Bluesman

Right on. When I was the Lead DPRK Desk Analyst, it became clear to me that their entire doctrine for employing SOF against fixed high-value targets (like Osan and Kunsan and marshalling areas and motor pools and whatever-the-hell) stood a better-than-even chance of working just long enough to give their storm troops and breaching ops a chance to work.

There is a nightmare scenario of just that happening, with huge chunks of US units being cut off from vital combat support and combat service support; retreat lines being closed or impeded; reinforcements being delayed; and command elements being snapped up JUST LONG ENOUGH to see North Korean units rolling into Pusan BEFORE the Marines from Okinawa can land at a friendly port unopposed. LOTS of US troops in the bag; LOTS of leverage for the DPRK to get favorable terms from what they see as a gun-shy political class in the US (and after last couple of weeks, tell me they don't have reason to believe this ).

And a BIG component of this is that vital opening day, which will see a massive effort to isolate the front line troops from everything our doctrine absolutely counts on: resupply, fire support, airpower, and communications with leadership. In short, they could be all on their own, with the ammo they have all they're going to GET. Even the excellent troops we've got up there on the DMZ (dumbest phrase I've ever heard, given the level of 'militarization' on both sides of the Line of Demarcation) will eventually be defeated like that.

It could happen that way, but I think it's long odds against. But what do THEY think? THAT is really the entire question, and if someday the Chonger wants to roll the dice and try his luck, even if we win, we're in for a VERY bad time, with LOTS of flag-draped coffins coming back to the US.

__________________
"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."
- George Orwell

Bluesman

Oh, and when we get face-to-face, I've got a True Story of an event that will literally make your hair stand on end. I was briefed up on it by an old Navy Master Chief and North Korean Subject Matter Expert, and while he was talking about it, he was as grim as an undertaker on downers.

He was my mentor while I was getting spun up on the North Korean problem, and his knowledge was literally encyclopedic, as he had quite literally written the book - a HUGE book - on everything he thought was important to know as an intel analyst. It became my bible, and I'm proud to say I made that mission my own, and was the unchallenged expert on North Korea.

But Master Cheif had forgotten more than I'd ever know, and some of the things he could tell you would curl your hair and make it turn white. That's why I want NO PART of the North Koreans. I know they're not ten feet tall, and I think we'd beat 'em if it ever comes to that.

But they'll kill LOTS of my military family before we do, no matter how it goes.

Maxor

My general feeling is that I hope that the north doesn't get crazy enough to come south. If it does Alot of my freinds will likely be getting relocated very quickly at best. I don't know how far south the US and South Koreans would be pushed but I suspect it'd be south of Osan and while it might not take another bayonet charge to get it back, I do strongly think that the casualties would be ugly. As for the political feeling that we'd leave the country to the north after they attacked, I disagree based on the tripwire theory the number of causalites that the South and US would take in a semi-successful attack by the south would preclude a quick peace resolution.

Bluesman

Oh, I agree that it would be a gross miscalculation for Kim to make, that we'd simply quit and take our survivors off the peninsua. But he may not be learning the right lesson from all the 'cut-'n'-run' talk he's hearing from the minority party these days.

See, that's the big problem: as insular and isolated as North Korea is, Kim may not make a good calculation about what we're likely to do if he decides to take his army out to dinner and a night on the town in Seoul someday. He just knows what CNN and the yes-men that he's surrounded himself with all day every day tell him. He may conclude that they could inflict WAY more than 2,000 American casualties, it wouldn't take two-and-a-half years to do it, and the shock of it all would be too much for an effete, corrupt and decadent American political class to take.

You see what I mean? It doesn't really matter WHAT we would do. It only matters what he THINKS we would do for him to make a mis-step, and blunder himself and us into a very bad war.

Semper Fi

When you say something like that are you referring to their Commando units? I hear NK has more commandos then any other country. What would you say is the main NK strongpoint? Or do their mountains give them a great advantage? Why are they so scary?

