North Korea Parades Hybrid 'Frankenmissile', Then Fails Yet Another Missile Launch Test (cnn.com)

First, an anonymous reader quotes Inverse: On Saturday, the North Korean military paraded an unprecedented array of weapons through Kim Il-sung Square in the center of Pyongyang... "We're totally floored right now," Dave Schmerler of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California, tells the Wall Street Journal. "I was not expecting to see this many new missile designs." Schmerler tells The Journal that the large missiles -- the "frankenmissiles," as he calls them -- in the parade appear to be hybrids of the North Korean KN-08 and KN-14 missiles, both of which are ICBMs.
But at least one arms control expert noted that while the parade included ICBM-sized canisters, "what's inside is anyone's guess" -- and there's still mixed results for the country's missile program. "An attempted missile launch by North Korea on Sunday failed, US and South Korean defense officials told CNN... At this point, US military officials don't believe the missile had intercontinental capabilities, a US defense official told CNN." The official said there was limited data -- because the missile blew up so quickly -- prompting CNN.com to run the story under the headline "Show of Strength a Flop."

Update: Slashdot reader Dan Drollette is a science writer/editor and foreign correspondent for Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and contacted us earlier today to share his recently-published analysis "to delve into what has been happening lately...and to discredit some common tropes in the media, such as the idea that 'North Korea is about to collapse,' 'China has a lot of influence over North Korea,' 'North Korea can credibly threaten the United States right now,' 'North Korea has no reason to feel threatened,' or 'The North can be completely denuclearized.'"

Comments

Hybrid!

[TechyImmigrant]

It's nice that they are thinking of the environment and building hybrid missiles.

Re:Hybrid!

[Aighearach]

Indeed, since no country in the world parades actual missiles, they're guaranteed to be pretty green compared to the kind that can explode, or fly, or both in North Korea's case.

It is pretty funny reading transcripts from these talking heads who fly all the way to Korea to get on the teevee and pretend that nobody told them that parades have fake weapons.

Countries with higher quality missile programs can use empty canisters from otherwise-real missiles, and show off a high degree of consistency from one missile to the next. Real missiles are built on assembly lines with everything exactly the same, because it really helps if they're predictable and all only explode under the exact same conditions, which can then be well known.

When you see a "Frankenmissile," it means that they don't have spare canisters for real missiles, and the mockups are built one at a time in more of an art-studio type environment, probably by people who are not engineers are don't have an eye for faking manufactured goods to the level needed to make them even look real.

And the media guys who breathly speculate... know all that. They're just totally shameless.

Re: Hybrid!

[barc0001]

> My first thought was that they were fake

You're not the only one... I'm no missile designer, but it seems to be that something in this video does seem to be a bit out of whack:

https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=922_1492285518&utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

Not saying that's a cheaply constructed fake, but at the same time I can't see how it could do any good to have a nosecone deflected that far off the direction of flight...

NK *is* a credible threat

[fyngyrz]

North Korea is a credible threat because they have SLBM's (Submarine-Launched-Ballistic-Missiles.) They can get very close - they don't need the kind of range an ICMB design provides.

That, and their glorious leader regularly displays both extreme aggression and extremely small-minded decision-making.

Re:NK *is* a credible threat

[ColdWetDog]

If they want to wait several million more years for the southern part of the Pacific plate to wander over somewhere in the general vicinity of NK;

The North Korean navy is considered a brown water navy and operates mainly within the 50 kilometer exclusion zone. The fleet consists of east and west coast squadrons, which cannot support each other in the event of war with South Korea. The limited range of most of the vessels means that, even in peacetime, it is virtually impossible for a ship on one coast to visit the other coast.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

But then they'd only get to annoy Mexico.

Re:NK *is* a credible threat

[fyngyrz]

Your (completely uncalled for) optimism about NK's 70 or so subs is noted.

Brown water... I would only point out that in WWII, the Japanese managed to build subs that could reach the US coast. Assuming some NK hardware is not at least as capable is absurd.

Assuming a sub can't get out from under surveillance may also be uncalled for. Hard to say without going into classified details. In any case, the fact that they have the hardware that can deliver the weapons means that they present a credible threat, whether we can stop them from doing so or not.

And Trump... well, I am not filled with confidence that Trump is a "thoughtful" person either.

