United States Begins Flying Stealth Bombers Over South Korea 567
skade88 writes "The New York Times is reporting that the United States has started flying B-2 stealth bomber runs over South Korea as a show of force to North Korea. The bombers flew 6,500 miles to bomb a South Korean island with mock explosives. Earlier this month the U.S. Military ran mock B-52 bombing runs over the same South Korean island. The U.S. military says it shows that it can execute precision bombing runs at will with little notice needed. The U.S. also reaffirmed their commitment to protecting its allies in the region. The North Koreans have been making threats to turn South Korea into a sea of fire. North Korea has also made threats claiming they will nuke the United States' mainland."
The winner? (Score:5, Funny)
Can't we just measure Kim Jong-un and Obama's penises and get this whole thing over with already?
Re:The winner? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The winner? (Score:5, Insightful)
Worked for Europe in 1938!
Re:The winner? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The winner? (Score:5, Insightful)
Appeasement didn't really have much to do with it. It was the fact that we totally fucked Germany after WWI that made a second war inevitable. That is why they were treated differently after WW2, and why the EU was created.
Re:The winner? (Score:5, Informative)
WW2 (Score:5, Interesting)
You also have to consider a big difference between WW1 and WW2: fear of communism. While almost everyone in France was in a patriotic frenzy before WW1, there were a lot of people that did not want to fight Germany for WW2 because fascism was seen as a good protection against communism.
Germany, Italy, Spain had fascists regimes. France spared a fascist coup in 1934 just because different fascists leaders could not agree with each others. Some where hoping that a war defeat would bring to France what a coup missed to achieve.
Re: (Score:3)
Prior to WW2 there was little enough fear of Communism in France and the UK. There had been concern in Britain after the collapse of Czarist Russia but that was at the tail end of WWI.
Germany wasn't allowed to rearm out of some fear of the Reds, but because there was a general desire not to place the Allied Powers, greatly preoccupied with domestic problems, on a collision course with Germany. Russia, eating itself alive on Stalinist purges, barely factored into anyone's equations.
Re:WW2 (Score:4, Informative)
That's not quite correct. While there was no direct collision course, Stalin's politics actually put USSR firmly on everyone's map as a rising giant. It's very difficult to deny that Stalin's policies weren't the main drive behind the massive rise of USSR from post-civil war ruined country to an industrial and agrarian powerhouse over just a few years. The main reason why it wasn't as scary as it was after the war was that fascist Germany was rising from similar situation even faster.
For example, did you know that at the same time as "USSR's bread basket" Ukraine suffered from holodomor, the hunger that killed millions, USSR was exporting millions of tons of grain? Stalin judged that dead ukrainians were worth the fund injection he used to build up the industrial base of USSR.
Re: (Score:3)
You don't know what you are talking about.
Sure.
People in France didn't want to fight Germany in WW2 because they didn't want to repeat the nightmare of WW1. It had little to do with "ism"s.
This feeling existed, but it does not explain everything. Germany was a rising military powerhouse, and Hitler plans for France were clearly explained in My Kampf, leaving no doubt to its intentions. French right wing governments refused to increase defense budgets. You have to wait 1936 when the left wing Front Populaire wins elections to see some military preparation against a possible war with Germany. And even a that time, many people in the industry and the army did not want to prepare for a fight
Re:The winner? (Score:4, Informative)
He has a valid point and his theory has been postulated (and is commonly accepted) by people who are experts in the field. That whole point was the difference between Neville Chamberlain (spelling, too lazy to look it up) and Winston Churchill for instance. Your response makes me curious...
See, the PM of the UK at the time was Neville Chamberlain and his nickname actually was "The Great Appeaser."
I don't mean this as an insult and I was once of a similar mind. But, I'm going to guess that you have been restricted (willfully or culturally) to an Americanized history of WWII. Read (or watch) about the events of the 1930s in western and central Europe. France and England stood by and LET Hitler take what he wanted with Chamberlain signing non-aggression pacts and getting autographed night stand pictures of Hitler all because of the sour taste that WWI left in the mouths of Europeans. I'll chalk it up to American education (left over from the Cold War) and not hold it against you all that much.
You probably also think that America won the war in Europe and that Japan surrendered because we nuked them. Hint: You can thank the Russians, probably for both. The Russians threw tens of millions of people at Hitler (defeating the Germans) and then crossed the boarder and beat the snot out of the Japanese in Manchuria around the same time we nuked 'em. The latter isn't known for certain and is still debated but there's a lot of evidence for it being as much, if not more, a catalyst than us having dropped a nuke on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Did America help in Europe? Absolutely and we funded and supported a great deal of it. Europe would have had a difficult time without American help, money, and equipment. The same applies in North Africa and in Italy. American Marines did the majority of work in the Pacific with the help of the locals, UK, NZ, and AUS but the Japanese were scared shitless of the Russians who threw something insane like 24,000,000 people in the European theater alone.
