It is a mess, and NK has the potential to be the culmination of it all.
We shall see.
Perhaps Kim Jung whatever will pay attention to the lack of rhetoric from P45 - no minced words with "fire and fury", no political correctness, no diplomatic bullshit. " with us and you'll burn".
I know he's smart enough not to have a hair trigger - he got elected, didn't he's a smart guy, whether you like him or not.
He's also got some excellent advisors - and that's another sign of his intelligence. He surrounds himself with experts. A truly smart person doesn't have all the answers; they know where to go to find them.
This could be a turning point for the US on the world stage, back to being a superpower instead of a whimpering apologetic sissy cowering in a corner.
I just pray we can do it without mass bloodshed. Here, OR abroad.
Not known if it is capable of sustaining re-entry temperatures.
Do not believe anything you read on this subject. It's in the NK's interest to exaggerate their ability, and in the U.S.'s interest to ALSO exaggerate, or downplay, the ability depending on day, tweet, and intel assessment.
Besides, if Kim's minions read the NY Times,and they do, they know all about EMP and have no need to build re-entry vehicles for a ( far too easy to build ) A-bomb.
The calculus on this is frightening. NK has thousands of large artillery lined up in caves to murder Seoul, a densely populated city with a LOT of Korea's industry and wealth, just minutes away from the border by tank. And N Korea has LOTS of tanks.
So every move against Kim has to be balanced off against the major disaster he can trigger with his dying breath, or automatically, if Pyongyang is attacked, Kim has the flu, or a General decides to have a fireworks show.
Now that they have nukes, crappy or not, they have changed the equation and not for the better.
And finally, why worry about unreliable, flashy, expensive, and limited numbers of missiles? Use a container ship. Ryder rent a truck. 747 with the right transponder code. Small yacht. A ground burst in a boat in Long Beach harbor, or Seattle, would be major bad.
I make no predictions, it depends too much on China, who are not the good guys in this, at best, the second worst.
Yup. I don't understand why an icbm is the threshold for "now we have to do something". We can (probably) shoot those down. Bomb in a fishing boat? No defense.
I read about a 3 letter agency that is able to real-time monitor any nuclear cargo. I forget the details, actually there were no details given on how their tech works, but the author who was a Delta guy said it is virtually impossible for anyone to transport a nuke in or around the US without these guys knowing about it. I don't fear cargo ship nukes for that reason.
While I would like to hope that we could shoot down an ICBM, and I believe we could under ideal conditions, I don't believe it's a foolproof system. For example, I assume it would be quite difficult for an ICBM to reach DC, but what about Guam? Is that why Kim Jungle Gym threatened it?
They threatened our family members. It is past time to neutralize the threat. It's all fun and games until you say you're seriously examining killing my brother. Then it's time to incapacitate the bully before he makes good on his threat.
I've served with two Chamorros from Guam (in case you don't know, it's a US territory and the army recruits pretty heavily there). Was in combat with both of them. They were both rock solid, give-you-the-shirt-off-their-backs kind of men. I've had nothing but good experiences with Guamanians.
You're assuming the cargo ship goes through customs. 12 nm out is international waters. Remember...close counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and thermonuclear weapons.
I'm assuming the ship never even reaches US waters. This is purely speculation as I'm no nuclear physicist, but I'm guessing there's satellite or other signal equipment that detects radiation emitted by uranium. I assume that tech exists, but of course you wouldn't want to go publishing that you own the patent. Again purely speculation.
I used to believe that . . . based on nothing but "American's are really smart".
I'm less convinced at this point that if a handful of these were headed toward Chicago we could achieve a 50% intercept rate.
Interesting.
When I was doing the fist power plant, near Polettti, in NYC there was a group that flew the piers nightly with helicopters and sensors of some sort. I was told they could pretty well pick up a watch with a radium dial.
Again . . . I bought it because for the "American's are technical whiz' thinking . . . nothing more.
If you openly threaten America with nuclear attack, your days MUST be numbered.
It is that simple. There can be no alternative.
We have the Truman administration, Democrats infested with Soviet agents, to thank for handing China over to Mao's Communists, and for leaving Soul at the mercy of massed North Korean artillery.
McArthur may have been an arrogant prick, but he was right.
