ShivaX
6482
Especially not anything that would help the likely targets of South Korea and Japan in time.
I think the GOP strategy for dealing with a pre-emptive NK launch would be to sent Ant-Man and Wasp to disarm it.
Hillary could send Bill to be a ward of Kim Jong-un.
Yeah there are some hair-raising stories from that era we know now. Scary stuff. What might be scarier is, how likely is it that a dude in a similar position in North Korea would be as responsible and capable as Petrov? Or even have the power?
Timex
6487
This is actually far less true.
Shooting down short range missiles is actually way EASIER, since they’re traveling so much slower. With ICBM’s, you kind of need to track them when they’re in the launch phase. On the way down they’re going way fast.
But short range missiles? We’ve already demonstrated success with that stuff. Hell, the HEL systems in Israel can shoot down like 7 simultaneously fired mortar shells and crap like that. I think they’re reporting something like an 80% success rate currently.
This is why Japan and SK have those defensive systems in place.
It’s relatively easy to overload those interceptor systems.
Miramon
6489
But nuclear missiles and systems to defend against them are beside the point when Seoul is in range of NK artillery. That’s 10,000,000 people in the line of fire, with no way to defend except counterbattery fire, which of course would occur too late to be much consolation to people living in the city.
Let’s see, Israel’s Iron Dome success rate was 90% on much shorter, lower shots. I’m more concerned about NK selling Nukes to Terrorists than actually hitting us with an ICBM.
Timex
6491
Not really.
I mean, that was a potential argument back in the 90’s, with a huge arsenal like what the Soviets could bring to bear, but the north koreans? South Korea and Japan have a lot of ABM systems in place, and the US Navy’s there too.
But nuclear missiles and systems to defend against them are beside the point when Seoul is in range of NK artillery. That’s 10,000,000 people in the line of fire, with no way to defend except counterbattery fire, which of course would occur too late to be much consolation to people living in the city.
Systems like Israel’s Iron Dome system actually do counter artillery.
Ultimately, until it’s fully tested in that arena, you don’t KNOW it’s gonna work… but in Israel, it’s had very high success rates.
With a situation like NK, they could potentially get a shot in, but like you say, nuclear’s not the real danger. It’s just the fact that it’d become a shooting war, and in that war folks are gonna die.
But at the end of the day, North Korea loses that engagement, and they cease to exist. As soon as they start shooting, North Korea becomes the target of the most powerful conventional military in the world… and when the US miltiary turns its conventional force on you, you have a bad day, real fast. And in that kind of situation, I don’t think China’s gonna have NK’s back.
It’s gonna be a bad scene, any way you slice it… but it ends with NK’s regime being destroyed completely.
Interceptor systems are always more expensive than the weapon they’re trying to destroy. So in any serious fight, there are never enough interceptor systems available. That’s especially true in Korea where the DPRK has thousands of rocket and tube artillery positions along the DMZ. The massed fire would immediately overwhelm theatre defense systems.
Systems like Israel’s Iron Dome system actually do counter artillery.
Ultimately, until it’s fully tested in that arena, you don’t KNOW it’s gonna work… but in Israel, it’s had very high success rates.
This TPM article gets into the problems with the Iron Dome.
The short, like all of these systems it doesn’t work very well.
Bloomberg officially announces he won’t run.
Democrats breathe a sigh of relief. (Bloomie specifically states that his entrance might throw the race to a Trump or Cruz and that being a factor in his thinking.)
90% is fine when they shoot down one at a time, but it would be crazy to expect an ABM system to shoot down hundreds of shells all fired at once. I doubt any system exists in the world that can handle an artillery barrage from a real army unit. NK stuff may not be very advanced for the most part, but they have a lot of hardware. This is completely different from shooting down the occasional terrorist rocket.
They wouldn’t have enough missile platforms, and they would quickly run out of interceptors. They also have the problem of stray rockets to deal with. A kill for the Iron Dome is detonation that throws the missile off target, but doesn’t necessarily destroy the warhead. Actual kills are comparatively rare. So you still have that ordinance falling on someone’s head.
Yeah, that’s the problem with iron dome. Missiles are a lot more expensive than shells, and you only have so many missiles. Plus, what goes up must come down.
You might even say they took a big gulp of air.
Oghier
6498
Took me a few seconds. Well done :)
CNN reporting that Rubio has advisers telling him to exit the campaign before Florida, lest he damage his career as a lobbyist in the process.
Fold up that tent, y’all.
Heh. Even Dukakis and Mondale won their home states. Amazing if Lil’ Marco loses his.
Tman
6501
FWIW - One of my good friends who was all for Trump is now espousing Cruz as his choice. Anecdotal, but it does mean some of the republican messaging is getting through. When I pressed him for why, the reason didn’t change much as he still sees Cruz as the anti-establishment vote.
As a non-affiliated voter, who has no voice in the primaries, I’m sad to see that Kasich is not getting more traction. Two of my voting age sons are going to cancel each other out with one going for Hillary and one going for Bernie.
