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Here's the Missile Sub That Would Kick in North Korea's Door

Abbazorkzog

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Here's the Missile Sub That Would Kick in North Korea's Door

USS Michigan is visiting the Korean peninsula.


landscape-1493664781-3331864.jpg


The end of the Cold War in 1991 reduced the number of submarines needed to 14. Four of the older submarines, including the Michigan, were converted into cruise missile submarines by taking the hull space devoted to their Trident II D-5 nuclear ballistic missiles and converting it to house Tomahawk conventional land attack cruise missiles instead. The result is a single submarine that can carry 154 land attack cruise missiles, each of which can travel up to 900 miles and attack a target with a 1,000-pound high explosive warhead with GPS-level accuracy. It's an incredible package of precision firepower that rivals the destructive capability of entire 20th century air forces.

North Korea's ability to detect and strike the Michigan, which could sit hundreds of miles off the Korean peninsula to attack targets on land, is essentially zero. North Korea has no long-range anti-submarine warfare force to speak of.​

In other words, North Korea doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell against the U.S. Military.
 
Here's the Missile Sub That Would Kick in North Korea's Door

USS Michigan is visiting the Korean peninsula.


landscape-1493664781-3331864.jpg


The end of the Cold War in 1991 reduced the number of submarines needed to 14. Four of the older submarines, including the Michigan, were converted into cruise missile submarines by taking the hull space devoted to their Trident II D-5 nuclear ballistic missiles and converting it to house Tomahawk conventional land attack cruise missiles instead. The result is a single submarine that can carry 154 land attack cruise missiles, each of which can travel up to 900 miles and attack a target with a 1,000-pound high explosive warhead with GPS-level accuracy. It's an incredible package of precision firepower that rivals the destructive capability of entire 20th century air forces.

North Korea's ability to detect and strike the Michigan, which could sit hundreds of miles off the Korean peninsula to attack targets on land, is essentially zero. North Korea has no long-range anti-submarine warfare force to speak of.​

In other words, North Korea doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell against the U.S. Military.

Last I heard, the most secretive regime in the world was a mystery to our military planners. Could be they just don't want to take chances.

At worst we would need to attack their facilities with bunker-busters.
 
Here's the Missile Sub That Would Kick in North Korea's Door

USS Michigan is visiting the Korean peninsula.


landscape-1493664781-3331864.jpg


The end of the Cold War in 1991 reduced the number of submarines needed to 14. Four of the older submarines, including the Michigan, were converted into cruise missile submarines by taking the hull space devoted to their Trident II D-5 nuclear ballistic missiles and converting it to house Tomahawk conventional land attack cruise missiles instead. The result is a single submarine that can carry 154 land attack cruise missiles, each of which can travel up to 900 miles and attack a target with a 1,000-pound high explosive warhead with GPS-level accuracy. It's an incredible package of precision firepower that rivals the destructive capability of entire 20th century air forces.

North Korea's ability to detect and strike the Michigan, which could sit hundreds of miles off the Korean peninsula to attack targets on land, is essentially zero. North Korea has no long-range anti-submarine warfare force to speak of.​

In other words, North Korea doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell against the U.S. Military.

The major question is whether one can do enough damage enough quickly to prevent retaliatory action by North K. We really don't want our ally to lose a million citizens.
 
The major question is whether one can do enough damage enough quickly to prevent retaliatory action by North K. We really don't want our ally to lose a million citizens.

Better stock up on your Samsung products now!
 
Last I heard, the most secretive regime in the world was a mystery to our military planners. Could be they just don't want to take chances.

At worst we would need to attack their facilities with bunker-busters.

At worst we would probably need more than bunker breakers to minimize the probability of catastrophic damage to South Korean populations.
 
Last I heard, the most secretive regime in the world was a mystery to our military planners. Could be they just don't want to take chances.

At worst we would need to attack their facilities with bunker-busters.

The most important strike in any war with North Korea would be the insane number of artillery pieces current trained North Korean cities. If the opening strike comes from North Korea then Seoul is doomed. I am not sure even the US has the capability to take out even the majority of North Korean artillery pieces in the opening hours.

Here is the Stratfor estimate of the immense damage potent facing South Korea if North Korea began firing:

nork.jpg
 
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The most important strike in any war with North Korea would be the insane number of artillery pieces current trained North Korean cities. If the opening strike comes from North Korea then Seoul is doomed. I am not sure even the US has the capability to take out even the majority of North Korean artillery pieces in the opening hours.

