I’m not sure how this one will break. As Robert Farley over at the Information Dissemination blog says, the South Koreans probably knew the cause of the Cheonan’s sinking shortly after it went down, and for political reasons have been playing it cool. Very cool. We’ll have to see how this plays out, but I’m amazed at the measured rhetoric coming from South Korean officials.
STRATFOR’s take is that South Korea has limited military options because of Seoul’s well known vulnerability to North Korean rocket and artillery strikes and basic economic vulnerabilities that would result from a major dust up on the peninsula. Planned economic engagement with the north will almost certainly suffer, the private intel network says. An unintended consequence of the Cheonan sinking: an overdue modernization of the South Korean military, including new ISR assets and newer ships.
– Greg
{ 31 comments… read them below or add one }
A surprise attack and and the response is absolutely nothing. Crying to the UN is not a worthy response. Who knew MAD with artillery only went one way. I guess if you have nothing to lose you can take advantage of your opponent who has everything to lose. Sad. A world held hostage by a few Rogues.
Who said we humans are in perpetual war, and we have more wars and more killing. All false. Another time, and that region would be on fire. Some call that progress, me, I am not too sure.
The difference being that Seoul is within range of arty fire from the North, while Pyonyang is not. It's not so much as MAD with tube artillery, as the bad guy has his pistol at your throat and not much in the way of decisive action you can do about it.
I think the South Koreans are playing it just fine, play it cool, don't give the North the dust up Kim wants and just let the cooky bastard die off eventually.
Perhaps a unexplained disappearance of a nork sub might be appropriate.
That's what I thought… I already can imagine that may have happened. Since when did the Norks report such things though!
Not suprising, the Norks wanted payback after that last naval skirmish. Be interesting to see what the South doe sto respond…most likely not much. As battered and fragile as North Korea is they still posess a staggering amount of weapons capable of turning Seoul into a smoking ruin.
A heartfelt message to Lil' Kim:
엿먹어라
I don't think you get it. Kim is dying, his chance to play the hero he imagines himself to be is vanishing. Why give him what he wants? The South Koreans lost a ship and some men, and that is very sad, but probably worth the sacrifice IF they can avoid a war that is to no one's benefit. You think the world is being bullied by that little SOB, that's what he'd like you to believe. I think we're just enduring him, and it won't be very much longer.
I don't envy the people who will have to clean up the horror the Kims left in the North.
Do we really know what the effectiveness of NK's front units are after all this time? If they can't afford to feed their people I can't imagine them being able to maintain their front line units.
I can't understand how it went down so dam easy.
And I bet before this everyone was saying the SK navy would anialte the NK but thats left out of the equation now and to say it wouldn't last a month is foolish.
Better equiped more population last longer and this time the whole world isnt backing SK good luck on that 1 month guess.
Try never ending!
The SK blogosphere has a very different take on the situation. There is a huge mistrust of the conservative government and conspiracy theories abound as to what happened and why the government took so long to find the ship (apparently local fisherman were the first to find the wreck). Theories range from collision with a US submarine, outright denials based on photographs and autopsies of recovered bodies that a mine or torpedo caused the damage, to the government deliberately slow-playing and outright distorting the situation to make up for the fact that they are very politically unpopular right now. It all sounds kooky to me but there are a lot of people willing to believe anything but that it was a deliberate NK attack.
Perhaps the administration will delay dividing the command in Korea. We all know that such a move shows less determination as SK is hardly ready to shoulder the weight alone…..
Seems like a very bad political gamble and I don't see how looking weak makes you popular in the minds of your people? Just sayin
Well, I think everybody agrees that with the lack of food in NK and the total air superiority that SK would easily achieve, the war wouldn't last more than one month. But it would be a painful month for Seoul.
I figure if you put a line of rice bags and kimchi jars about three km in from the DMZ, that's where the NORK invasion will stop…
I figure if you put a line of rice bags and kimchi jars about three km in from the DMZ, that's where the NORK invasion will stop…
I figure if you put a line of rice bags and kimchi jars about three km in from the DMZ, that's where the NORK invasion will stop…
I can tell without a doubt, just from a glance, that that ship was definitely sunk by a torpedo. The SK conspiracy theorists are just being silly.