Re:NK *is* a credible threat

[fyngyrz]

I'm sure our boomer and attack sub commanders would be appalled to know they are so easily found. You should let them know ASAP. /s

Or to put it another way, you have no idea what you're talking about, and should probably stop talking in order to prevent further illumination of this fact.

Re:NK *is* a credible threat

[hey!]

They can get pretty close by simply putting it onto a boat and sailing it in the any US port. For that matter the 9700 pound Hiroshima Bomb could be built into a modest sized cabin cruiser and sailed up to the Potomac to within about a mile of the White House.

It's really hard to protect a large modern state from a rogue nation with nuclear capabilities, which is why non-proliferation is so important. It's one of those problems that are so hard, people just ignore it and focus instead on ones that seem more accomplishable, like establishing democracy in countries that have never had one.

Re:NK *is* a credible threat

[Aighearach]

The thing about submarines is that the low tech ones are actually quieter than the fancy ones when running on batteries. They have to make a bunch of noise to recharge, but if you're just moving one submarine one time there are ways to avoid that, like having it follow under a regular civilian ship and running generators on the ship. That obviously won't work for a whole fleet, and won't work repeatedly, but there are lots of schemes to get a battery powered sub through the defenses one time. Even the drug smugglers manage it. They might even buy it somewhere else, and it wouldn't even have ever been to North Korea.

I'm not sure what difference you think you would see if it has nukes, vs not having them.

Things like plankton plumes are what you would worry about with a nuclear powered submarine that generates a lot of waste heat, it has nothing to do with a battery-powered submarine that is simply carrying nuclear warheads.

Perhaps you read something talking about the cold-war techniques developed to try to keep track of submarines, and mistook it for an absolute capability instead of a bag of tricks that sometimes work.

Re:NK *is* a credible threat

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming some NK hardware is not at least as capable is absurd.

This is 2016, not 1942. The technology for detecting and tracking submerged vessels has improved somewhat in the last 74 years. The North Korean subs are basically vintage 1960s era technology, like much of the rest of their military. They're not going anywhere without being tracked and if they approach the United States they will be sunk, war or no war, because nobody will be watching except the ones doing the shooting. Submarines can be accident prone and the Pacific Ocean has a fearsome reputation among mariners. Nobody would have any problem believing that a North Korean submarine had an "accident" while at sea. In fact, the visibility of submarines at sea to the general public is so low that they United States could essentially deny any knowledge. Finally, the North Koreans are so unsympathetic and unpopular these days that nobody would care what happened to their submarine anyway.

Re:NK *is* a credible threat

[chromaexcursion]

why did you post as an Anonymous Coward?
DEAD on. and DEAD on what happen to any NK sub where the US doesn't want it. Gone, without a word, with all hands.
re quoting:
This is 2016, not 1942. The technology for detecting and tracking submerged vessels has improved somewhat in the last 74 years. The North Korean subs are basically vintage 1960s era technology, like much of the rest of their military. They're not going anywhere without being tracked and if they approach the United States they will be sunk, war or no war, because nobody will be watching except the ones doing the shooting. Submarines can be accident prone and the Pacific Ocean has a fearsome reputation among mariners. Nobody would have any problem believing that a North Korean submarine had an "accident" while at sea. In fact, the visibility of submarines at sea to the general public is so low that they United States could essentially deny any knowledge. Finally, the North Koreans are so unsympathetic and unpopular these days that nobody would care what happened to their submarine anyway.

Re:NK *is* a credible threat

[Anonymous Coward]

AC's are no less wrong or right than anyone else. Judge on substance, not user name. That is how Trump became president.

Re:NK *is* a credible threat

[Aighearach]

No, they say they will nuke us. They're the only country in the world to develop the tech and say that, but it is what it is.

Re:NK *is* a credible threat

[dbIII]

You want a magic pony or something, who said anything about Seoul not being damaged?

OK, I see where you are coming from and really wish I didn't.
WTF is it with the warmongering and complete and utter disrespect of allied nations? WTF is the point of attacking NK at all if South Korea is going to be thrown away - "being strong" or some shit like that?

Re:NK *is* a credible threat

[AmiMoJo]

NK has been clear that it will retaliate, which is the same stance as the US.

Kim is a fairly rational actor. He is guilty of overkill, but he acts pretty rationally. Trump on the other hand...

Re:NK *is* a credible threat

[Bert64]

Let's not forget that Ukraine also gave up their nukes, and Russia promised to protect them... Look what happened there.