My memory is a bit fuzzy and some of the numbers or names may be a bit off but I doubt I got anything too far off. However, the person's post was spot on for the most part and what they propose isn't even really subject to debate with most folks though I'm sure you could get find someone who disagreed though I'd have to see some extraordinary evidence and reasoning. If you have some other facts that the experts don't know about then I'd be interested in hearing about them. I'm not an expert nor do I have a degree in the subject, I'm just a rather passionate fan of certain areas of our history and I consider learning about those periods to be a hobby.
To show you that I really don't mean this as an insult I went and did a quick Google for just the terms "wwii appeasement" and found this as a handy link:
http://www.history.co.uk/explore-history/ww2/appeasement.html [history.co.uk]
I'd recommend just a few of the more recent documentaries or World at War if you can find it. The Military Channel has a bunch that are worth watching. It is a subject I really enjoy so if you have anything to support your statements I'm definitely interested in it.
Re:The winner? (Score:5, Interesting)
About those Russians (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The winner? (Score:5, Interesting)
France and England stood by and LET Hitler take what he wanted
And so did the USA. We knew about the holocaust long before we got involved. Hell, the service contract for the IBM concentration camp management machines was handled straight out of Armonk, NY. Well after we knew what was going on we were still selling aluminum to Japan, and fuel and other resources straight to Germany. The Bush family fortune is based on deliberately channeling funds to Hitler's S.S. There's plenty of blame to go around.
Re: (Score:3)
Russia stopped Germany from moving too far north. The would not have beaten Germany back into it's own country. They had no interest in in that, they just wanted Germany out of their territory. Russia was also suffering from war fatigue.
The bombs are why Japan surrendered. It's pretty damn clear. Would Japan have lost without the bombs? yes, but it would have cost millions of lives.
The Russian fought well, and bravely. Had they not, thing would have been a lot different. Lets not over blow things.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:The winner? Wrong much? (Score:3)
You post is incredibly inaccurate and shows you have a basic grasp of World War 2 history. The Soviet Union was only able to survive because of the other fronts Hitler had lost to the Allies. He had to refocus his defenses and this allowed the Soviet Union enough breathing room to regroup and counter. Also, the success of the Soviet Union in WW2 was mostly because of logistics. Their trains, trucks, and fuel all came from the United States and the UK. Without any of that, they would have lost. They had NO W
Re:About those Russians (Score:5, Insightful)
That the Russians has a near unlimited supply of poor untrained peasants to fling at the enemy on mass does not say much for their strategy. If Germany had not made the bone headed move to invade Russia at the onset of one of the coldest winters in decades, the war would have turned out much differently. You also forget the AIR POWER that the Americans brought to bear on Germany's manufacturing cities and supply lines. Without manufacturing, the German war machine collapsed. It was American technological might that saved the world in WWII, not Russian brawn, which only resulted in millions more needless casualties on all sides.
It was a combination. We can theorize left and right about what might have happened without any one of the great powers, or with slightly different deployments of resources. Britain might have been forced into a separate peace due to an inadequate food supply, for example; Russia might have lost soldiers more quickly than it could produce them without advancing sufficiently if the Americans hadn't bombed the hell out of Europe; America might have turned nuclear against Germany in 1946 if Hitler had never been stupid enough to attack Russia; America might never have declared war on Germany if Japan had attacked a year later and Britain had made a separate peace; The Russians might have failed in their advances if they hadn't tied factory production directly to the food supply for incentive purposes.
There is so much anti-american sentiment these days that theories diminishing the importance of any American commitment are inherently suspect, IMHO. On the other hand, there is nationalistic propaganda that is often wrong, on all sides.
hiroshima... (Score:3)
I've been to the Nuke museum in Hiroshima, Japan. They have USA DoD declassified documents from the time of WWII which discuss the decision to drop nukes on Japan. The US DoD state that Japan was on the verge of surrender to Russia, who was negotiating a conditional surrender at the time of the bombing. In the end, the nukes were dropped to force an unconditional surrender and to short circuit a Russian backed peace agreement. The American DoD documents from the highest officials are clear about this, despi
Re:The winner? (Score:4, Informative)
Some pretty minimal googling [google.com] could have answered that for you.
