North Korea And Their Launch Codes
 

I don't want to make this political but wanted to pose the question.
Would the guys in North Korea actually follow through with Kim Jong-un order to launch a strike on the U.S knowing moments after the launch they would all be vaporized?
I know he has followers but that is usually at gun point.

Well behind the guy behind the button, there is 2 guys with a gun.
Both those guys and the guy behind the button think there is somebody who will shoot them if they dont shoot.

And behind those guys there are some more guys with guns.

There you go.

You say that like the crazy little turd wont be pressing the button himself.

I think the chance is greater that their munitions sputter out on on the launchpad or in the drink than that they dont push the button...

And I agree about the vaporizing. Good or bad, the current administration is itching for a reason to go in bombs blazing...

Yep.

Their "rationality" is not necessarily consistent with your 'rationality'.

The Japanese military were determined to fight on despite losing 2 cities to nukes and the credible threat of "a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth". The Japanese only stopped fighting when their Emperor god decided to over rule the military. The NK Emperor god would perhaps not follow that path.

Don't think so Sid, bad for business

Agree with their rational not the same as ours

You have assigned our culture, values and knowledge onto the North Koreans.

First, the guys pushing the buttons wouldn't know any such thing.

Second, they have been raised in a culture their entire lives of authoritarian idolatry.

I'll stop there.

Americans tend to judge their enemies using American standards of freedom, education, culture, etc.

Never understood why.

Interesting chatter on the Defconwarning site about the NK's Guam missile test. These guys theorize that if he actually does launch 4 ICBMs toward Guam with splashdown near Guam, he is testing our ability to knock down 4 at once toward the same target. If we get 3 but one gets through, it will be a success for NK, as it proves we can't reliably get that many at once on 1 target. FWIW.

This.

The entire population of the main island of Japan were ready to fight hand to hand to the death for their emperor. Old ladies and children. If they were overwhelmed the would commit. They used women with babies in arms with bombs strapped to themselves to get past the front lines and then blow themselves up and kill those in the rear on Okinawa. Then they threw themselves off of cliffs to prevent capture.

When the US finally captured Okinawa there were a huge number of what we now call PTSD and US troops that were sent home with "shell shock"

World War II Psychiatric Wounds of War | Defense Media Network

The psychiatric wounds of the troops was a huge percentage.

Having visited the DMZ and toured the tunnel that NK troops were building to invade South Korea, I'd say the threat is real. Hosted a North Korean refuge in my home for 6 months as well. The situation there is bad, and desperate people do stupid chit. You may not like our president, but the NK threat is serious and its been there and growing for a long time (none of the past few presidents have taken it seriously enough IMO).

This.

Perhaps it is a combination of ignorance and arrogance. Ignorance due to native born Americans never having lived under a totalitarian ruler. Arrogance due to believing that everyone wants to live as we do. IMHO

those missiile are GPS guided?

cant we just shut that off for a quick moment? and i cant even imagine firing back..that would destroy the region..even for the good guys no?

The USAF controls the GPS system.

I would imagine they use INS instead of GPS, but if they did use GPS then the military would just "alter" the coordinates and not shut the system down.

They can use an IMU and computers to get pretty darn close even without GPS or the Russian system Glonass.

https://www.quora.com/How-many-countries-have-their-own-GPS-system

There are other regional GPS like systems.

From what I've heard from unnamed sources, the launch codes are up really high. Out of reach of Kim Jung Fatboy. Rodman hasn't been traveling there to play basketball.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1502466528.jpg

There have been several NOTAMs out west to do with GPS and I would venture a guess that they are testing the ability to "alter" other peoples GPS in case of war.

That said, smart money would be using an inertial based guidance as a backup.

I doubt it. But even a crude Inertial Nav System would be good enough over that range.

Civilians only get the Coarse Acquisition code. The P (precision) code is encrypted and requires a key that is distributed to friendly users.

Civilian aviation uses a Wide Area Augmentation System where ground stations receive GPS and send corrections to a geostationary satellite which relays the correction to receivers in the area.

^doubt very much that North Korean people want to live the way they do...but they don't know any different. They are told that the rest of the world is poor and in shambles. Imagine how it must be for them if they actually experience how the "western" world (including their neighbors in South Korea) lives.