North Korea is a small country with a relatively weak military, who have either lost or are in the process of losing their powerful allies. As it stands, a conventional war between north and south korea would end very swiftly in defeat for the north especially if america got involved on the south's behalf and right now pretty much the only thing stopping this from happening is china, and it doesn't look like the chinese will be backing them for much longer.

On the other hand if they have nukes and are able to deliver even a small number that would make any aggressors think twice about attacking because even though north korea would still ultimately lose, there would end up being significant losses on both sides and neither the us or south korean governments would be able to justify this to their people.

The north is highly unlikely to ever strike first, because there is no way they would ever be able to hit hard enough that there wouldn't be a severe response. They might be able to blow up a few cities, but then they would have america attacking them back in full force.

Let's also consider the economic sanctions imposed on north korea, they don't hurt the regime - there are still plenty of black market channels through which kim jong un can obtain his imacs and whatever else, and the lack of open trade/communication is helping the regime keep their people away from foreign sources a propaganda. Meanwhile the negative attention and threat has caused them to spend a disproportionate amount of their budget on the military in order to defend themselves.

Re:NK *is* a credible threat

[SuricouRaven]

North Korea has an understandable desire for nukes as a deterrent. They fear, and for good reason, that some future US president will decide he wants to 'spread freedom and democracy' and launch an invasion. It's happened before, it may happen again. The problem we have is the apparent unpredictability of North Korea: Their government frequently displays intense hostility towards just about the entire world and minor outbreaks of hostility are commonplace between them and South Korea. Between that and having almost all power centralised in the hands of just a handful of people, it raises the uncomfortable prospect that a nuclear-armed North Korea might just be one bad day away from believing their own propaganda and launching a preemptive strike.

Re:NK *is* a credible threat

[SuricouRaven]

China is sensible. They plan long-term. They wouldn't want to sully their reputation by supporting NK in a war that could only end one way. They'd be more concerned with controlling the aftermath: Making sure that most of NK ends up under de facto Chinese control, rather than as a puppet-state of the US or being slowly reabsorbed into the US-allied south. I imagine this would be best achieved by largely sitting out the fighting, then launching a massive humanitarian aid and reconstruction program. China can afford it, is reduces the amount of refugees fleeing into China, and it ingratiates them to the newly-liberated population.

Re: NK *is* a credible threat

[guruevi]

I wouldn't call a 100ft diesel-electric sub carrying 20T of cocaine a small thing - those are indeed the exception but none of them are being torpedoed out of the water. About 20% of US drugs is estimated to come from narco-subs. That's a LOT of potential nuclear armament.

Re:NK *is* a credible threat

[LWATCDR]

Our boomer and attack subs are decades more modern than the junk that North Korea has. Their ocean-going subs are all old Russian Romeo, Whisky, and Hotel class subs. They have a few midget subs but they could not reach the US.
In other words, you also do not know what you are talking about if you compare the subs of NK with US.

Re:NK *is* a credible threat

[Kjella]

The north is highly unlikely to ever strike first, because there is no way they would ever be able to hit hard enough that there wouldn't be a severe response. They might be able to blow up a few cities, but then they would have america attacking them back in full force.

On a day that NK is rational, of course they make their best impression of being irrational. A rational explanation is that NK wants to give the impression they'll fight to the last man and make any invasion a bloody carnage even if they'll be on the losing end of the mess, whether or not that's actually true it's better than giving the appearance that they'll fold to superior forces. The counter-argument is that they might really be irrational and replaced so much fact with ideology, honest men with yes-men and drunk so much of their own kool-aid they'll attack in a genuine but foolish belief they'll win.

The question is how often has that really happened, that a vastly inferior army has gone on the attack? Even if you look at the wars that were genuinely lost like Hitler's invasion of Russia, the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor, the arab build-up to the Six Day War, Saddam's invasion of Kuwait and so on they had a lot more genuine power to think they could win or wouldn't incur the wrath of major allies. North Korea has half the population and 1/50th the GDP of South Korea and the US is a close ally that has repeated made it clear they'll back SK in case of a war.

It seems to me most dictators are quite happy ruling their own fiefdom, I doubt your world gets any shinier if you rule 10 million people or 20 million people. At least now in the modern day of long range weapons where you can't just send out your armies to die for you while you're king of the castle. Or at the very least commanding well behind enemy lines. Despite all the heroic tales of kings leading their men into battle I doubt they were at the front of the charge...