We may have an amazing capacity to deal with incoming artillery and nukes.
But it takes leadership committed to the continued and vigorous development and deployment of such high tech defensive systems for them to be effective. When leadership views the deployment of defensive capability as a provocation, then we lose that capability.
Eight years of Obama, Hanoi John Kerry, and Hil-liar-y...
President Obama saved a life today by performing a fourth trimester abortion for a struggling single mother. The president valiantly paid for the abortion himself, saying, "I only wish I could do more to help those making this choice. Join with me in opposing Republican efforts to deny a woman the right to health care".
Or maybe even, "If I had a son, he would have tasted like this".
Truman made the fire & fury type threat against Japan, Clinton & Obama did against the Norks, but only Trump is a bad guy. The lefties are certainly consistent.
What Truman said to the Japanese was no threat. It was God's own truth. Kennedy did the same thing with the Russians, and THEY blinked because they knew what he said was God's own truth.
When it gets to the point where you have run your mouth so much that the other guys thinks "yeah, right", there needs to be some God's own truth. Or as my dear departed father would say "crap or get off the pot".
Should we nuke NK because some punk runs his mouth? Of course not. He is proving to the world what an idiot he is. If NK launches on us or one of our sworn allies, game over. Time to stick a fork in it. A Trident. Just one would be plenty.
Best bet is to encourage a General to pull out a pistol and shoot Kim in the back. Followed by insincere attestation of a desire for peace and an influx of foreign aid to help the starving victims of the Kim dynasty, with the few other bureaucrats and generals with ambition to compete for the crown disappearing in the night, and he's good for years.
We can not nuke them, the fallout will damage too many allies. But we have a large supply of conventional explosives and should be able to remove a huge number of weapons with them.
Still hoping China will back us up. I'd like to see China perform a missile intercept on the next Nork launch test. I think that would send the correct message without killing anyone. If we do it, it will be war.
This whole situation reminds me of Crimson Tide. When I was younger, I was always on the side of Denzel Washington's character. Now, as a man, I have to side with the captain.
North Korea keeps South Korea away from their border. If there was a free, actual Republic, successful, nation on China's border there would be a flood of refugees fleeing the dictatorship. The Wall on the river border would be unlike the Iron Curtain as it would be pretty much machine guns lined up side by side to murder the tide trying to flee.
The artillery Kim's daddy put in is hidden in caves and bunkers. It doesn't have to have traverse or elevation, it's already aimed when they plant them in concrete. Just a slightly larger than muzzle sized hole. They are not weapons of war to support the invasion, ( although they have thousands of cannons for that ) it's a massive murder weapon pre-set to kill civilians in Seoul. Imagine the entire Jersey shore as one long bunker filled with cannons aimed at NY City.
You imagine that you can fly the few B-52s we have left ( and are all older than their pilots ) in formation dropping bombs on the area just over the border in a miles wide strip that is cannon range? Without getting shot down by thousands of Soviet & Chicom built anti-aircraft missiles? Don't forget the thousands of anti-air artillery shooting 100mm shells, and already more or less aimed at where any attacking airplane has to fly to bomb the bunkers and caves.
Do you also imagine that every one of those cannons aimed deliberately at the women and children of a Major City will hold their fire while being bombed with a handful of really old planes? "Oh, sure we'll just watch while an unarmed cargo plane drops MOABs on my barracks mates." Not a chance in heck that they won't get orders to initiate the slaughter the instant there's an attack, or Kim has bad gas.
The ultimate defeat of N. Korea's regime is pretty much a given. But how many are you willing to let die? How many are you willing to order killed in pursuit of one fat psycho?
If we can't get one of Kim's Generals to turn on him and take over, we may have to accept that thousands of innocents near him will have to be murdered in cold blood, by us, to stop him.
If we'd invested in different things than giving Iran Billion$ for the greater glory of Islam, like the Thor program or orbital lasers ( see "Real Genius" movie for funny version ) then we could hit Kim while he's watching another lovely parade, but there's no way even the hottest Top Gun graduate in a F-18E can drop a bomb on Kim in the open without the fat brother killing nut being hauled out of danger by the people who stay in power, and fed, by his power.
I doubt even Delta could assassinate Kim and have a hope of escape. Maybe if we planted a small nuke in Dennis Rodman?