Interesting article about the only survivor of 31 North Korean commandos that attempted a raid on the South Korean presidential mansion:

Failed North Korean Assassin Assimilates in the South - The New York Times

We would know their trajectories as soon as they left the ground and would not shoot down any that were already going to land in the water either by accident or design. That would keep NK guessing, but still be a casus belli for us.

But they didn't know what hit them or if it could happen again or how many more times. And I don't think we had much inventory to keep hitting them like that at that time.

Everyone knows a single US sub off the coast of NK could lay waste to much of the country within minutes, and there'd be plenty more where that came from, if necessary. Then again, I wonder how Kim takes bad news from his advisors or how much he knows about the outside world, having been schooled in Switzerland, but not having traveled much other than that.

I've wondered that as well. It's quite possible that Kim actually believes the B.S. his generals are shoveling him in order to keep from being shot to pieces by an AA gun or torn to pieces by dogs (two of KJU's favorite methods of dispatching individuals with whom he's displeased). It'd be tragic if so many people had to die simply because the leader of one of the combatants was completely ignorant.

It's a variation on the old axiom, "life is hard, but it's a lot harder if you're stupid".

I think KJU really needs to educate himself about what his real chances are against the U.S. military (to say nothing of S.K., Japan and whomever else might rally to the cause). It'd be "suicide by cop", just on a lot bigger scale and with a lot of collateral damage.

Any one of those subs have 200 nuclear missiles and each one is way more powerful than what we dropped on Japan in WW2. Just one sub could make NK a vast wasteland. And then we have the other surface ships with their arsenal. I just wonder how many nukes our aircraft carriers have at the ready.

Even without the nuclear option we could take down NK.

I would bet N.K. firing a missile would actually be "A Test Fire" as with the USAF/Navy systems being proven effective.

I think the Ohio class have 22 or 24 missiles that are nukes and they can carry non-nuke Tomahawks.

THAAD has not been proven to be "effective" just yet so if NK sends 4 "test" missiles we, in all likelihood, would not hit them all.

That said, KJU has been notorious about seeing how far he can cross the line and get away with it. One of these days he is going to assume a permanent horizontal position possibly from one of his own. The sooner the better. The citizens of NK don't deserve the same fate as KJU.

You can't rain down nukes on NK as easy as that. Much of NKs military is massed along the border and Seoul, SK is only 30 miles from the border. There are 10 million civilians living in Seoul. SK will bear the brunt because if chit hits the fan artillery and NK troops will flood across the boarder and head south.

take out the air defense and a couple thousand precision guided Mark 84's would implement regime change real quick but it wouldn't stop a few artillery shells being lobed into the south.

I didn't say there wouldn't be collateral damage, but we certainly have the capability to hit very many targets inside NK at the same time with almost no warning to them. First priority would be any missile sites and their artillery on the DMZ.

And Un would be 2 miles below surrounded by concrete and comfort women.

We used this system for YEARS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D37D

The issue is that the earth is not consistent. Gravity varies as the density varies. The makes guidance inaccurate. For big bombs, it doesn't matter. but we were trying to hit nuclear missile sites. A lot of the missions over the USSR were to map the gravimetric anomalies.

They may have better electronics, but they will not be accurate. They the biggest bombs they have are 20kt.

They knew EXACTLY what hit them. Japan, Soviet Union, England (independently) Germany were ALL working on nuclear weapons.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vuP6KbIsNK4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Click below to go straight to the best part

https://youtu.be/vuP6KbIsNK4?t=2m13s

I will say this, based on recent reading on our nuclear capabilities in the 1960's, we seriously over estimated the USSR's missile capability. I wonder if we are over estimating KJU.

What's sad is Kim Jong Il and Trump had so much in common...

https://www.thestar.com/sports/golf/2011/12/19/kim_jongil_once_carded_38under_par_at_pyongyang_go lf_course.html

According to reports, Kim, who was 52 at the time, carded no worse than a birdie on any hole at the country’s only golf club. He also had five holes-in-one in the round, which was witnessed by 17 armed bodyguards.

fixed it for you

It does not work like that. It works on time.
GPS works on the calculation of time difference between various known sources at known locations.

Simplified : if you know A is london, B is NYC and C is Paris
And you know they all have a Clock that is in sync.