Re:NK *is* a credible threat

[swb]

The problem is they've had 60-odd years to multiply and dig-in their artillery emplacements capable of hitting Seoul. I don't think there's a scenario where Seoul doesn't experience significant damage, no matter how effective counter-battery or airstrikes are at silencing those guns. Even pessimistically, 1500 guns getting off 10 rounds each is a lot of artillery strikes for a modern city to absorb. The ability to hit Seoul with artillery is a greater deterrent than nukes, and really Kim should have invested in dumb rocket launchers and even more artillery.

I think the only way Seoul escapes is some kind of decapitation strike that kills Kim and his immediate circle so convincingly that the rest of his military doesn't react and surrenders.

IMHO, this isn't entirely far-fetched -- my speculation is that in a country so paranoid, field commanders are scared witless and almost trained *not* to make decisions. I would question how many of them are existentially committed to fighting to the bitter end to protect and restore a new Kim-style dynasty in the event of the inner circle's untimely demise.

Trouble is, that decapitation strike is tactically difficult and the consequences of not doing it perfectly.

Re:NK *is* a credible threat

[MightyMartian]

The problem being they have had nearly seventy years to dig that artillery in, and you don't think they haven't counted on aerial bombardment or missile strikes? Whatever happens, Seoul is smashed to smithereens, and the lives of 10 million people in one of the most important cities in the world are put at extreme risk. Even if you manage to take out the artillery in short order, Seoul is still in ruins, and who knows what else the regime has; likely chemical weapons, and maybe they can even get one of their nukes off the ground.

If the intent of intervening in NK is to prevent a lot of death, it strikes me that a military intervention to topple or weaken the regime will accomplish exactly that; lots of death.

Re:NK *is* a credible threat

[haruchai]

In case you missed my reply to another of your posts about Pyongyang's threat to Seoul, here it is again.

Short story - destructive potential of entrenched NK's "massive artillery" to South Korea's capital is massively overblown.

http://www.popularmechanics.co...

Re: NK *is* a credible threat

[ptkdb]

Good book on US Sub operations Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story Of American Submarine Espionage https://www.amazon.com/dp/1891...

Re:Who cares

[TechyImmigrant]

Just bomb them ASAP. It's clearly a criminal organization at the top. Time to put an end to it. 10,000 tomahawk missiles to strike the targets near the border at 3am. Loads of MOABs JDAMs for the rest of the country. My estimate is 2 days all done and after that South Korea can clean up the rest and integrate.

So when they put out all the paranoid rhetoric that the US is only out to invade and bomb them, are they really being paranoid?

Re:Who cares

[prisoner-of-enigma]

So when they put out all the paranoid rhetoric that the US is only out to invade and bomb them, are they really being paranoid?

My drill instructor gave me some useful advice about thirty years ago: if someone says they want to kill you, you should take them seriously. Let's keep in mind that since the late 1950's North Korea has been militant, aggressive, threatening, and destabilizing no matter who was in the White House. Various administrations have tried various sticks and various carrots to get them to change all to no avail. If the Norks are afraid of external animosity they only have themselves to blame.

Nonsense

[argStyopa]

From the 'debunking' note, I wouldn't credit Mr Drollette as being as informed as he seems?

"âoeNorth Korea wants to demonstrate it has a deterrent. To do so, it needs to be able to credibly threaten the US mainland or our overseas assets. For that, you have to make the bomb (more correctly, the warhead) small enough to mount on a missile,â "
No, they don't.
Certainly, any of the 4 old Romeo-class subs that the DPRK has could accommodate a sizable warhead, and it's entirely unlikely that US antisub systems would be audacious enough to sink it if it was cruising in the Los Angeles littoral. Surfacing just outside or in the harbor, and suicidally popping that nuke would devastate Los Angeles even if it fizzled.

"North Korea has no reason to feel threatened? "
Oh bullshit. The US ROK exercises have gone for what, 50 years? To assert 'they infuriate the north who believes them a practice for invasion' is about as credible as Little Kims score of 18 at golf, or the insistence that he simply doesn't poop. Let's say that they have no rational reason to feel threatened and leave it at that.

