The new old war in Korea

[Occhidiangela]

Hi,

Personally, I'd love to have Occhi chime in as he's got a better handle on this than all of us.

Than all of us *combined*. Yes. I'd love to see him here more often.

--Pete

The short and sweet is that North Korean "battle of the first salvo" position is semi enviable. They have sufficient tube artillery, which is mid to low tech, to create what Jester called hell on earth in Seoul. Whomever agreed to the lines on the map in 1953 rather missed the boat on how far Seoul ought to be from the border ... but then, maybe they didn't expect the cease fire to be as far as they got.

In re air superiority, I am not as familiar with SK CAP and alert postures, but the NK's are at risk of being Syria to SK's Israel, 1981-1982. SK has integrated air C & C built on our model, with EW and airborne C&C capability that renders the air battle a rather short one. Also on the books are non-trivial interdiction missions and NK SAM disruption/suppression, in which the US air arms figure. Caveat: my info on the Op Plan is some years old.

The question is, does SK C & C break down, or not? If not, their military is competent, well equipped, well trained. They'll handle small unit fighting well enough. North will not play for invasion. They haven't the logistic depth to do that. Their game is to cause enough pain for SK to buckle, with turns the area between the DMZ and about thirty miles south of it into a charnel house.

How tough are South Koreans?

IMO tough enough, but we may find out, for better or worse, pretty soon.

The other question is, how well with NK infiltration work to reduce the effectiveness of the theatre rear/logistics/resupply/air in the opening 48 hours? Don't know, but we do know that doctrinally, infiltration and penetration for those purposes are their MO.

PS: I was thinking of Magi this morning. We are in College Station, son getting all registered and such to become an Aggie this fall. Current major is Nuclear Engineering department, with initial aim at radiological/health aspects of nuclear engineering. I still would rather he went to power generation, but we'll let things play out. He's gotta follow his dream.

Occhi