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Are Some of North Korea's Long-Range Missiles Fakes?
gbrumfiel writes "North Korea has not been shy in announcing plans to destroy the United States, but questions remain over whether it has the nukes or the missiles to do so. Now NPR reports on open-source intelligence showing that one of the North's most 'advanced' weapons might actually be a decoy. Six KN-08 missiles were paraded last year, but each showed differences in the way they were assembled. Is it all a bluff? Or are the missiles part of a real program?"
Obviously the ones they parade are just shells. Do you think the US/USSR paraded armed nuclear missiles down the streets back in the day?
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I just read those two lines under that nice picture.
Some analysts say the half-dozen missiles showcased at the military parade were fakes.
So the ones they showed in a parade are fakes. Now how smart do you have to be to decide to use fakes in a parade? I mean, you have maybe only two of them working, maybe only one, or maybe even six in good condition. Why take the risk that something happens while showing them off? Showing them in a parade means they are not ready to use if the US or the South attacks. (How unlikely this might be to us, they have a different perspective.) The decoys might be empty ones that will be used later. That each of them has differences only shows that they are working on them.
It only takes ONE to start a major war.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Say what you will about North Korea, you still have to admit those guys sure know how to put on a parade.
Close inspection of the nose of the missile shows the warhead's surface is undulated. Some analysts suggest the wrinkles mean the material is a thin metal sheet, unable to withstand flight pressures.
Maybe they're speed ridges, you know, to make them go faster. Sort of like speed holes on a sports car, but different...
Or maybe they're just ribbed for her pleasure?
Seriously folks... they HAVE nukes. We know this. They've detonated them underground, we've detected the flash. It's fact. (unless both they and our own government is lieing to us... a distinct possibility)
Do they have missiles that can launch them? Who gives a shit? Any ballistic missile they would have would be trivial for our military to shoot down. They do, however, have very sophisticated submarines. All they need to do is load one of their nukes on a sub and sail it into a major harbor anywhere in the world and viola, world catastrophe. This is the threat we should be worried about. The whole missile thing is just sabre rattling, irrelevant of their real capabilities. They'd need thousands to overwhelm our defenses.
now we have north korea. from TFA:
North Korea has demonstrated its ability to build short- and medium-range missiles, and it has launched a small satellite into space. But neither of these achievements would necessarily allow it to reach the U.S. with a warhead.
so how many more steps will have to be completed before we land a competent assessment that north korea can send a warhead to the US? are we seriously going to entertain the idea that a country capable of launching a satellite into space is just 'faking it' when it comes to missile technology? Parent posts are probably correct: you're absolutely insane to parade real missiles in a public square if the goal of those missiles is to be highly mobile and undetectable in the face of a nation thats demonstrated numerous times its willingness to violate foreign sovreignity in the pursuit of furthering its interests.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Be carefuly with that analogy. There's no question that Hussein actually had chemical weapons until the '90s. We sold him the fucking things, and the capability to make more, before the Gulf War, and the UN implemented a disarmament treaty in the aftermath. Whether he was following that threaty - and what risk any remaining weapons might present - was central to the Iraq war. It's not like, apropos of nothing, Western powers decided he must have weapons of mass destruction.
Of course there's a preponderance of evidence that whatever his ambitions, he simply did not have the weapons or the capability to make them. That is, there was evidence of absence, not absence of evidence.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Ok, let's look at this more closely, because you bring up very good and valid points. While it's true, if you are wrongly incarcerated you won't be happy about it, however, there are things which can be done to repay you for that injustice (financial compensation, and I know it may never be enough to make up for you losing your freedom). What reparations can you make to a man who you executed? He's dead, his body will no longer function, ever, you can't give him anything to make him come back to life or to make up for killing him. I won't say that execution is just as bad as murder, because I don't think it is (though I do think it somewhat barbaric).
I got nuthin
On the other side, you have some 600,000 shitty South Korean soldiers who would probably drop their guns and run
The South Korean soldiers I've known would absolutely not do this. They are tough. They would not win against the North alone, but they absolutely would sacrifice themselves to hold off until the US arrives from the south (where the US military bases are).
Also, your idea of military strategy is wrong. 1.1million infantry cannot do anything without support, they will be mowed down like grass. Look at the battle of Somme for an example of what happens when you try to cross a No-Man's-Land with overwhelming numbers of infantry.
North Korea has the capability to inflict millions of civilian casualties on South Korea, on the first day of battle due to the poor strategic location of Seoul, but they won't win a conventional war.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You're thinking in the context of mass attacks. That isn't going to happen.
The NK DMZ is 2.5 miles wide. It has no easy passage for vehicles and directly passing through the forest would be all but impossible. Reaching the other side, on foot - if you avoid being eaten or otherwise killed by wildlife or AP mines - would instantly result in being turned into hamburger and/or fine mist by a mix of automated turrets, mortars, etc. Any massing of troops in the forest, as detected by airborne infrared sensors, would immediately result in shelling of the area.
So really, a land passage isn't exactly tenable. There are small passages through these jungles and those are likewise guarded. They'd get shelled out within seconds of any indication of a convoy rolling down the road. (I don't care if they are well trained soldiers, they've got to either walk or ride vehicles, and it takes a long time to move even a fraction of a million people, well trained or not.)
So really, the only tenable way for NK to get actual troops and their associated Chinese vehicles to SK is by sea or air. How well do you think that will work?
Here's a hint: NK uses 1950s-1970s Soviet technology for pretty much everything they do that's "advanced". That means most of what they do is one-off and poorly assembled; they are easily 70 years behind the West at this point in basic industrialization, and they're even further behind if you consider what they are able to produce domestically. NK would almost instantly fall apart internally if they expended the time, energy, and resources to engage in a war - in the matter of days, people would be dying of starvation in high numbers. Posturing alone is likely too much for them to sustain for long.
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All the history books / classes trumpet the whole "US Defender of Freedom" thing regarding WW2, because we helped stop the holocaust. Yet we have the same sorts of concentration camps / ghettos as in WW2, in North Korea right now. You dont think thats something worth considering war for?
Stopping the Holocaust was not really the reason the US entered the war. The public reason was that we were attacked by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor. The real reasons are up for debate. But this is a good object lesson in the use of history classes to reinforce the idea that America = Awesome. Unfortunately history is as often about making one's country look good as relating what really happened way back when.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
There's a good chance that the missiles shown in a parade were fakes. Many early missile designs didn't travel well. The US Atlas ICBM had walls so thin it had to be pressurized to keep it from collapsing. When not pressurized, it had to be held in a fixture that kept it under tension. North Korea's missiles are roughly at the Atlas level of technology - they're liquid fueled. Putting them on off-road trucks is not too useful, since they have to be accompanied by liquid oxygen trucks. They need a launch complex.
The Atlas was a good booster. Variants of the design were used into the 1990s. (There's a current "Atlas" booster, but it's a full redesign.) North Korea clearly has boosters in that league - they've launched several. They're just not well suited to parade displays. So it's quite likely that, for parade purposes, dummies were used.