Nothing slices a ship in half nearly so neatly as a heavyweight torpedo with a magnetically triggered detonator exploding 20-30 ft underneath the keel. The initial explosion flexes the keel upward while creating a massive air pocket beneath the ship. The keel then flexes downward and snaps the ship in half as the ship falls into said air pocket. Finally, as the air pocket collapses inward, a high pressure water jet is blasted upward through the broken keel, neatly cleaving the two halves apart. The whole process takes about one second. Our Mk48 ADCAP torpedoes are rated to sink any ship up to 20K tons of displacement in just such a manner.
Of course, I can't tell whether the torpedo was one of theirs or one of ours. Hmmm. . . . ;)
Not really. They actually feed the Army very well. There were good photos in the Choson Ilbo about a year ago of red-cross food bags at the nK GOPs so we know where some of the food aid goes to. Their reserves would probably stop to feed, KJI knows he needs to keep his regular forces loyal and he keeps them fed according to their usefulness.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwWzFSePevw
And that is the new conspiracy. A South Korean National Assembly Woman is claiming it is a US torpedo and cannot understand why the US is helping with the investigation. It's not like we have a mutual defense treaty and a US led Combined Forces Command dedicated to detering north Korean aggression. If we had all that ….oh wait we do. Useful idiots, I hope they get shot too when fat man dies.
I was under the impression that /any/ underwater explosion creates the "snap the keel" effect that basically cut the ship in half. It doesn't have to be a torpedo. We had this discussion in the last thread that mentioned how the vessel was in a predictable patrol pattern (though new developments may have countered that previous assertion).
Though minisubs is not an infeasible theory…
You are correct that any underwater explosion could create the effect. However, the clincher in this case is the location of the damage. Mines are generally designed as "dumb" weapons that detonate as soon as they come in contact with either a hull or a sufficiently strong magnetic field. Modern torpedoes are typically "smart" weapons, in that they are guided and are designed to delay detonation for a split second. Thus, mine damage is almost invariably located near the bow of the ship; frequently destroying the forecastle. It is very highly unlikely that a mine would detonate midway down the length of the ship, or directly underneath the ship.
So in principle, yes it is possible that a mine could do that. In application though, only a torpedo is likely to achieve such optimal placement before detonation.
Maybe we can stop them with an impressive display of Juicy Girls and SNSD. That is an Op I would like to plan.
If the latest reports are true that sources INSIDE NK admit a 13 man crew and a mini sub were responsible, Kimmie has another service for hire along with his weapons. And who knows who they train. The operational capacity for false flag operations increases. Just note the accusations at the US.
The world's conflict will indeed get murkier as we grow less inclined to do anything about it.
I just heard something that made me think.
The Oil Rig in the Gulf that exploded and sunk was owned by South Korea. The US government had made some kind of announcement about oil drilling and then conveinantly this disaster strikes.
Then I was reading in the article about how Drug cartels are using semi submersibles to infiltrate US Coastlines and the US Military has been shown that they are unable to defend our coastlines and that our Military has exaggerated our capability.
Then I was thinking about how North Korea was able to deliver this explosive charge that blew the South Korean ship in two without any sort of detection and how they have more advanced submarines then the drug cartels are able to make.
You combine all of these known vulnerabilities and capabilities and I think its likely that North Korea has used a submarine to covertly sabotage the oil rig.
Everything that has happened is very conveinant for North Korea.
Does anyone have any input?
re:"Does anyone have any input?"
- Sure.
Don't believe everything you read.
The human mind is wired to draw connections between observations and find patterns. Be aware of this tendency in yourself and others.
it is a BP oil rig
Also does anyone in the intelligence community know that is the South Koreans are blaming the North Koreans for the oil rig?
If so there is the possibility that they have sabotaged the oil rig themselves in order to solidify US support against their northern neighbor.
All possibilities but I wonder what the wonder what the companies theory has been since their behavior might be an indicator of wether they were involved.
I should not type with one hand, sorry for the poor grammar.
A suface ship doing its normal patrol routines is not likely to detect the submarine out there until far too late. Even if they had their limited sonar on active mode, a small sub is going to get very very close before they are detected. In the commotion of the sinking, away sneaks the sub. I do not think we are likely to have sunk the SK ship, but who would benefit from doing so? I can think of only two countries that would directly benefit, DPRK and PRC. A torpedo has no country of origin once it has launched, many countries have SET-80's, etc. Where has Uncle Kim gone? To the PRC. Just a thought.
china did shadow u.s war ships without being found with there subs.we all know that china and north korea share teck.