Comments on: More on North Korean Impending Attack

By: John Moore (Useful Fools)

John Moore (Useful Fools) — Sat, 17 May 2003 20:52:14 +0000

I think a hundred thousand or so. This is probably the main reason they need to be threatened so drastically. Otherwise they would kill millions in South Korea and many in Japan (depending on the missile warheads used there).

By: nick crone

nick crone — Sat, 17 May 2003 10:26:14 +0000

Question. How many rounds can they rain down on Seoul per hour in their initial counter attack?

By: John Moore (Useful Fools)

John Moore (Useful Fools) — Sat, 08 Mar 2003 05:22:39 +0000

The Norks could be influenced by appeasement if it seems to be in their long term advantage. If they felt they could ease internal problems (if they care at all about those), and still secretly develop their WMD’s, they might go along with it. After all, they certainly were happy to deal with Clinton, and they changed their nuclear program as a result – covertly switching from reactor-produced plutonium to the more difficult uranium enrichment process.

I strongly doubt that we have the capability to take out the artillery tubes and rockets near Seoul with any technology other than ground-burst nuclear weapons, which would be inappropriate for fallout if no other reason.

The Norks have had 50 years to dig tunnels and caves and fortifications, and certainly have adequate engineers. I am sure that they have lots of blast-proof artillery positions – possibly all of them.

FAE’s are more effective than conventional explosives for two reasons: (1) they have more total energy because they don’t have to carry the oxygen they use; and (2) they can produce a planar shock wave which for some distance does not fall off with the 1/r^2 law. Ultimately this means that they are a heat and shock weapon, just like a conventional explosive.

Thus FAE’s are really a way to either make a great big (20T+ equivalent) explosion on a point target, or to do damage over a somewhat wider area than normal bombs. From the standpoint of taking out Nork artillery, they simply reduce the number of weapons one would need to employ, but otherwise have no significant qualitative difference.

By: Randall Parker

Randall Parker — Sat, 08 Mar 2003 04:46:50 +0000

It doesn’t make sense that the North Korean regime would be influenced by attempts to appease it. They understand very clearly that the US has no intention of attacking North Korea while the US is busy with Iraq. They are very worried about what the US may do afterward though.

What the US most needs in terms of military capability is the ability to very rapidly knock out artillery that is dug into caves on the sides of mountains. I wonder if the new generation fuel air explosives that are under development (using, btw, Soviet developed FAE technology) would be able to kill all the artillery crews and thereby stop the North Korean artillery barrages that would be part of the opening rounds of a North Korean attack on the South.

The other problem is chemical warhead missiles that could kill millions of South Koreans. Those missiles might be very well concealed.