The excerpt from the first link that google shows:
Discover how the policy of Appeasement, championed by Neville Chamberlain and the League of Nations inevitably led to WW2.
Re:The winner? (Score:5, Interesting)
I do not know but could he commit the British people to that level of death and destruction without having tried?
If he had stood up to Hitler earlier, the level of death and destruction would have been far less, or perhaps zero. Germany was still very weak when the appeasement started. When Hitler sent soldiers into the Rhineland [wikipedia.org], they had no ammunition. If the Allies had put up even a token resistance, they could have stopped it. But by making concession after concession, they gave Germany time to build up forces. Even after the war started in September of 1939, Britain and France took little offensive action, and war settled into a "sitzkrieg". They gave the Krauts another nine months to finish off Poland, and mass their forces on the western front.
At the time, WWI was called "The Great War" and WWII had not yet been named. When Churchill, who had opposed appeasement, was asked what the war should be called, he answered "The Unnecessary War".
FOrgetting one thing (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
You're going to have to explain that one to us.
Appeasement bought enough time for the UK to rapidly bolster its forces. Just enough.
Re:The winner? (Score:5, Interesting)
NK is not Germany, though. And so far they're just shaking their fists in the air, not invading countries.
Re:The winner? (Score:4, Insightful)
NK is not Germany, though. And so far they're just shaking their fists in the air, not invading countries.
The difference though, is that when Germany pulled the trigger, they moved in troops and occupied territory. Should North Korea pull the trigger it'll be to wipe out millions in a single minute with no intention of doing anything but damage.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Hitler actually had the military to make good on his threats -- he wasn't all bluster. If Li'l Kim actually started a war he'd be smashed into powder by the South Koreans alone, and he knows it.
Re:The winner? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't underestimate North Korea's military. They might not have the most modern equipment but there are a lot of them and they are fanatical. Even though they would eventually lose it would be a very bloody war with a lot of close fighting.
Re:The winner? (Score:4, Interesting)
Better way. Ignore them completely. Don't acknowledge them, don't respond. Act like you you don't even hear them.
Pretend they don't even exist.
That's bloody stupid. Has ignoring playground bullies ever worked? No, it just invites escalating provocations.
Re:The winner? (Score:5, Insightful)
Better way. Ignore them completely. Don't acknowledge them, don't respond. Act like you you don't even hear them.
Pretend they don't even exist.
That's bloody stupid. Has ignoring playground bullies ever worked? No, it just invites escalating provocations.
Depends on the motive of the bully. If they are looking for a reaction (eg tears) and they don't get one they will either escalate or move on to an easier target. If they are performing a show of strength to demonstrate their superiority then ignoring them won't be as useful. In the playground, _your_ objective is to not get picked on, which normally means don't be the softest target. This doesn't apply here as the objective is that nobody gets picked on.
If this does escalate and they do turn SK into a "sea of fire" then wiping NK out right now will be the option with the best net result in terms of lower loss of life, based on that this is what will happen anyway if they do make good with their threats. History won't see a pre-emptive strike that way though...
agreed (Score:3, Insightful)
People who dislike confrontation tend to prefer methods of confrontation-mitigation that are themselves non-confrontational. Sometimes, this works....for example if you never provoke a confrontational person they often don't notice you and hence an unpleasant situation is avoided.
Obviously, the strategy stops working the moment you are noticed anyway. But people who have a distaste for confrontation convince themselves that they can end the situation by continuing to refuse to participate. Of course, in
Re: (Score:3)
I agree with you that DPRK has a loud mouth but it has resulted in deaths. Not only of it's own people but South Koreans as well. Opening dams to cause flooding, torpedoes, and artillery have killed South Koreans. Those were intentional acts. But i suppose some amount of killing has to be ignored, right? It would be silly to go to war over just a few deaths. DPRK will have to kill a lot of people before it becomes worth it. Which is unfortunate.
Re: (Score:3)
Better way. Ignore them completely. Don't acknowledge them, don't respond. Act like you you don't even hear them.
Pretend they don't even exist.
That's bloody stupid. Has ignoring playground bullies ever worked? No, it just invites escalating provocations.
It will work if YOU are the biggest bully in the playground.
The Principal?
Re:The winner? (Score:4, Insightful)
Better way. Ignore them completely. Don't acknowledge them, don't respond. Act like you you don't even hear them.
Pretend they don't even exist.
That's the same stupid advice mothers give to their children about bullies. When has a bully actually given up because you ignored them hard enough?
