North Korea sinks the Cheonan

Suppose a North Korean Romeo fired a torpedo at the ROKS Cheonan on March 26 and sunk her. Furthermore, a US 688i is within passive sonar range of both vessels. What does her skipper do? Does this lead to war?
 
Suppose a North Korean Romeo fired a torpedo at the ROKS Cheonan on March 26 and sunk her. Furthermore, a US 688i is within passive sonar range of both vessels. What does her skipper do? Does this lead to war?

I doubt the US skipper fires without permission. Although an ally was attacked, his sub was not fired on. He probably radios the info back to PACOM in Hawaii and requests instructions. If need be he can engage the North Korean submarine later.

If it leads to war is another story. I think you'd need some more domino effects however to end in full blown hostilities.
 
The event is still going on as we speak, for all we know it was a torpedo. We should wait for more information before starting the What Ifs.
 
The event is still going on as we speak, for all we know it was a torpedo. We should wait for more information before starting the What Ifs.

Too true, it could be a leftover mine from the first round of the Korean War for all we know.
 
For all we know, we could be in a war within a week if they find out it was North Korea that did it.

I doubt it, plus if your North Korea why put your enemies on alert?

The best strategy for the DPRK would be a surprise attack where the US and ROK gets little to no warning. I don't think that North Korea would win even in this scenario but its better to strike without giving your enemy time to mobilize.
 
At this stage, war with North Korea is quite far from reality over this. Things would get very, very sour in relations, and even a few sanctions, but all in all, war would be avoided, though both militaries would be put on alert.
 
I suspect that then the USN boat would open fire on whatever DPRK boat was the one that fired, but would not pursue it past the NLL. If they hit the KPN sub and destroy it, then all involved countries begin the diplomatic screaming, the DPRK threatens to use nuclear weapons, and everything is back to normal in a few weeks.

The aftermath would probably be that ROKN claims it is an accident, they are not going to launch a full scale war over this. DPRK diplomacy has managed to successfully convince everybody that any kind of action would trigger that, so the ROK is just going to be tight lipped so that they don't have to look bad by not responding to the KPN attack. To show the KPN that they can't get away with it regularly they would then sink a stray KPN vessel at some point over the next few months and claim it had crossed the NLL.
 

Cook

Banned
The event is still going on as we speak, for all we know it was a torpedo. We should wait for more information before starting the What Ifs.

Good God man; are you suggesting we wait for the facts before shooting our mouths off?

You ARE new here aren’t you!
:p
 

Cook

Banned
Ah Sir, Ah say Ah Sir resemble that insult!


Foghorn_Leghorn.png
 
Even if N. Korea went to war, who's going to back them up?

Their biggest ally is China, but are they really going to go to war with some of their biggest investors? I doubt it.
 
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