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Subject: ROKN Patrol Corvette sucken by DPRK torpedo boat
YelliChink    3/26/2010 12:10:07 PM
Just happened 2150 Korean local time. Chinese reports say that it was DPRK torpedo boat. The ROKN corvette sunk is probably a 1200t PCC. I can't read Korean so I am not sure which one exactly. At this moment, 59 out of 104 crew have been saved so far. Best wishes to the still missing ones and condolence to families of lost sailors.
 
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DarthAmerica       5/6/2010 2:40:04 PM

The S Korean Military is trying to box in the President politically to commit to some sort of retaliation which would satisfy the generals. The President is thinking about the risk and is avoiding language that firmly places blame. Tug-O-War. We'll see what happens. I still think that S Korea won't do much more beyond harsh language and referal to the UNSC. Would not surprise me however if a small naval clash or two break out over the next year or two.

-DA

 
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SantaClaws       5/6/2010 6:24:42 PM
If you've read any of my proposals then it should be clear I'm in favor of starving them out.



NK only has enough fuel to sustain a 2 day ground war. SK can win simply by tying down their forces until reinforcements arrive, which is rather easy considering how difficult it is for the NK to move South from the DMZ. The war would be over in weeks as the NK would have no viable means to sustain ground operations barring infantry, which can easily be dealt with using air support.






 



The real problem lies in disabling the NK artillery before it can cause damage. Even worse, the NK may have managed to weaponize a nuclear warhead and place it onto an artillery piece. We would be in a world of hurt. Even with all our cruise missiles and bunker busters, it would be impossible to destroy the majority of artillery pieces in a small window or to even know where each piece is located. Another problem would be that air assets would be tied up in providing air superiority (at least in the initial stages) and other air assets would be tasked for ground support.









Why the military option? Does the cost in lives and money justify the outcome?

 

Clausewitz said that war is the continuation of the politics by other means. It is true that some persons see war as an end, they are probably accustomed to think like that. But the end is not the war, the end is set in political and strategic goals.


 

Sun Tzu opinion for the best strategy is to attack first enemy's plan, then enemy's alliance, next the army and worst the walled city. The highest appreciation goes for winning without the battle.


 

Of course one must calculate as much as possible, military actions, too.


 

ChiefG


 
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Nocturne       5/6/2010 8:03:10 PM
If you've read any of my proposals then it should be clear I'm in favor of starving them out.

Yeah but this plan has one critical bug - PRC. They will rush rice and oil just enough to keep NK alive everytime sanctions come close to breaking it. You just can't starve them out..at least not all. Most of the dead would be ordinary folks not the military or the party which would be surviving and in a position to surppress any act of disobiedience
 
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Hamilcar    Excellent point.   5/7/2010 12:22:58 AM

If you've read any of my proposals then it should be clear I'm in favor of starving them out.




Yeah but this plan has one critical bug - PRC. They will rush rice and oil just enough to keep NK alive everytime sanctions come close to breaking it. You just can't starve them out..at least not all. Most of the dead would be ordinary folks not the military or the party which would be surviving and in a position to surppress any act of disobiedience
Which is what makes the legal route the necessary first step. You cannot corral KJI at all without making him international poison even for the PRC bandits.
 
Military clash is not in  the cards as long as the RoKs are not backstopped. With the Chicago Thug refusing to support Lee at all (because of his, the Chicago Thug's, pro PRC bandit stance), he, Lee, will not commit to a useless military action, either.
 
H.
 
PS. Nichy, I'm not holding my breath on any apology. 
 
 
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CFG    @SantaClaws   5/7/2010 1:00:23 PM
My bad, SantaClaws.
I tried to address the issue of military options in general, mentioned on page by dogbarry and others on thread, and I peek / quote just your post. My bad. In my defense I did mention "Of course one must calculate as much as possible, military actions, too." I value the ideas and discussing ideas and less references to the persons that actually bring the idea/ideas. Hope you didn't take it ... my bad.
 
I do think that the military options are to expensive in "blood and treasure" in this case. Also, from theoretical point of view mentioned in previous post, one should act military only as a last resort.
 
For the starving out.
For me sound like not doing much. Just don't give NoK rice and fuel. They will not evolve much or at all. But China will be around and will keep NoK running, it's a buffer & all ... Russia can feed, now that oil is over $80 ... And how about if even in this economic low level system NoK get a nuclear stick and threat to use it? The risk to arrive at that exist for other states, if too little is done in each case ... as I said, for me starving out is like doing ... .
 