Re:The winner? (Score:5, Insightful)
F. U.
Tell it to the little kid that was me 35 years ago. Smartest kid in the class and chubby. It started in first grade when I whizzed through vocab. Scaled up to ostracism, getting chased, being beaten. Got jumped by guys with knives but luckily ran away.
The only thing that got people's attention was studying karate and breaking a big 6th grader's nose. Aside from that a glacier rock was my best friend at lunch hour. Sure I had some friends, other geeks. But it only really stopped after I got out of the public school system and commuted an hour away to a preppy private high school.
If you want to know why America sucks at least one reason is because of the utter wasteland of stupidity that is the public school and community of people going to it for 90% of the people, and the system refusing to beat down bullies while they're young. Law of the jungle? Gandhi? Fuck that. I still have trauma from when I was that little kid. Maybe you just didn't get bullied enough. Tell it to kids (not me thankfully) who have gotten rolled up in gym mats, suffocated and died.
I bet a huge proportion of slashdotters have been bullied like me. Fixing (neutering) bullies and rewarding fair play would do a lot towards fixing (neutering) our military-industrial complex and maybe even our money politics.
Re:The winner? (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the things I take the least pride in as an American is the rampant anti-intellectualism.
OT of course, but not the answer either (Score:4, Insightful)
F. U.
Tell it to the little kid that was me 35 years ago. Smartest kid in the class and chubby. It started in first grade when I whizzed through vocab. Scaled up to ostracism, getting chased, being beaten. Got jumped by guys with knives but luckily ran away.
The only thing that got people's attention was studying karate and breaking a big 6th grader's nose. Aside from that a glacier rock was my best friend at lunch hour. Sure I had some friends, other geeks. But it only really stopped after I got out of the public school system and commuted an hour away to a preppy private high school.
If you want to know why America sucks at least one reason is because of the utter wasteland of stupidity that is the public school and community of people going to it for 90% of the people, and the system refusing to beat down bullies while they're young. Law of the jungle? Gandhi? Fuck that. I still have trauma from when I was that little kid. Maybe you just didn't get bullied enough. Tell it to kids (not me thankfully) who have gotten rolled up in gym mats, suffocated and died.
I bet a huge proportion of slashdotters have been bullied like me. Fixing (neutering) bullies and rewarding fair play would do a lot towards fixing (neutering) our military-industrial complex and maybe even our money politics.
Like most things it's not that simple. At 13 I would've agreed with your final conclusion. Then I grew up and learned the world is more complicated than that. I've also worked with and taught HS kids, where I learned things get even more complicated when you know even more of the backstory. Bullying often stems from problems, many of them at home. Abusive parents, neglectful parents, absent parents, actual mental issues, economic problems, familial stress, physical injuries, drug and alcohol issues and many more things all can play a part.
Bullies are often not evil kids, and a countrywide reaction to bullies Hammurabi style would do an enormous amount of damage too, as would simply overlooking competence, however fair it seems. Yes, there are some kids who would stop bullying if they get punched in the nose but there are many more who stop bullying *you* and move on to a easier target, and that's obviously not an answer from a societal view of things, since not all those bullied can punch the bully in the nose. The best approach is not a blanket one, but one that would take bullies and send them social workers to figure out what the hell is going on to begin with.
Re: (Score:3)
Many of these kids may not have had an actual choice.
Either we believe in free will, or we don't.
The situation is more complex than "these kids" anyway. In cases where bullying is permitted to continue or even become pervasive, the administration is always to blame; preventing it is their responsibility, and they often in fact give tacit approval.
If you think bullying is evil, you have had a very soft life. Bullying is wrong, and its a behavioral problem. It isn't evil.
It's not a great big evil compared to many other things, but bullying is junior terrorism. I lived in fear from sixth grade through sophomore high school. If I'd have had ready access to a firearm I'd probably have u
Re:The winner? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry. I'm no proponent of NK, but from here it looks like that what US is doing is a provocation. Of mentally unstable, suicidal lunatic. If you want to show your force, go ahead and do it. On your half of the globe. Not in the backyard of the idiot.
Re: (Score:3)
Still so smug. Let me guess, still shaking down the other kids for their lunch money at recess?
Re:The winner? (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the main reasons the US is failing is the lack of empathy. If someone emotionally harasses you, it's our fault for being bothered by it. I've been told that at least 100 times on Slashdot in various ways.
Re:The winner? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm. In Vietnam the US destroyed the Vietcong and withdrew. Nearly half a decade later the North Vietnamese continued their original aim, invade South Vietnam. In terms of South East Asia it was an eventual defeat for the US-led Free World. In terms of the overall strategic geopolitical situation it was a huge win. Communist expansion was stopped. Eventually, with no more victories Soviet Communism collapsed (although it did leave its evil seed in many Universities around the World).