"the best and most realistic approachâ"or rather, the âleast badâ(TM) approachâ"is to negotiate a freeze on Pyongyang's nuclear program. Such a deal would in some sense be a new version of the 1994 Agreed Framework, which succeeded in slowing the North's nuclear program."
The 1994 Agreed Framework was a complete and TOTAL FAILURE. It was intended to halt the DPRKs nuke program, and the rationalization that it "slowed it down" is utterly without basis except to the pollyannas who believe sanction just might work the next time.
How gullible are you?
"âoeUnder an updated version of the agreement, North Korea would impose a moratorium on nuclear tests and long-range missile launches. It would give inspectors access to its nuclear facilities. In exchange, Pyongyang would receive food, humanitarian and development aid on a regular basis"
This is EXACTLY what the 1994 Agreement tried to do, they took the food, the aid, and cheerfully violated their side of the agreement. I'm reminded the colloquial definition of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over expecting different results".

I'm not a warmonger. I don't believe the US can "send in special ops" or nonsense like that. But to assert blithely that an agreement with DPRK can result in anything but rewarding them with more time and western goods to limp along in their goofy separate reality is ludicrous.

Re:Nonsense

[Strider-]

Not necessarily true. Diesel-electric submarines are extremely quiet when running off their batteries. Canada has a (small) fleet of diesel-electric Submarines, and is often called upon to play the role of "Opposition Forces" in military exercises. In 2007, during an exercise in the north Atlantic, HMCS Corner Brook was able to sneak up on a British carrier (HMS Illustrious) and snap a photo through her periscope. All without being detected. It's also pretty routine for Canadian subs to "Sink" US carriers during exercises in the pacific.

Don't discount it because it's "just" diesel electric.

Now, when it comes to the North Koreans, wouldn't trust the reliability of their crews or vessels, but that's a different question entirely.

Re:Nonsense

[ColdWetDog]

The ONLY deterrent that NK needs - and already has - is massed artillery within range to hit the SK capital in minutes. The only thing that would take out the vast majority of those weapons would be a nuke - right outside the largest city in the country which houses half the population of the country. Oops.

Sure, you can blow NK into tiny little bits, but then you're going to take enormous civilian casualties. Perhaps historians can justify this 100 years hence but not even the Orange Fluff is psychopathic enough to give that particular order.

Re:Nonsense

[chromaexcursion]

Actually, that's exactly the justification.
To prevent civilian casualties in SK, a massive bombardment will be required.
There is no peace in Korea, only an armistice. A state of war exists. NK blatant threat of SK civilians makes SK civilians a targets
Think Berlin and Dresden, but in NK. WWII rules apply.

Re:Nonsense

[SuricouRaven]

Seems overcomplicated. A NK nuclear deterrent doesn't need to reach the US, just any US ally. South Korea is easiest. Japan would do. Besides, they wanted to get a nuke the US, the easiest way might well be to stick it in a shipping container and bribe/threaten someone to smuggle it onto a shop exporting goods from a South Korean port to somewhere in the US.

Re:Nonsense

[whodunit]

This claim has been debunked for years: http://nautilus.org/napsnet/na...

North Korea in no way has the capability to "destroy" Seoul with conventional artillery.

Re:Easter missile

[TechyImmigrant]

It's an easter missile.

You know... easter.. the day we celebrate where Jesus turned into a fluffy bunny and went around shitting out chocolates and colored eggs.

Back in biblical times, reanimated zombies were not a joking matter. When the zombie control team rolled back the stone and found it gone, they new they had a new outbreak. It was all hushed up by couching things in terms of messiahs and apostles and fake magic tricks, but the select few knew and their ancestors went on to make zombie movies to prepare us.

Re:Who cares

[Alwin Henseler]

Delivering a massive first strike would only give the NK regime an excuse to say to its people "see, we told you this would happen", and then retaliate in equal measure. Which would only leave losers on both sides.

NK should not be given that excuse. Shoot down their missiles if any of them come too close to population centres outside NK. Sink a sub if it comes too close to US (or other friendly nation) shoreline. Covert sabotage operations, fine. A good dose of cyberwar, why not. Stationing extra troops near border areas as a show of preparedness. But DO NOT be the one to push the start button for a full-on war. Especially if nukes might be involved.

Ultimately it's up to NK people to deal with their own regime. And that regime will come to an end - like everything else. It's only a matter of time.

Re:Who cares

[FrankSchwab]

It's entirely possible the 25 million people in and around Seoul care.
Just what do you think would happen when those Tomahawks show up on NK radar? Do you believe that NK doesn't have one or two nuclear warheads on top of short-range missiles with Prime minister Hwang Kyo-ahn's address on them? And hasn't let China, South Korea, and the US know?
There's no doubt that, if the US decided to "Desert Storm" the country, they could land hundreds of missiles and destroy all or most of NK's fixed military. Whether or not that would lead to destruction of Seoul, or a nuclear exchange with China, within 72 hours of the first salvo is an exercise left for the reader.