According to Sun Tzu, it's more important to attack plans and then the alliance. What can be done in this respect? What are the plans of NoK and alliances? I know it's a public place here ...
Obvious China is an ally ...
 
Bottom line, most likely there will not be much public actions in this part of the world. DA got a point here ...
 
 
 P.S. On a let's say theoretical level, it seem to me that if one think from bottom to top like Sun Tzu way (measurements, quantities, calculations, comparison, victories) one can miss opportunities, options and possible victories/outcomes, while if one think from top to bottom (political goals, strategic level, operational level, tactic level) one can set objectives/goals that can't be achieved. Is it just me? ... Not that are not valid ways of thinking, just that each have weakness ...
 
 
chiefg
 
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DarthAmerica    @Chief   5/7/2010 1:49:15 PM


Bottom line, most likely there will not be much public actions in this part of the world. DA got a point here ...

 P.S. On a let's say theoretical level, it seem to me that if one think from bottom to top like Sun Tzu way (measurements, quantities, calculations, comparison, victories) one can miss opportunities, options and possible victories/outcomes, while if one think from top to bottom (political goals, strategic level, operational level, tactic level) one can set objectives/goals that can't be achieved. Is it just me? ... Not that are not valid ways of thinking, just that each have weakness ...

chiefg

I certainly hope not now. It's an issue of timing and options. Don't get me wrong though, I'd love to see the NorKs blasted into oblivion! It's just no a very practical thing to do however. One danger here that I see is the S Korean Military. Understandibly the Generals are pissed! They want more than just talk about "harsh reponses" as a matter of principle. Some of the statements that are being leaked out have agendas. Agendas that are designed to limit President Lee's decisions. They know that striking a major blow in retaliation is probably not realistic. But they do want someone to pay a price in blood. The problem there is that there is no way to predict how far things will go once the shooting starts. After retaliating, WE HOPE the other side accepts the recirpocity. HOPE is not a guarantee. In otherwords, after striking back, assuming North Korea, it's up to North Korea to decide on whether or not to end it at that. If they don't the you have to hope the return fire is proportional. Again, hope. What if they sink another ship? Or what about something more drastic such as shelling Seoul? Of course South Korea can hit back and probably even beat North Korea. But that isn't the question. The true question is at what cost? How many South Korean deaths and how much economic damage is it worth to retaliate over Cheonan? 100? 10,000? Economic crash costing billions? These are things that come whether the South wins or not. This is not appeasement. It's the cold hard reality of the situation. The attacker knows this and initiated their actions from a position of advantage.

The right thing to do is to take the initiative away and gain advantage yourself. Advantage in this case doesn't mean having the best military. This problem goes beyond military considerations and has geopolitical consequences. I don't know what the answers are in this case. I don't think anybody does. I do know the desired end state and it's based on that that we have to find the path to get there.

-DA


 
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Nichevo       5/7/2010 1:51:06 PM
OK, attack plans, not sure I get this. 
 
Attack alliances?  That would be NK-China.  Sinking a Chinese boat with an NK torp in time of some crisis between the countries?  Maybe a Chinese spy ship watching the Norks (I assume this happens from time to time) happens to die?  Maybe a diplomat in Pyongyang happens to die?  I pose the question, let others say what would be useful irritant to that alliance.
 
 
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Nichevo    OK DFA - more out of the box   5/7/2010 2:03:17 PM
How about a gigantic EMP effect over all of North Korea, and only NK, sufficient to suppress their commo for some time?  If no commo, no ten-thousand-tubes-crapping-on-Seoul.  I imagine they would not fire without orders, yes?  It would give us the first blow, perhaps for a considerable time - how does each battery talk to the next, underfed carrier pigeons? - and let us weed out the conventional terror threat.  Presumably in combination with a full assault, but maybe if we just massively degraded their usual threat, they would hold back their hissing once defanged.
 
 
Now, this is just for kicking around, I understand there would be issues...the usual regarding any use of nukes...plus does NK have a viable nuke threat in return?  But it all seems to come back to the ten thousand tubes (though others here believe it to be much less) and Seoul.
 
 
And OK...back to 'attack alliances' - think Mission: Impossible.  How about we don't poison KJI, but we drug him or drive him nuts or deceive him and make him attack or otherwise offend China?  During some NK-China scrap over rice or whatever, have something happen (or try to happen, failure is fine in this case) to Hu Jintao or Wen Jiabao, done with tech or people traceable to DPRK.  I would bloody HOPE that RoK has some sleepers there, some samples of Nork/Chinese Semtex or the like.
 