In Iraq the US defeated Saddam, smashed Al Qaeda and the Mahdi Army. Installed a new democratic regime (very imperfect, but that is always going to be a problem in an Islamic country due to the political nature of Islam). The strategic mistake the US made was to withdraw and leave too few forces, and an even bigger strategic mistake was to accept an Iraqi Constitution where Sharia was enshrined. This was a fatal mistake that will haunt the Iraqi people (although it already affects the Assyrians, the Islamicist have nearly completed their ethnic cleansing of them ; and yet, the Obama Administration says nothing about the rights of freedom for all people).
In Afghanistan a few hundred US Special Forces with Afghan Northern Alliance soldiers toppled the Pakistani puppet regime called the Taliban. Smashed Al Qaeda, killed jihadis that were drawn to the honeypot from all over the World. Made the same mistake as Iraq in allowing a Constitution with Sharia.
The US never leaves the battlefield in defeat. The problem is they win well enough that they can't see the point in staying. So they leave (probably prematurely, but hey, it makes good campaign speeches even if it makes zero geopolitical sense).
North Korea is not like Vietnam (Russia and China are weaker relative to US power than they were previously). Furthermore, the South Korean Army is much much better equipped than the North. In any fight the Northern regime will surely topple. China might like to intervene but in the age of tactical nuclear weapons their main advantage, massed infantry assaults, is not a strength.
In short, learn proper history please (not the pop history that doesn't match the *actual* facts). The North Koreans would come apart even faster than the massive Iraqi Army if push comes to shove. The only real question is how much damage they could do to Seoul before they went down. Note also that the South apparently isn't that keen on reunification - the evil regime in the North have turned the country into a complete basket case that the South are not that keen to have to fix.
Re:The winner? (Score:4, Interesting)
China wants North Korea as a buffer zone. Having a reunified Korea lead by the democratic South is not what it wants - that's why it continues to prop up the Norks, despite the latter being insane.
China doesn't want to be an enemy. It is a competitor though, so in some sense it already feels as if it is in a shadow war with the US (and the rest of the World, in fact). Here's an article discussing the huge amount of espionage that the Chinese Government is organizing:
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htintel/articles/20130328.aspx [strategypage.com]
China knows it cannot win a kinetic war against the US and its allies. It is instead planning to set up all the pieces beforehand (eg. technology, modern arms and a knowledge of US military secrets) and have a strong regional force so that the US will hesitate to intervene in any dispute. The plan of China is already to enforce its ridiculous "9-line" claim, by force if necessary.
However, China is concerned about the supply lines to keep its industry going. It is contributing to global peacekeeping like the Somalia anti-piracy operation (which also helps train the PLA Navy for eventual power projection in the Indian Ocean). If China stops trampling on the Exclusive Economic Zone of its neighbours then its rise will be a positive thing. At the moment it is running around roughshod over its neighbours, so it is increasingly viewed negatively by its neighbours (who used to be neutral or friendly). That is why Vietnam asks US *military forces* to visit (no doubt a surprise for any readers with their mind still stuck in the paradigms of the 1970's), of course the US is still in Japan and Korea. Then we have Burma/Myanmar peeved with the Chinese (and their crap quality weaponry) so turning toward the Russians; then we have the Philippines who kicked the US out asking to have the US back. The funny thing was that China was afraid of a US-lead anti-China alliance even though none existed. By stupidly throwing its weight around it has in-fact got it's neighbours annoyed and they are asking the US to guarantee their protection (thereby starting to create such an anti-China alliance). I know that the Chinese feel that it is "their time to take their rightful place in the World", and this is somewhat true, but they are so terribly clumsy about it they don't realise they are acting as their own worst enemy.
Note to Chinese readers, we like you and don't want to fight you, so please chill a little. We know you don't want to be pushed around, please realise no-one else wants China to push them around either. Compete hard, but compete fair. :)
Re:The winner? (Score:4, Insightful)
Better way. Ignore them completely. Don't acknowledge them, don't respond. Act like you you don't even hear them.
Pretend they don't even exist.
You might think that would work, but you'd be wrong. North Korea has a habit of making sneaking attacks on South Korea when they don't respond. Recently they sank a ship that killed dozens. In the past they have shelled civilian or military areas, kidnapped people across the border, and axed people cutting down a DMZ tree (since they claimed that Kim Il Sung himself planted it). I mean, what do you think the recent cyber attack was about? Without a proper show of force, these provocations will increase. We don't really need a proper USS Pueblo incident, do we?