Just like finding a crashed airliner under the sea

[dbIII]

Truly we have fantastic technology today.
We can find a submarine just as easily as we can find a crashed airliner under the ocean given a couple of years to look for it.


Some things are just not easy kids - no flying car for you!

Re:Just like finding a crashed airliner under the

[fyngyrz]

Well, it's not quite that cut and dry; subs move, make noise, wakes, create magnetic anomalies in motion (and image subtraction can trivially find one of those consequent to continuous MA observation of any area where the sub is, assuming the monitoring capability is available), and while no one tries to track each jetliner using sufficient resources to never lose sight of it, there's good reason to think that we would be keeping track, as best we can with the resources we have available, any NK asset that presented a potential nuclear threat.

That said, even if we're on them at any one point, it doesn't mean we can't lose track of them, either. Even a hardware failure of a tracking resource could put this kind of thing into play where one might ordinarily assume it wasn't. This stuff is devilishly complex. Lots of ways for tracking to fail.

Can't put my finger on it

[Tablizer]

For some reason, the North Korean soccer team makes me nervous.

Re:Sound waves in water not so simple

[fyngyrz]

I'm aware. I write signal processing software for the signals that drive spectrum / waterfalls. Some people would be quite surprised as to what can be done with only a hint of data.

Again, no details can be laid out here, but some tracking is definitely possible. My point was that losing track is also possible, so yes, we agree.

Re:Sound waves in water not so simple

[dbIII]

I wrangle computers for geophysicists these days but I used to be an engineer.
It's hard enough sorting out signals going through rock to find something really big let alone something like water.
I'm just addressing the smug "it's so easy posts" like the GP.

Re:Just like finding a crashed airliner under the

[chromaexcursion]

A crashed airliner is stationary, dead and cold in over 2 miles of water. A moving sub is live, and hot, in less than 200 meters of water. The NK diesels have to come to snorkel depth, maybe 30 meters. Not so hard to find

Re:Who cares

[FrankSchwab]

They could do significant damage - but "reduce to rubble" is quite an overstatement.
What do you think the expected lifetime is of an NK artillery battery wielding a gun big enough to hit Seoul, after their first shot? The US and South Korea have some very excellent counter-battery radar systems; I would guess that the artillery arrayed on the south side of the border would be most immediately tasked with placing rounds on the origination points of NK artillery rounds.

Re:Just like finding a crashed airliner under the

[dbIII]

Not so hard to find if you are looking in exactly the correct place and they are not running on batteries.

Sadly physics gets in the way of Tom Clancy fantasies.
Search and rescue plus a lot of other things would be easier if those fantasies were real.

Maybe read Frank Herbert's "The Dragon Under the Sea" or some non-fiction on the topic. Submarine detection isn't so easy even if the subs are old.

If if makes you feel better

[rsilvergun]

NK doesn't want to kill us, they just want us to keep up enough pressure on them that their populace feels threatened enough not to question why things never get better while they're being told their leaders are nearly God-like. You gotta do something with that disconnect.

And the best part? Both sides benefit. NK's ruling elite gets to stay in power because everybody's too scared to risk a changing of the guard and, well, so are we. What's that old phrase... "We've always been at war with Eurasia". Ya know, we're still at war with Iraq. Legally anyway...

Naw, it's because NK doesn't have oil

[rsilvergun]

or anything else besides millions of refugees. Nobody wants to pop the boil that is NK. It'd be a humanitarian nightmare that you couldn't easily ignore like we do now.

Re:Just like finding a crashed airliner under the

[CrimsonAvenger]

Not so hard to find if you are looking in exactly the correct place and they are not running on batteries.

They're diesel boats. They can run on batteries during the hours of daylight if necessary, but they can't run on batteries long enough to cross the Pacific (realistically, they can't run on batteries long enough to go 100km). Most of the time, they'll be running on diesels, and can be heard by anyone within a 100 km or so.

And they can't outrun a nuke boat. Not even sounding like a freight train (diesel boat running at max).

Re:Sound waves in water not so simple

[fyngyrz]

They're probably thinking of things like near-field synthetic aperture sonar. You can get images as clear as this, which gives the impression that water is no obstacle. Distance, however, changes what one can do, and there's quite a difference between passive monitoring and active monitoring as well.