Bluesman

I think the big thang that give me the willies is they have methods to cancel out our traditional advantages. We, on the other had, sometimes have a hard time with what they are good at. I'm NOT saying that all of their big plans are going to work, and that none of ours will. I'm saying depending on the breaks it could go any which way from we crush 'em, to they pull it off just barely. But whichever way it goes, we lose LOTS of guys...and we all know what happens to an American politician's spine, balls, knees, heart and guts when he's faced with anything but overwhelming victory in a military action.

Even if the North Koreans only THINK they can get away with it, it's ON, even if they have no realistic shot.

Examples:

As already posted, their SOF (the largest organization of its kind in the world, you're absolutely correct) is specifically designed to neutralize those things we depend on, and that our doctrine stresses. I'm not saying it'll all work as advertised, but IF IT DOES, we will lose the war. I'm stating it categorically like that, because in reality, the entire war will likely be decided, but not concluded, in the first 72 hours. And the leading edge of that initial hit will be their SOF troops, which are composed of the most reliable hard-core party fanatics, and they get the pick of everything, and they train hard and constantly.

Their mission is to take away our LoCs, airpower, reinforcements, resupply, organic and attached firepower, C3, and every other thing we rely on to keep the battle from becoming what they're best at: close quarters massed infantry battles. If the situation gets down to that, all of a sudden the odds of it coming out favorably to THEM get WAY better.

Once - IF - they've managed to do that, their doctrine stresses battles of annihilation. Our doctrine stresses battles of maneuver. Well, they will be trying to get around the flanks (by utilizing 'no-go' terrain, more about which later), behind (by infiltration, which their recon units excel at), over (by tactical airdrop), and under (by tunnel) our forces, making certain that if we wish to disenage from THEIR type of battle so that we can fight OUR type of battle, we'll have to fight our way clear, every step of the way. This uses up fuel and ammo and troops and time, and remember, that's exactly what we won't be getting any more of, because they've cut the roads behind us.

They learned a valuable lesson in 1950: 'DO NOT let the Yankees run away, because we'll just have to fight them again. When you get into a fight with one of their units, grip them by the lapels, and never let go. Make 'em die where they stand, comrade, and take that entire unit off of their Order of Battle, either KIA or POW. It not only saves us from fighting a unit that would then have combat experience again...it increases the odds that the Americans will be shocked when whole units are destroyed...and then they'll QUIT.'

One of the ways they intend to take advantage of us is the concept of 'no-go' terrain. When an American unit staffs a move, the first thing the ops guy (S-3) does is start crossing off huge areas on his map as 'no-go' zones. The North Koreans have no such concept for their infantry forces. Although our units are orders of magnitude faster because NObody walks, and everybody is mounted on some type of vehicle (that's OUR concept of manueverability and agility), their infantry bubbas will go into terrain considered all but impassable. They then pop out at a VERY inconvenient place, either encircling an American formation, or seizing what we thought was a protected piece of terrain by the unit that had the obvious road all blocked off securely. While that US unit is now heavily engaged from the front (like it thought it would be) and holding out like heroes, killin' a metric ton of North Koreans from the 'pinning' unit...the objective - and the Americans' way out - has been seized by a hard-marching unit of light infantry that went up and over a brushy mountain in one long winter's night that we couldn't have gotten on top of with anything but an airmobile platoon or two, IF we had known we were going to need to even do even that, and IF them goddam' naval sniper brigades hadn't landed near the helicopter base, and attacked before first light, zapping all the Blackhawks with full gas and ammo. (And that's THEIR concept of manueverability and agility.)

Another reason to dread fighting them is they have the greatest ability in the world to go to war from a standing start. While a high percentage of our lads may be home for their two-week break from their year-long tour in Korea for the Holidays...the North Koreans could literally blow the horn and run across the border in whatever state they happen to be in, with whoever happens to be in barracks at the time, with whatever they're wearing on their backs and whatever they have in their hands and pockets. If they time it right, it could be devastating.