Re:The winner? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
If we appear weak then forces inside the regime have no motivation to help stop the insanity. A show of force launched from some place they can't hope to touch is a benign reminder of what they're up against.
It doesn't matter to us much one way or the other.
Could mean a lot for our friends though.
Re:The winner? (Score:5, Informative)
The response here is probably a good one. Fly a few planes around. It serves little military purpose to let your enemy know you've been doing practice bombing runs. But it's a decent way to send a message to North Korea, "stop being annoying."
Re: (Score:3)
But to be fair, Kim Jong Un is a model of sanity compared to APK.
north korea strikes first = loser north korea (Score:2)
north korea strikes first = loser north korea
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
In case you haven't noticed, the USA is at war with North Korea. There was never a peace treaty, and NK has exited the armistice agreement. This has zero to do with dick waving and lots to do with trying to save a lot of lives.
Re:The winner? (Score:4, Informative)
South Korea is at war with North Korea. The US never declared war on North Korea. It took part in a UN-sanctioned action to defend South Korea.
Good luck with that (Score:5, Funny)
"North Korea has also made threats claiming they will nuke the United States' main land."
Given the success of their missile program so far, I think China should be more worried than the US - and that's assuming NK is aiming at the US.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If I were North Korea and I just wanted to blow up some Yankees out of spite, I'd say "forget the missile" and try to work out how to get a nuke into a standard intermodal container on a ship bound to a busy port near a population center.
Slashdot, check me on this. As North Korea, are my nukes powerful enough to do damage to land-based civilians from a boat pulling into harbor in Oakland or New York or Los Angeles? I know detonating a nuke in the NYC harbor was among of the canonical cold-war-turns-hot scen
Re: (Score:3)
One does not "pull a boat" into Oalkand or LA without the US already knowing what is on it and where it came from.
In exchange for fast customs clearance the US clears the vast majority of containers before the ship departs from foreign ports.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Interesting)
One does not "pull a boat" into Oalkand or LA without the US already knowing what is on it and where it came from.
In exchange for fast customs clearance the US clears the vast majority of containers before the ship departs from foreign ports.
Hahaha...only 8-10% of containers are inspected before departing foreign ports, and roughly the same when they're coming into port in North America, there's just too much of it to search and look it up. The majority of shipping relies on documentation and belief that the shipper is "following the regs and laws."
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a book [wikipedia.org] where a supervillain delivers nukes into the US mainland inside of new cars. The A/C unit of the car is replaced with a nuke; then ships are filled with those cars and sent to US ports. The cars are perfectly functional, except that the A/C is not working - but who is going to test that? Not the dealerships; they are owned by the said supervillain.
There is a lot of large machinery that can contain a nuke, or parts of a nuke. You cannot even take that machinery apart. Consider a large electric motor, for example... that is 10' or 20' in diameter. How would customs agents even power it up? it is absolutely impossible. But that mountain of metal can have plenty of space inside to hold contraband. The shipper does not even need to damage the product. If the container is inspected, the agents see what they expect to see - a bulldozer, for example. How would they know that 90% of its fuel tank is already taken by a contraband? How would anyone know what is hermetically welded inside the steel chassis of that machine? You cannot X-ray it; you have to destroy the product - and the agents will do that only if they have specific information.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Informative)
They test every ship with a geiger counter. The containers with the nuke would be found very quickly.
Uranium-based nukes are not sufficiently radioactive for that. The metal itself is a weak alpha emitter. That alone can be blocked with a mere sheet of paper. But the bomb is enclosed in a metal casing that absorbs pretty much everything. Given the size of the bomb and the size of the available volume for concealment, you could even shield a gamma emitter with enough lead, and nobody would know.
To further complicate your inspection job, container ships are loaded so much [wordpress.com] that you cannot even access containers inside the stack until the ship is at the pier and cranes are working on it, layer by layer. By then it's kind of too late. You could try inspections at the port of origin, but that is hard - you have no rights there, on the foreign soil, and the locals are in charge. You can approve one container, but a completely different one gets loaded.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Informative)
When did they start scanning ships before docking? The last I heard they were still trying to get the machines that scan the individual containers to work correctly, without a lot of success.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
There must be a pretty good chance that USSR and perhaps also China have smuggled nukes into the USA
Both the US and USSR developed "suitcase nukes" [wikipedia.org] for just that purpose.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
North Korea has 70 submarines (the US has 71):
http://www.globalfirepower.com/country-military-strength-detail.asp?country_id=North-Korea [globalfirepower.com]
I'm wondering if we're tracking all of them, or even able to track them. Sure, they're probably old and what not, but if we're not tracking them, one could be sent into a port... unless we have some kind of submarine fence/detection system?
