korean peninsula and we go through peninsula wide exercises twice a year to simulate a war here. On top of that, we go through tactical training at a unit level even more frequently than that.
What gives you the impression that North Korea doesn't want to kill South Koreans? Hell, the North tortures it's own citizens. What makes you think they'll even second guess bombing the shit out of Seoul? The citizens of North Korea probably have no animosity towards the South, but they're not the ones dropping bombs. And I don't know which South Koreans you're talking to, but I know plenty that would love for us to go and destroy the North.
Btw, Living in South Korea doesn't mean anything. I live in South Korea too and I'd beg to differ with your position.
fair market value of targets completely irrelevant and useless point of view for the purposes of warfare. Risk and benefit analysis of war doesn't include those numbers.
My impression comes from the content of news dispatches, propaganda and speeches from the North Korean media and military leadership. While they show imagery and make threats of destroying US cities and non-military targets, the rhetoric geared towards the South talks about destroying the 'traitorous' government and military (and occasionally media outlets) here and are not threats towards the general public. As for those in the South, most people here have aunts, uncles, and other extended family in the North and don't want to see their relatives murdered just because the regime running the North is awful.
Long live the BSD license
We probably have a nuclear sub or 2 off the cost. We could empty all tubes on NK and level the country.
Murdering millions of innocent non-combattant peasants, nice. I thought Milosevic was dead. See you at the Hague when you're done, ASSHOLE!
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
...and you're not sharp enough to understand that the purpose of this propaganda is to turn the South Korean people against its government (thereby weakening it, and by extension weakening the SK military) & lull these same citizens into a false sense of security.
The North would like nothing better than to conquer the South, and would not hesitate to kill mass numbers on both sides to do it. The North's elites don't even care about their own peoples' lives or the quality thereof; they will have even fewer compunctions about people who think "wrongly".
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
I know the story about the artillery within range of Seoul makes a good scare piece, but there's zero chance they will be wantonly killing all the South Koreans just because it's technically a separate country.
Because they didn't kill any South Koreans in the Korean war right?
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
you're there because it's the closest to China you can be without starting a war.
No, we're there because China started a war. And their proxy in that war (North Korea) insists its still on.
Oh yes, the usual "world's saviours and protectors" rethoric...
So, what has your country done to prevent NK from rolling into SK? What did it do when they first tried, and what has it done since? If the US is just faking it, in terms of protecting SK from the north, there must be someone else doing the actual work. That would be you, I guess?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
North Korea isn't eastern Europe.
No one in Eastern Europe really liked communism or Russian rule.
They were puppet states with little if any popular backing.
Regimes like Cuba, Vietnam, and NK, are regimes that did have, at least at one point popular backing, and were founded by charismatic leaders viewed as heros, because the people knew FAR worse than the regimes that got set up there.
Cuba - if you read history you knew cuba was never a democracy, Batistas regime was far worse than Castros. The revolution that Castro fought wasn't even communist until a few years after the revolution, after the US denounced it, and they needed political backing.
Vietnam - was lead by Ho Chi Min. He was fighting a gureilla war against the French before WW2, the Japanese durring WW2, and the French again after WW2. He was a US ally in ww2 against the Japaneese. He expected the US to help vietnam get indepedence after the war, they didn't, so he went to Russia and turned against the US. Still the constitution of Vietnam has very similar pre-amble and rhetoric to our own. The regime in the south was held together by nothing but the US Government, and fell apart when we abandonded it in 1973.
North Korea - Kim Il-Sung, the founder, like Ho Chi Min, was another anti-Japaneese insurgent in WW2, and extremely popular for fending of the Japaneese in WW2, this cemented his popularity. NK is isolated from the outside so no one in NK has any idea of the rest of the world beyond what they are told. They just know who saved them from the Japaneese in WW2. Visitors are carefully screened and chaparoned.
NK is also NOT a sattelite state of any other regime at current, as hard as it is to believe. They remained hardline stallinist durring China's "cultural revolution", and breshnev's liberalism, and later the fall of the USSR. Their policy of self-reliance and isolation has fended off Russian and Chineese reform policies at whrecking their once vibrant economy.
They have this massive army, and experts disagree with what state of repair their ancient military vehicles are in.
Which is entirely irrelivant because they do not have the fuel to power even a 1/3rd of their force for a signifigant amount of time, nor does any of it stack up to the latest NATO equivilants.
Further adding to the mix, is the rugged mountains of NK, making tank warfare almost worthless, along with most other armored vehicles. A battle with NK would be determined with infantry. NK's 120,000 strong special forces/light infantry corps being the only formation we really have to worry about, and their vast networks of tunnels.
These requires really little if any infastructure support, as they will steal provisions and equipment from the enemy, and try and infiltrate deep inside enemy lines.
Its also unlikely that if NK tries and nuke someone, it will not be done with missiles. It would be carried by these special forces by hand, and detonated in place.
Also, read more H. John Poole. He'll explain most of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._John_Poole
A perfect example. When push came to shove the USSR backed down. They knew where it would go and didn't want to go there. Just like we backed down many times later rather than push things too far. Too much to lose.
Not so - it was a trade-off. Kennedy pulled missiles out of Turkey, USSR pulled out of Cuba. Refer here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_missile_crisis
There was a requirement that the Kennedy deal didn't get told publicly - one reason I didn't know about it 'til I saw it in my daughter's history books. My dad never did, and died thinking Kennedy had stared Krushchev out,,,
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
"If the second Korean War breaks out, Seoul will disappear in thirty minutes by North Korean artillery. And there are ten million people living in Seoul."
This is complete rubbish and the ability to destroy Seoul thing is just complete and utter bluster.
Hitler spent about 3 years trying to destroy London and he had far more devastating munitions available than North Korea does. This is in part because Hitler had an air force capable of dropping large bombs whilst the North Korean air force wouldn't even be able to get close to Seoul. Artillery alone isn't going to destroy a city, even if they fire first, and get a few rounds off before they're hit by large conventional weapons like MOABs and cruise missiles, people will die but it'd be in the tens of thousands at worst. That sounds awful, but when you consider that 230,000 people died in the 2004 Tsunami it's still small fry as disasters go. Again, if London managed to survive the Blitz, then Seoul can survive a North Korean bombardment. It'd be bad, but it's not going to be 10 million dead, city destroyed bad, not even close.
North Korea doesn't even have the communications and intel required to make their artillery particularly effective, they'll have no idea if they're even hitting targets, they'll really just be firing blind for the most part.
So sure there will be casualties, but what's worse, it happens now when there are tens of thousands of deaths, or in a few years when North Korea has a larger, more capable nuclear stockpile?
I don't see how else this problem can resolve in all honesty, Kim Jong Un is young, he'll probably be around another 40 years, and you're never going to convince a crackpot like him to change, he's only going to get more capable, and more dangerous. He's not even listening to China anymore.