Here is the Stratfor estimate of the immense damage potent facing South Korea if North Korea began firing:

View attachment 67217036

They're locked and loaded and spread across the DMZ...it would take massive numbers of cruise missile strikes to take down even a portion of their artillery.

This is gonna be messy as Hell.
 
NK forces will focus on overrunning the South before US reinforcements can arrive. CW use will probably be extensive. I estimate it would require conventional US/SK forces 4-6 months of high-intensity combat with ~1+ million dead civilians.
 
NK forces will focus on overrunning the South before US reinforcements can arrive. CW use will probably be extensive. I estimate it would require conventional US/SK forces 4-6 months of high-intensity combat with ~1+ million dead civilians.

We have 30,000+ troops within miles of the DMZ. My worries are mostly for them.
 
In other words, North Korea doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell against the U.S. Military.

Obviously the US Military would destroy NK.

The problem is we don't want NK to attack SK & us troops because our many-baby president decided to do a "show of force" with another man-baby, this one deeply narcissistic, psychotic & unhinged.
 
The Michigan and the other three SSGN's are formidable, partly because they cannot be located. That would be an advantage in a surprise attack, because the cruise missiles could be launched from close to shore, reducing their flight time and giving their targets little or no warning.

The U.S. military's preferred plan seem to make the enemy's air defenses the very first set of targets to be attacked. Without air defenses, all of a nation's military assets--troops, tanks, artillery pieces, missile facilities, trucks, bridges, ships, ports, fuel and ammunition stores, electric stations, command centers, rail yards, etc.--are just targets for systematic destruction by tens of thousands of guided and unguided bombs, missiles, and rockets, delivered day and night, week after week. And all this time, presumably, a naval blockade would be imposed on North Korea.

The Michigan would play a valuable role in a sudden attack on North Korea's air defenses, but it could not even come close to doing the job by itself. An SSGN carries less than three times the number of Tomahawks the U.S. recently used against a single airfield in Syria. Across a single large target with an area of several square miles, there may be as many as several dozen specific points at which a weapon is to be aimed. And against many targets, the 1,000 lb. bomb a Tomahawk carries is either wastefully oversized or too small to be effective.

I can only make a rough estimate. But it seems to me any effective "decapitation" attack on North Korea would take, in addition to Michigan, at least two carrier strike groups, with 300-400 more Tomahawks on their cruisers and destroyers, twenty or more F-22's carrying the new 250-lb. guided bomb, and a good part of the fleet of B-2's--maybe ten or so--carrying bombs of 500, 2,000, 5,000, and maybe even 30,000 lbs. As many as 1,000 bombs and missiles--as well as special forces on the ground--might be needed just for an initial attack on North Korea's air defenses and its ballistic missile and nuclear weapons sites.

No rational person wants an onslaught like this, but it is only rational to plan how to carry one out, if there should be no acceptable alternative. I personally would like to see the U.S. solve the problem by killing Kim Jong Un, but that sort of thing is easier to do in movies than in reality. I'm sure both Churchill and Roosevelt wanted very badly to kill Hitler, and maybe end the war in that way. But he was a very difficult target, and none of their forces ever came close to killing him.
 
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Better stock up on your Samsung products now!

No problem, I have none.

At worst we would probably need more than bunker breakers to minimize the probability of catastrophic damage to South Korean populations.

Yep.

The most important strike in any war with North Korea would be the insane number of artillery pieces current trained North Korean cities. If the opening strike comes from North Korea then Seoul is doomed. I am not sure even the US has the capability to take out even the majority of North Korean artillery pieces in the opening hours.

Here is the Stratfor estimate of the immense damage potent facing South Korea if North Korea began firing:

View attachment 67217036

Most of our 30,000 will be cannon fodder.

They're locked and loaded and spread across the DMZ...it would take massive numbers of cruise missile strikes to take down even a portion of their artillery.

This is gonna be messy as Hell.

It was before. If Truman would have let MacArthur attack China after WWII, conflicts with NK and Viet Nam would not have occurred.

NK forces will focus on overrunning the South before US reinforcements can arrive. CW use will probably be extensive. I estimate it would require conventional US/SK forces 4-6 months of high-intensity combat with ~1+ million dead civilians.

Yes indeed.

We have 30,000+ troops within miles of the DMZ. My worries are mostly for them.

Me too.

Obviously the US Military would destroy NK.

The problem is we don't want NK to attack SK & us troops because our many-baby president decided to do a "show of force" with another man-baby, this one deeply narcissistic, psychotic & unhinged.

Nor, do we allow a bully, to continue his intimidation of the region. I'm sure there are covert operations in play to take out Kim, we may not hear about the failures, but we will know if they succeed.
 
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