The new old war in Korea

[Lissa]

The South Korean Airforce

Well, I suppose there's no point in beating a dead horse. Needless to say, I think you're wrong. How South Korea, spending $24 billion a year, could not manage to outclass North Korea, spending $9 billion a year on an army twice its size, is beyond me. How the "only advantage" of the United States military, the most powerful force on the planet, with a budget of $500 billion a year, would be in training? I have no idea.

Compare the compositions of their respective air forces. That tells the story well enough. MiG-17s? MiG-19s and 21s? Il-28s? They're really going to beat the South Koreans and the United States with poorly trained pilots in those planes?

-Jester

And I think you're wrong because you're not looking at the whole picture of the theatre involved. The South Korean Airforce has a number of modern aircraft, but their forces have a large number of F4s and F5s (both Vietnam era, same as most of the NKs planes you listed). They also have no attack helicopters at all where as the NKs have a number of them (specifically Mi 24s and Mi 26s).

Now, let's take a look at ground forces (which you seemed to have ignored as well). North Korean Ground Forces are using similar era equipment to the South Korean Ground Forces. Again, the South Koreans have a few more modern pieces, but, the technical advantage isn't this gigantic amont that you continue to portrait. As I said many times earlier, have you actually looked at the forces involved here? Clearly you haven't if you continue to spout that 24Billion is trumping 9Billion to have better equipment.

Whether you want to believe it or not Jester, a lot of the money in the US armed forces budget is for training/operations and personnel. If you take a look at the US Defense Budget, you'll notice that 2/3s of the budget is going to operational/training and personnel costs, that's over $400 Billion right there. You'll also note that between procurement and research, a little than a third of the US budget is spent on equipment. If you look at the situation in NK and SK, I'm sure you will see something along the lines where SK is spending their budget like the US, $16 Billion on training/operations and personnel, where as the NKs are spending more money on procurement (and if you pay attention in the link you did above about the NK Air Forces, you'll see that an entire class of aircraft is ground due to high fuel costs which shows that NK isn't spending as much on operational/training costs if they can't fly those jets due to the cost of the fuel).

So, I think you're not viewing things in the proper light and are using some statistics in a non-meaningful manner. You are comparing NK forces to US Forces when not realizing that everything the US gets in its military does not automatically get transferred to our allies' inventories. In essence, you've been comparing apples and pineapples.