Thread: Best Assault Rifle?

Originally Posted by 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?

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.