Still, an undetected sub could leave North Korea with a nuke and then hijack a cargo ship from a US friendly country, transferring the
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
They inspect it where its packed so they don't have to inspect it here.
At the Sony plant, in the dock yards in Korea, Japan, and China. Go down to to the harbor with your binoculars.
Virtually every container will have a customs band on the door.
You don't see them inspecting because it was done dockside overseas.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Interesting)
Depends. I'm not familiar with the geography of Oakland's or New York's harbors, but a low yield nuke in the LA-Long Beach port would probably have (relatively) few immediate casualties. The port itself is huge, and the surrounding area relatively under-populated (compared to other areas of the city). The Hiroshima blast radius was only about 1 mile with little direct structural damage outside that radius. Such a blast at the LA port would still probably kill thousands, but very likely far less than Hiroshima did. They ensuing chaos (we Angelenos LOVE a good riot) would probably kill as many people as the bomb.
My guess would be that Oakland would be even less severe, and New York would be worse.
Re: (Score:3)
The same bombs detonated near ground level, whether on a ship in the harbor or in a sea container stacked in a yard on land, would have somewhat lower blast radius, I think.
The instant damage would be limited, especially considering how wide everything is spread in the USA. Sometimes you need to drive a car between stores of the same mall.
However a ground explosion will be very dirty. The resulting contamination will sicken millions. This, in terms of civil defense, is worse than outright casualties. D
Re: (Score:3)
... the headquarters of Starbucks would be flattened.
Yet you say this as if it were a bad thing.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
The Serbians figured out how to detect and shoot down stealth bombers decades ago. There is wreckage of one in a Serbian museum. You can bet that NK has been developing similar systems.
I don't want to to on about it but America always does this. It assumes its stuff is unbeatable and then quickly discovers it isn't. That's why you keep having trouble with war games and other countries "cheating". Just sayin'.
Re: (Score:2)
That was an F-117, not a B-2.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The Chinese are the only ones in a position to twist Kim's arm hard enough to make him stop acting like a four-year-old, the Chinese are the ones that we are trying to scare.
I doubt it is about convincing China to influence NK. Its about showing China that all of their territorial claims [google.com] won't go unchallenged. It is also about showing US allies that they should be even better buddies with the US because the US is the only one in the world willing to stand up to China.
China doesn't even have to respond militarily, a lot of countries in the area have China as their single largest trading partner. Threatening to screw with their economies is major leverage in this "debate."
NK i
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the B-52 [wikipedia.org] entered service in 1955. In fact, I remember watching B-52 raids back in '72, when we were in Tonkin Gulf, and steaming through the clouds of sand, dust and grit that they created. FYI, there's only one thing I've ever heard in my life that sounds the same as a flight of Stratofortresses cutting loose: an earthquake.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Interesting)
they've gotta be getting to the point where even China isn't going to take their crap for much longer. They WERE trying to destabilize the region. NOW they're trying to destabilize the entire world.
I see NK like some punk little child that goes around trying to start trouble everywhere he can, that always runs back and stands next to his big brother whenever anyone gets fed up with his harassment. This makes him bold beyond common sense, kicking and spitting on the others around him that would otherwise break his face. And Big Brother has got to be getting sick of it by now.
And just like in the neighborhood, china's the hulk of a big brother that is the only reason any number of others in the neighborhood don't tackle the punk and give him the pounding he so badly needs and deserves.
So really the big brother is the only one that can effectively fix the problem, by finally picking him up by the hair, shaking vigorously, and screaming "ENOUGH!"
I just hope that china is even a fifth as annoyed with him as the rest of the world is. Seriously, even China-style communism would do that country a world of good. I'd just love to see Jinping make a trip over to Pyongyang and sit the little dictator/delusional-god in a small chair and discuss making some minor adjustments to how NK is run.
(contrary to some suggestions in earlier comments, this is not the sort of problem you can ignore till it goes away... the more you ignore little punks like this, the bolder they get. ignore them, and it will never end, it will only continue to escalate)
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Funny)
They don't want to be reliant on China for security, they want Mutually Assured Destruction.
Pretty sure they are just going to have to settle for AD.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Funny)
Pretty sure they are just going to have to settle for AD.
If they want ActiveDirectory that bad, let's give it to them.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Funny)
If they want ActiveDirectory that bad, let's give it to them.
Well I rally meant Assured Dest....
Oh wait, I see we're on the same page here.
