WI: Pre-Emptive Strike | USA vs North Korea
- Thread starter GlobalHumanism
- Start date
To put it bluntly: we don't know. The North Koreans claim they have working missile warheads, of course, but then I would be checking outside if they said the sky was blue just to be sure. Outside of North Korea, opinions in the intelligence community are all over the place. The problem is that North Korea is something of an intelligence black hole due to taking totalitarianism to a level that would have even Stalin going "dude, dial it back a little." So the fundamental reality is we don't actually know.
Obviously we are also not eager to find out the hard way.
Agreed. Alternatively, they could try and smuggle it under the DMZ via one of those tunnels they dug as part of a preemptive strike.
Well doh.
I honestly don't think China will intervene militarily.At this point,Best Korea has become a source of liability.The Chinese have made it clear that they are extremely annoyed with Best Korea's constant begging and their lack of reforms to gain self-reliance.What it will be concerned about would be refugees and continued US presence in Korea.
Now,the question lies with just how much artillery and nukes can the US and SK take out in a pre-emptive strike.
Destroying North Korean artillery is going to inevitably be a matter of attrition. There are just too many pieces in too many places. The saving grace is that they won't be that heavily concentrated against civilian targets at first and be prioritizing fire-support missions for their ground forces. It would take a political decision for them to focus most of their guns on Seoul.
As for the ballistic missiles... well, the static launch sites are dead the moment we have the aircraft to spare to hit them but you can forget about successfully suppressing the mobile launchers. The Scud hunts against Iraq lasted months and we never managed to confirm a single TEL kill and that was in the western deserts of Iraq, terrain far harder to hide in then what you have in North Korea. If we manage to surprise the Norks (unlikely, but possibly) then maybe we'll get lucky and catch a few inside their depots, but once they deploy into the countryside it will be almost impossible to find (and therefore destroying) them from the air.
And I doubt we have the first clue where North Korea's warheads are stored.
I should also point out that North Korea does have nerve gas and certainly has developed ballistic missile warheads for them. While these would be of limited value against ROK-US military forces, against South Korea's civilian population they could be devastating. Military forces are equipped and trained to operate in a chemical environment, civilians are not. The North Koreans certainly have ballistic missile warheads developed for those.
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There have been quite a few posts here arguing the odds against the S Korean & US making such a premeptive strike. The logic presented I think was airtight, as far as it went. The trick is the North Koreans have half the vote on a war starting...
Prempting a nuclear attack is one possibility. Others would revolve around N Korea getting to rough with a third party. Lets say China miscalculates & impounds some essential shipment of grain or other items in response to N Korea failing to make a shipment. The NK response leaves the Chinese stunned , frighted and angry. Everyone else is scared too by the NK "lesson" & in a moment of opportunity & panic the SK/US team cuts loose.
The NK provocation need not be aimed at China. Japan & Russian Siberia are close targets. & there are other possibilities further afield.
Prempting a nuclear attack is one possibility. Others would revolve around N Korea getting to rough with a third party. Lets say China miscalculates & impounds some essential shipment of grain or other items in response to N Korea failing to make a shipment. The NK response leaves the Chinese stunned , frighted and angry. Everyone else is scared too by the NK "lesson" & in a moment of opportunity & panic the SK/US team cuts loose.
The NK provocation need not be aimed at China. Japan & Russian Siberia are close targets. & there are other possibilities further afield.
How do you guys think the Koreans (Both Northern & Southern) would react if Japanese Self Defense Troops were used in such an operation, aka Japanese troops on Korean soil?
Nope. Compared to aircraft, sattelite's are a much more fixed asset: they follow predictable and largely unalterable orbits which means any enemy is going to know when they are overhead. And like reconnassiance aircraft, satellite sensors can not see through trees, other heavy foliage, or hills. Nor can they easily distinguish a destroyed vehicle from a vehicle that has been dressed up to look like it has been destroyed.