Re:Just like finding a crashed airliner under the

[LWATCDR]

The fact that this is marked as insightful shows just how bad Slashdot has gotten.
1. We know where the subs home ports are.
2. Subs make noise and move under their own power.
3. North Korea's subs all have to run their diesel to recharge their batteries.
4. The subs of North Korea are old and loud and easy to find if they leave home waters.

To give an example the USSR lost a Golf class SB just like the one the North Korean's have sunk 1500 miles off the coast of Hawaii in 1968. The US found and recovered part of it.
Had that airliner been of interest to the US it would have been tracked from the start until it hit the water. Also if the airliner was still an airliner and not a collection of parts spread across the Indian Ocean we would have found it.

Re:Ps US misplaced 8 of our own nukes

[drinkypoo]

The US should also be able to keep track of North Korean subs. But ...

Nukes don't make noise. Subs do. We have sonar emplacements which do this job. We don't even need submarines to handle NK submarines, because they are such ancient technology. We can handle them with the sonar warning net and a torpedo boat.

If you want to talk about Russkies who can presumably still afford a decent sub now and then, that's reasonable. They might be able to get close. NK, though? That is just not a credible threat. They couldn't get here without being allowed to get here.

Re:Just like finding a crashed airliner under the

[Ol Olsoc]

The fact that this is marked as insightful shows just how bad Slashdot has gotten.

It's rather amusing the level of dumb that the folks who hate 'murrica will go to to fuel their fantasies of other countries destroying us.

Especially when it is a country like NK. A lot of The mouse that roared syndrome. The smaller the country that will presumably destroy us the more engorged their peens get.

When in fact, if there is one thing we are damn good at, it's protecting ourselves.

This even goes for nations like Russia, remember how if Helleree was elected, Russia was going to end up destroying the US in a nookyaler war? It don't work like that homies - cuz the math ain't there. As for North Korea, just possibly - but on the very low end of possibly, they might be able to sneak under our defenses, and just possibly, they might be able to fire a missile, and just possibly, it might actually work. I might do a three-way with Sophia Vergara and Taylor Swift too.

And after this incredible odds defying and semi pointless stunt, if successful, North Korea would cease to exist.

Re:What about Anchorage or Honolulu?

[ColdWetDog]

What would Trump do if Kim did take out Anchorage?

Don't know what Trump will do (probably first have to look it up on a map), but the rest of Alaska would rejoice.

A wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Re:Just like finding a crashed airliner under the

[ceoyoyo]

Diesel subs are very difficult to track. Much harder than nuclear subs. While submerged. The Achilles heel of diesel subs is that their speed and range is severely limited while underwater, because they have to operate on batteries.

However, there are tricks you can play to get around that. Carrying the sub underneath an innocent looking surface ship until you get close enough for it to make the trip underwater, for example. But a shipping container would probably be easier for a first strike.

Re:The "great man" theory strikes again

[swb]

With the greatest possible respect (since I'm sure you are good at something and I've just got you at a bad time) the cult of personality you describe revolves around someone who has been dead for a long time.

No. In dynastic cults of personality, the current living leader is always elevated to the same status as their predecessors and new attention focuses on them and their glory. The current Kim is the current focus of the cult of personality -- it's his image front and center, flanked by his ancestors. Failure to promote the living leader as the center of the mythology results in the myth of the dead leaders overshadowing the current leader, leading to unpleasant comparisons and belief that the current leader isn't adequate. It takes continuous promotion of the living leader to maintain his power and centrality to the myth.

I've got no idea why you think a tight circle is enough to run a country - that "great man" fairytale has got you.

Centralized decision making and authority, with extremely limited authority granted to subordinates. There's an elaborate police state apparatus designed to keep subordinate administrators loyal and in line, but it's all extremely dependent on a narrow group of people at the top who have anything like the autonomy represented by "running a country".

The "great man" problem is a lesser issue relative to DPRK because of its status as a tightly controlled, dynastic authoritarian state. In its case, there really is a "great" or at least central figure. The "great man" is a larger problem in more open societies or explaining historical events (eg, WW II). It's actually a defining feature of a nation like DPRK by definition as an authoritarian dynasty, unless you want to argue that Kim Jong-un is merely a prop and figurehead for an elaborate and diverse apparatus of state not actually controlled by Kim.

And you know this how exactly?

And you know I'm wrong how?