You can calculate location by triangulation of the distance. The distance will be known because they all pulse at the same time, and the pulses arrive on your location at different times. the Pulse will contain information of the source that sent it.
Such as
Source A pulse 15h34m15sec340ms UTC
Source B pulse 15h34m15sec340ms UTC
Source A pulse 15h34m15sec350ms UTC
Source B pulse 15h34m15sec350ms UTC
Source A pulse 15h34m15sec360ms UTC
Source B pulse 15h34m15sec360ms UTC
Source C pulse 15h34m15sec340ms UTC
Source C pulse 15h34m15sec350ms UTC

This example shows 2 sets the one sent at 340ms and the one sent at 350ms and the start of another one that isn't complete yet


When the receiver gets those pulses, it can figure out how much delay is between the 3 pulses.
Because it knows it got them at different times, but it can identify them as being sent at the exact same time. They are a set.
In the above example the receiver is closer to A then to B and C is very far away

So you cannot "alter" the coordinates, those are a fixed factor in the system.
This is a simplified example, as GPS works slightly different, it works with trilateration instead of triangulation. Slightly more complicated, and it works in 3D rather then just a flat map.


What the USAF would do in times of war, is turn off the Civilian clear text transmission of the pulses. Leaving only the encrypted pulses to be used by The military who has a fancier "TomTom" that can decrypt those signals.

Now in that case, everybody else will still get some GPS signals, but they will be unusable since there is no information that can be read from them. The trilateration would not work as you would not know what to trilateration from.

It might be possible to still ball park the source location, but if you do not know at which time the source sent the pulse, you cannot do the trilateration.
Because you need a minimum amount of pulses, that were sent at the same time, from the synchronized atomic clocks... That's the key, not the location..

Source A pulse
Source B pulse
Source A pulse
Source C pulse
Source B pulse
Source B pulse
Source A pulse
Source C pulse

All that is meaningless , since you do not know which pulse belongs to which simultaneously sent set.
As such you cannot figure out the delay
it's just useless data at this point.

Agreed.

In our defense, we have built the greatest nation on the planet by pulling the best, and worst, from everywhere else. You would think then that would we appreciate the rest of the world better. Exceptionalism is a powerful drug. We are addicted.

The leaders of both North Korea and the US benefit from escalating the rhetoric. Both face major domestic challenges, both are obsessed with their public image, and both are using aggressive language to drum up political support of the “rally around the flag” variety.

It is in both Kim and Trump’s interest for the current drama, tension, and attention to be the status quo for some time, then to de-escalate in a manner which allows both to claim victory.

Interestingly, drawing out aggressive military threats from the US is also in China’s interest, as it enhances China’s position in SE Asia as the reasonable, non-aggressive superpower. The other countries in the region are well aware that the death and destruction in a war will be in Asia, not in the US.

There are various ways for such a de-escalation to occur. North Korea could postpone the next missile launch and the US or China could agree to vague future diplomatic talks. North Korea could launch one missile that aborts mid-flight but is reported inside North Korea as being four missiles that hit the advertised target (international waters about 15 miles from Guam) and the US could threaten more fire and fury on the next launch. China could persuade North Korea to refrain from the launch by promising continued economic support, to restrain the US, and to broker future talks, allowing everyone to save face with China getting most of the credit.

There is also the chance of a serious miscalculation that leads to war in Korea. It is hard to say which leader is more likely to make a miscalculation. Kim is more experienced (he's been trained his whole life for his position) and seems calculating, but he may have executed some important adviser; Trump is inexperienced (his ignorance about foreign affairs is remarkable) and seems impulsive, he has a mix of hot-heads and sober minds around him but Kelly is hopefully packing his calendar with the sober ones. Kim knows his and his country’s survival is at stake; Trump probably realizes the (current) military threat to the US is minimal and may be less concerned about the threat to South Korea.

On the other hand, the US, North Korea, and China are almost certainly communicating in secret, a war is in neither leaders’ interest, Kim controls information flow in his country such that he can do X and make his people think he did Y, and Trump doesn’t usually carry out his threats because simply “talking tough” is good enough for his core political base.

TL:DR version: both Kim and Trump love the high ratings this saber rattling is delivering.

Kim and Donald are sharing a beer over Face Time.