The most valuable thing satellites give us against ballistic missiles is early-warning: the launch bloom of a missile in its boost phase is easily visible on a infra-red EW sats images. But, as we discovered during the Gulf War, by the time we could use that data to rout strike assets to where the missile came from the launch vehicle and crew had long displaced.
Satellite reconnaissance has it's advantages, but it also has drawbacks. The fact that in both wars with Iraq we were largely unable to successfully track down and destroy Iraqi mobile launchers despite the devotion of considerable intelligence and combat assets, including satellites, for pro-longed periods of time.
I imagine the only way the ROK would allow Japanese troops on its soil would be if KPA tanks are at the outskirts of Pusan, and that's hardly likely. JMSDF and JASDF might be involved though.
I doubt the KPAF would last more than a few weeks. They have a few modern MiG-29s and some decent SAMs, so they would inflict some losses on the USAF/ROKAF/JASDF/RAF/RAAF (you get the picture). Still, the KPAF would be wiped out soon enough.
As for the land war, the KPA would be crushed on open tank-on-tank engagements, but the Allies would take huge casualties clearing out the North Korean cities filled with dug-in troops and militia.
At sea, the KPN dissapears in three days or less. Maybe their subs get a few Allied destroyers and frigates, but they all end up at the bottom of the ocean sooner of later (probably sooner).
As for Russian/Chinese intervention, I doubt it would happen. It's not impossible, however. If the PLA was too intervene, I expect they would roll the Allies all the way back to Pusan (let's face it, nobody can win a land war with China on her own borders). It wouldn't happen because the PLA gave a shit about North Korea, but rather because they didn't want US troops on the Yalu River.
I doubt the KPAF would last more than a few weeks. They have a few modern MiG-29s and some decent SAMs, so they would inflict some losses on the USAF/ROKAF/JASDF/RAF/RAAF (you get the picture). Still, the KPAF would be wiped out soon enough.
As for the land war, the KPA would be crushed on open tank-on-tank engagements, but the Allies would take huge casualties clearing out the North Korean cities filled with dug-in troops and militia.
At sea, the KPN dissapears in three days or less. Maybe their subs get a few Allied destroyers and frigates, but they all end up at the bottom of the ocean sooner of later (probably sooner).
As for Russian/Chinese intervention, I doubt it would happen. It's not impossible, however. If the PLA was too intervene, I expect they would roll the Allies all the way back to Pusan (let's face it, nobody can win a land war with China on her own borders). It wouldn't happen because the PLA gave a shit about North Korea, but rather because they didn't want US troops on the Yalu River.
Idk. With the amount of Bi-Lateral ties we have with China, I hardly think Americans on the Yalu will matter nearly as much as it did when diplomatic relations were zero, circa Korean War. And the Koreans wouldn't stand for Chinese troops on the peninsula just as much as Japanese troops, as per your explanation.
The Chinese would have a lot of crap to weigh if they were to consider launching a counter-attack in response to an American invasion.
This will end bad...the one thing both Koreas agree on is that they hate Japan for what it did back then...
Many North Koreans would rather eat there own Childern then speak out against their God/dictator and millions would die without nukes by famine and insurgency
top kek. not in the world would it happen. needs more background info, otherwise this is really unrealistic
under whom? the Chinese? the South Koreans? the US? the UN? a democratic DPRK?
it's preemptive, so the following could be expected from the ROK/US forces:
1. capture of nuclear arsenals
2. decimation of NK's large and decrepit artillery via air strikes
3. humanitarian aid to lure north koreans out from cities, then carpet-bombing
4. conventional infantry attack across the dmz(with use of anti-mine devices, I assume)
and so on and so forth.
It may be successful in that ROK/US wouldn't have a hard time defeating North Korea, but it may not be successful in that it will trigger a Chinese response, one that can undo ROK/US's military objectives.
my bet is that he wouldn't, even when NK is basically fully conquered. He doesn't seem that nihilistic.
depends on how the war goes.
it'll open a can of worms, and I think the ROK/US ground troops would be enough to successfully conduct operations on their own. They can be useful in post-war pacification, however, and such a policy can help in increasing Japanese support in NK. Should be done delicately though.