Thursday, July 06, 2017
North Korea and the US
The strategic posture of the DPNK is to hold Seoul hostage to prevent US retaliation for their development of nuclear warheads and ICBMs. Their 7,000 or so artillery pieces aimed at the South Korean capital puts some 10 million citizens under the guns. This barrage capability could perhaps be blunted by a preemptive strike by a massive B-52 raid with each plane carrying CBU-105s and their Sensor-Fused Weapons (SFWs). However, it is not clear that such a raid could hit the majority, if not most of the emplaced artillery tubes, leaving Seoul vulnerable to serious devastation and casualties.
There seems to be little alternative to employing tactical nuclear weapons to scrub clean the area north of Seoul of as many tubes as possible in one big preemptive raid, say, by one or two B-52s with nuclear warhead JDAMs. Having done this as a humanitarian save of the Seoul population, it would be necessary to paralyze the rest of NK, using nuclear EMP explosions at appropriate altitudes to avoid disabling South Korean based systems, but assuredly freezing the armor of the NK army, and any electronic systems as well. Obviously, follow-up raids would be needed to hit surviving systems.
Any option less than this may not be sufficient to prevent the NK from a major offensive against South Korea. The use of nuclear weapons in a preemptive strike will cause condemnation by the rest of the world, if not violence against Americans wherever they are found. In the worst case, retaliation by China or Russia or both with their nuclear missiles might be forthcoming, which would spark off nuclear exchanges on both sides, and most likely the end of civilization as we know it.
A serious dilemma here that appears to favor the DPRK being allowed to continue their development of nuclear weapons capable of striking the US. What is the best solution?
There seems to be little alternative to employing tactical nuclear weapons to scrub clean the area north of Seoul of as many tubes as possible in one big preemptive raid, say, by one or two B-52s with nuclear warhead JDAMs. Having done this as a humanitarian save of the Seoul population, it would be necessary to paralyze the rest of NK, using nuclear EMP explosions at appropriate altitudes to avoid disabling South Korean based systems, but assuredly freezing the armor of the NK army, and any electronic systems as well. Obviously, follow-up raids would be needed to hit surviving systems.
Any option less than this may not be sufficient to prevent the NK from a major offensive against South Korea. The use of nuclear weapons in a preemptive strike will cause condemnation by the rest of the world, if not violence against Americans wherever they are found. In the worst case, retaliation by China or Russia or both with their nuclear missiles might be forthcoming, which would spark off nuclear exchanges on both sides, and most likely the end of civilization as we know it.
A serious dilemma here that appears to favor the DPRK being allowed to continue their development of nuclear weapons capable of striking the US. What is the best solution?
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