 
...Kill one, kill one hundred, kill ten thousand, kill a million.  Dealer's choice.  I prefer the one or a small multiple.
 
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Reactive    Get Real   5/7/2010 4:53:19 PM

How about a gigantic EMP effect over all of North Korea, and only NK, sufficient to suppress their commo for some time?  If no commo, no ten-thousand-tubes-crapping-on-Seoul1.  I imagine they would not fire without orders, yes?  It would give us the first blow, perhaps for a considerable time - how does each battery talk to the next, underfed carrier pigeons? - and let us weed out the conventional terror threat.  Presumably in combination with a full assault, but maybe if we just massively degraded their usual threat, they would hold back their hissing once defanged.

1. You mean several stratospheric nuclear detonations (or are you unaware of the severe power/range limitations of conventional EMP generators)? You'd need a lot of those (nukes) to take down all comms in NK, even if you did there are older, more electronically resilient comms systems, as well as some new ones that make it almost inconcievable that you could actually stop an attack order reaching the DMZ, do you imagine that they would fail to notice this vast EMP attack or do you suppose that those tetchy generals in charge of the army would fail to notice something was amiss? Study the system of beacons that was used to signal the arrival of the Spanish Armada (I can see one of these from my window right now)...
 

 

Now, this is just for kicking around, I understand there would be
issues...the usual regarding any use of nukes...plus does NK have a
viable nuke threat in return?  But it all seems to come back to the ten thousand tubes (though others here believe it to be much less) and Seoul.

Ah yes those pesky problems with an unexpected/unprovoked nuclear assault that is likely to affect China just as much as DPRK. Yes, it comes back to the tubes, the use of bio/chem weapons in the shells, if you haven't Evacuated Seoul vast civilian casualties are 100% guaranteed. If nuclear weapons were to be employed for a first strike, their primary mission would be in destroying the massed artillery itself, not by somehow hoping against all conceivable reality that you have managed to completely and instantaneously destroy communications. Modern military doctrine is almost ALWAYS based on destroying the C3I capabilities of the enemy, you do that by targeting the nodes, the power grid, the infrastructure, and where possible, the administration.
 

And OK...back to 'attack alliances' - think Mission: Impossible.  How about we don't poison KJI, but we drug him or drive him nuts or deceive him and make him attack or otherwise offend China?  During some NK-China scrap over rice or whatever, have something happen (or try to happen, failure is fine in this case) to Hu Jintao or Wen Jiabao, done with tech or people traceable to DPRK.  I would bloody HOPE that RoK has some sleepers there, some samples of Nork/Chinese Semtex or the like.

That's probably not the best way to think about this... Of course there's ways of disrupting the functioning of the regime, that is largely due to false intelligence and exploiting the naturally paranoid power structures in place, probably the most successful single employment of false intelligence in human history (short of the mythical trojan horse) was the false info supplied to the Nazis ahead of D-Day, where a double agent supplied several correct intelligence reports on troop build ups to the Nazis (info they didn't previously have, such as the date) but then reinforced this with the fake information that the actual target was not the beaches of Normandy, but Calais. The way to get at the KJI regime would be to inspire fear of a coup led by Generals. Not guaranteed or easy, and reliant on assets that we can presume, but not with certainty, are in place.

 

...Kill one, kill one hundred, kill ten thousand, kill a million.  Dealer's choice.  I prefer the one or a small multiple.
 
The problem as I see it is that the ROK regards the lives of North Koreans as less important than that of their own area of control, this allows them to make a balanced decision that allows the North to suffer concentration camps, starvations, zero human-rights, and brutal repression whilst arguing that such events are quantifiably different to those of South Koreans, this is an act of collective denial that is understandable but far from admirable. The real problem is that after over a decade of appeasement, the DPRK is a far stronger
 
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VelocityVector       5/7/2010 5:07:39 PM

h**p://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2920174
...
According to the official, investigators also found three to four pieces of metal near the site of the wreck, and analysis showed the fragments were an alloy of aluminum and magnesium, which is used in torpedo casings.

Investigators are trying to determine whether the alloy was made in Germany, China or Russia.

"It's possible that North Korea may have used a German torpedo to disguise its attack, knowing that South Korea uses German torpedoes," the official said.
...

Perhaps as I had guesstimated earlier the Iranians purchased foreign torpedo technology on the black market and shared this with Dear Leader's bathtub navy.  If EU-Iranian pathway then other connections may be divulged that could prove helpful in the future.

v^2

 
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