And finally...those GUNS. HUGE numbers of HUGE guns. The longest-ranged conventional artillery piece in the world, the 170mm self-propelled 'Koksan' gun. Multiple-rockets systems, including the 8X240mm fuel-air explosive warheads that can devastate huge areas OR the large, fixed high-value installations that we've bet so heavily on to defend the peninsula, and which, in fact, are the keys to the OPLAN being successful: the airbases and ports.

And now, thanks to Clinton's absolutely inexplicable 'deal', they have nukes. Nobody is certain if they've married one up to a delivery system yet, but even if they just have the credible threat, they MAY (I don't say this would or would not work, but I bet their planning calls for it all the same) be able to blackmail the Japanese into just delaying the use of our assets in Japan JUST LONG ENOUGH to get down to Pusan BEFORE the Marines from Okinawa show up, or the fighter wings from Misawa and Kadena get into action. Same for the naval assets in Yokusuka and elsewhere. If they can get the Japanese politicians (and as we all know, the Japanese are the ONLY people to have ever been nuked, so the threat is especially powerful) to deny us the use of Japanese-based assets while they debate it for a week...game over.

So, while I think the window for them to actually pull it off is now so close to being definitively closed, that doesn't matter unless the Chonger thinks so, too.

I sure hope he does, but he reads the paper, too, and may have decided that we don't have the strength nor the guts for another - a HARDER - fight. If he has decided that, I hope history will record the Democrat's role in his calculus for success.

Semper Fi

Geez...sounds like we would lose thousands on the first day of fighting.

I'm wondering though if NK were to attack SK who would be our allies other then SK of course? You would think it wouldn't just be the US and SK taking on that beast.

Also, I know some older South Koreans and they were telling me that they weren't really scared of Ol' Kimmy because in their words "his father was worst". So saying that maybe all hell won't break loose in Korea and we could spare all the bloodshed with an agreement.

Bluesman

Well, I also learned another thing about making a deal with the North: keep your hand on your wallet. You can't trust 'em any farther than you can throw a No-Dong missile.

In my opinion, the key is keep your powder dry...and have lots of powder. Keep the lid on at all costs, because ANY war, even a successful one, messes up the South, leads to a humanitarian crisis in the north of biblical proportions...and kills LOTS of Americans. Well, actually, not at ALL costs: try to avoid making the situation WORSE, like Clinton did.

Nobody's really sure what course that first day's fighting would take, but it would be terribly, terribly critical, and if the breaks didn't go our way...yeah, we could lose more in a day than on D-Day in Normandy. Think any Democrats have the stomach for THAT, especially since South Korea is such a fierce economic competitor?

Oh, and yeah, Kim il Sung was a WAY more charismatic leader, and had the cult of personality thang DOWN, baby. But the boy is just as ruthless, if not as beloved. They are both scary, in their own ways, but I agree - I'd rather fight this clown than his daddy.

RUSKIE

Well... id Go with an AK-74, but you put up the 101 so i had to vote for it...
If you had put the AN-94 up there, I would've selected it... Sadly the only AK ive fired was an 47... but from that and what ive read about the succecors id deffinetly go with the 74,101, and so on...

__________________
Dont change fact...
Scincerely, Napoleon

sniperdude411

Please refresh me... which ones have the double-bolt compensator system which reduces the recoil a lot?

alfa

While North Korea will be mobilizing 4 million "reserves" and bringing 1000 heavy guns up to speed to shell Seoul (which means all will be massed in around 20-30km arc alongwith ammo and logistics), USA and South Korea will be sleeping

Officer of Engineers

You don't mobilze 4 million men overnight and you certainly can't feed and water them without extensive prep work.

__________________
Chimo

TopHatter

And if you are North Korea, you probably can't feed and water them, period.

__________________
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
~John Quincy Adams

Dreadnought

Best assult rifle...unmistakably the Mk VII 16"/50.

Dreadnought

But you can provide light for them to read by..well for a few moments