#Russia targeting civilian areas specifically to kill civilians and nobody seems to give 2 shits

[crow-ter]

south africa is taking notes from the tiktok psychic

Nglkdjcjsnicndngkcuuf dont give them any more ideas!

[fapangel]

What factors would have to accounted for in order to have a successful nuclear strike on the Korean peninsula? Would it more likely be gravity bombs (B61-12s, really) or would we be turning keys and opening silo doors? What the fuck are we aiming at, anyway?

Definitely gravity bombs and/or cruise missiles. 

The B1B is technically not nuclear capable anymore, with the removal of their nuclear authorization equipment - but the B-52 still carries the nuclear-armed Air Launched Cruise Missile, and of course we have the B-2 Spirits with global range and the B-61 freefall bomb. There’s also conventional delivery via strike aircraft; the F-15E and other platforms can carry the B-61 as well. And the F-117 was capable of carrying it - had we had to follow through on our promise against Saddam, it would’ve been Nighthawk’s retaliating with B-61s for an Iraqi nerve gas strike. Considering that we still have Nighthawks flying, it’s worth remembering. 

Our Air Launched Cruise Missiles and freefall bombs are a bit antiquated when compared to other nation’s nuclear-capable conventional delivery platforms - but against North Korea’s badly antiquated air defense network, it’d be overwhelmingly effective, especially when considering jamming, kinetic suppression and other measures. In short, there is no reason we would risk scaring the shit out of China and Russia by launching ICBMs in their direction when we could make North Korea glow just with our aircraft. 

The other reason for using conventional platforms only is due to scale - they’re tactical nuclear weapons, not strategic ones, and there’s no reason we’d want to use anything bigger against the Norks. Our Minuteman ICBMs are currently equipped with either W78 warheads or the W87s, with yields of 300-350 kilotons to 475 kilotons, respectively. The B-61 freefall bomb, on the other hand, is a dial-a-yield weapon that can give anywhere from 300 tons to 340 kilotons of blast - allowing great flexibility in employment and affect. This is vital, because the entire Korean peninsula isn’t really that big - worse, the Chinese have placed their primary ICBM silos in southern China, not terribly far in geographic terms from the North Korean border. The Chinese are already publicly insecure about their smaller nuclear arsenal vis a vis ours - this is precisely why they scream, shout and stomp their feet over THAAD being in South Korea; they’re worried that THAAD might manage a boost-phase intercept and any dilution of their strike ability makes them worried that they might not be able to retaliate enough in a potential war. Therefore the ability to hit North Korea with ICBM-like yields without actually firing an ICBM in that direction is pretty important. 

It’s also important from a tactical standpoint. The use of nukes would only be a sensible decision if the Norks forced us to retaliate in kind, of course - but once you actually can use them, they have plenty of actual valid military targets to be used against, rather than just “kill a ton of civilians to show them what’s what.” North Korea is a hideously rugged country that’s more up and down than horizontal, and the Norks have been industriously digging bunkers deep under the tallest mountains ever since they got a taste of what American air power could do in the 50s. The entire point of the MOAB is to attack deep tunnels and bunkers by approximating the effect of a nuclear air-burst - the actual damage to the surface isn’t much, but it hits a wide swath of ground with a heavy overpressure blast, kind of like smacking the dirt with a big rubber mallet. This transmits downward force through the earth - or stone - over a wide area. Nature abhors a vacuum, so naturally, this tends to collapse underground bunkers and tunnels in a very authoritative fashion. The MOAB allows us to do this without firing a goddamn nuke, but an actual nuke set to a fairly low yield would do it a few orders of magnitude better. Better yet, because of the steep terrain, if the bomb was targeted properly it could achieve this affect without blowing a big crater in the ground - which is what produces poisonous fallout. 

The steep terrain also means there’s plenty of natural chokepoints - which can also be wiped out with B-61s set for air-blast detonations. These produce devastating overpressure waves with wide area affect, but they do not blast millions of tons of radioactive dirt into the sky that will then be blown around to poison millions of South Koreans, Chinese, Japanese or Indians, depending on prevailing winds. The science of airbursts is pretty complex, but suffice to say that you can achieve local overpressure conditions hefty enough to demolish moderate to heavy reinforced bunkers, even with an airburst (the effective radius will be lower, mind you.) Technically speaking, you can actually achieve the maximum possible ground-penetration/blast effect of Minuteman-sized nukes (so close to the B-61s max yield) at altitudes above what would cause any real fallout from hitting the ground. We haven’t dared fuze our weapons for that historically, because our ICBMs would be targeting enemy ICBM silos, which we must take out, lest millions of our own citizens die, and ensuring the RV went off at just the right altitude was a bit iffy with sensors of the day, at the speeds they’d be moving. But a modern B-61 bomb, being air-dropped by a plane moving at a tiny fraction of an RV’s speed? That’s a different story. 

There’s a previous post somewhere where I addressed the use of nukes against North Korea in detail - I’m too lazy to look for it, so I’ll summarize here. If the Norks actually pop off at us with a nuke, we’ll be in a full-scale, no-quarter war by definition, which means the Norks will be doing everything they can to kill as many Americans and American allies as possible - with no distinction between civilian and military. A conflict limited just to conventional weapons is something we can win, and at far lesser cost than most people seem to think - but if the Norks were to decide that they wanted to commit suicide, say by firing nerve gas artillery shells at Seoul - B-61s and ALCMs could suppress those weapons a hell of a lot faster and more authoritatively than hunting each one down with PGMs. Their forward ground forces and air bases could also be wiped out with prompt nuclear attack, and most crucially their ballistic missile sites - which are the greatest threat to Japan and South Korea, vis a vis inflicting mass civilian casualties - could also be destroyed effectively and swiftly. The artillery threatening Seoul would be wiped out brutally fast, and any troops advancing through the mountain choke-points would also be blown away fast. 

The most important aspect of these possible targets is that most of them can be hit with air bursts, not ground bursts, thus avoiding poisonous fallout that irradiates the land for generations and poisons people in nations hundreds of miles away. Attacking North Korea’s deep bunkers would be a possible exception, but given that we have weapons specifically designed for this role (the MOP) and aircraft to carry them, it doesn’t seem likely that we’d incur the massive humanitarian cost, which in turn would risk retaliation from China or Russia. 

The one exception to this would be North Korea’s sizeable SRBM/MRBM arsenal, which can hit South Korea and Japan, and can be assumed to be nuclear and/or chemical warhead capable. All of their weapons are mounted on Transporter Erector Launchers, rather than hardened silos, so at the very least the vehicles would have to emerge from underground bunkers to fire, leaving them vulnerable to destruction - but the urgency of preventing any of them from being fired may well mandate a bunker-busting strike, even a nuclear one, against their bunkers. Even a non-penetrating blast can collapse the tunnel portals and bottle them up where they can’t fire on anyone. Fortunately most of North Korea’s SRBMs are liquid-fueled, meaning they take longer to prep and are thus easier to destroy before launch - but they DO have some vehicle-mounted mobile solid-fueled weapons. Given the high threat from these weapons, a ground-burst attack with nuclear gravity bombs would be authorized with very few tears shed if it was the best and most reliable option for swiftly destroying them. 

Keep this in mind as you listen to the media’s non-stop lecturing and whining that we just can’t fight North Korea, it’s too late, we just can’t possibly take out these little bastards - we could actually nuke them and come out just fine. 

Nobody in their right minds want to - but nobody in their right minds want to take any risk that isn’t necessary. But we’re now in a situation where we must contemplate bombing them now... or nuking them later. The least risky option is pretty damn obvious.