Re: (Score:3)
Not entirely. What I most expect to happen is that at some point NK is going to pull a stunt similar to the six day war, where they invade SK and get a VERY short distance before being stopped, at which point they pull a "look over their shoulder, call for 'big brother' to come help", at which point they see big brother turning and walking away, not wanting to go to war over NK's being more insane than usual today.
Then it will get ugly. I doubt nuclear, but ugly. Because at that point they will basically
Re: (Score:3)
It would really help your credibility if you got your facts straight. Russia did help them build a power plant. That's as far as I needed to go after seeing your incredibly apologistic attitude towards NK.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Everybody makes export models of weapon systems. You sound like you think it was Soviet only.
Israel gets the cutting edge stuff. Everybody else? De-rated engines and simplified avionics.
And so it BEGINS! (Score:4, Insightful)
please deport the cute NK chicks b4 any war, kthxbye
I know B-2 are cool toys... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
That will only if everyone omits verbs.
I think they are just... (Score:2)
I think they are just trying to posture before they make their demands known.
1) Season pass to Disney.
2) Candle lit dinner with Denis Rodman, Mickey Mouse, and Goofy.
3) Orgy with aforementioned individuals.
If their demands are met they will give up the nuclear arsenal.
Re: (Score:3)
Isn't listing both Dennis Rodman and Goofy redundant?
I agree on single Nuclear Strike- on Jersey Shore (Score:2, Funny)
Glorious Leader, I agree on a Single Nuclear Strike on US soil and only single strike, if it targets Jersey Shore.
Thank you.
Perfect Analogy (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Perfect Analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a terrible analogy. North Korea could pretty easily launch a nuclear weapon right into downtown Seoul and kill half a million people while launching a war that will kill a million more.
They're not a threat to the US mainland, no. But they're a huge threat to South Korea.
Re:Perfect Analogy (Score:5, Informative)
None of their recent threats have been at South Korea
Other than the part where they talk about turning SK into a "sea of fire" and about "raining bullets on them" etc. Have you not been paying attention?
A farce (Score:4, Insightful)
So what do you think? You really think KJ Un wants a war? Or keep living with that level of UN penalties, poverty,
--
And of course Eric Schmidt was in NK to talk about the Internet...
Re:A farce (Score:4, Insightful)
KJ Un studied in Europe, he is far from being stupid, he likes life, good food, women ... in other words he is definitely not as crazy as his late father...
If he's that smart and sane, why doesn't he take a look at some of the saner monarchies out there? Like a lot of countries that have communist revolutions, it's essentially a dynasty at this point. He should move towards the British, Jordanian, or Saudi model. Much saner. Wow, you start talking about DPRK and Saudi looks sane and smart by comparison! He even makes the Castro dynasty in Cuba look good.
Well that's stupid. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
If they're stealth bombers, how will the North Koreans notice to get scared?
If Hollywood has taught me anything; one thing I know is that stealth bombers can turn the stealth on and off (entering stealth mode). If true, the US can fly the bomber to a point where they know NK will be watching, have the bomber disappear and then reappear in a different spot. Kind of like a firefly on the radar.
Re: (Score:3)
If they're stealth bombers, how will the North Koreans notice to get scared?
Because we have no reason to lie, other than to save gas, and they know it.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Marry Little Minuet (Score:3)
They’re rioting in Africa
They’re starving in Spain
There’re hurricanes in Florida
And Texas needs rain.
The whole world is festering with unhappy souls,
The French hate the Germans,
The Germans hate the Poles,
Italians hate Yugoslavs,
South Africans hate the Dutch,
(And I don’t like anybody very much!)
But we can be thankful, and tranquil, and proud
For Man’s been endowed with a mushroom-shaped cloud,
And we know for certain that one lovely day,
Someone will set the spark off
And we will all be blown away.
They’re rioting in Africa,
There’s strife in Iran.
What Nature doesn’t do to us
Will be done by our fellow man.
-- Sheldon Harnick 1953
Re: (Score:2)
First, NK is already pretty much a steaming pile, as a little time surfing with google earth would show.
But the melting slag comment sounds like something last heard around these parts just before Desert Storm.
Even if NK used one of the Nukes, there is no way the US would respond in kind. We know which way the wind blows, and it would not be necessary.
Re: (Score:3)
Perhaps not; neither China, Japan, nor South Korea would appreciate the fallout. But turning every military base in NK into a firestorm with conventional weapons and sending conventional bunker-busters into every possible hiding place for NKs leadership wouldn't be out of the question.
Re: (Score:2)
Think of it as rattling a silent saber.