May 20, 2003
US researched North Korea's geological structure
WSJ

The U.S. Defense Department dispatched a research team to Japan and South Korea from late last year through early this year to collect information on the geological structure of North Korea, Japanese government sources said Tuesday. Team members told Japanese and South Korean officials their purpose was to investigate the North's mineral resources, but experts said it is possible the U.S. began the geological survey with limited air strikes on North Korea in mind, given that it has important military facilities underground
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Posted by Oskar van Rijswijk at May 20, 2003 05:19 PM

Comments
It's curious to me how bunker buster tactical nukes have just entered the limelight. Perhaps they have something specific in mind here ?


Posted by: BigTroutz at May 20, 2003 11:18 PM
The primary threat from N.K. is several thousand artillary pieces which are dug-in along the DMZ and within range of millions of ROK civilians. They have constructed thousands of caves and supply tunnels in the mountains and can retract the big guns immediately after firing to avoid return fire from US and ROK forces on the other side.

Return artillary fire can only take out one at a time, and only when they are exposed. Precision air strikes would be risky and they too can only attack one at a time, so the cannons will continue to devaste the civilian population until ground troops can cross over and route them out in an old-fashioned down and dirty slugfest.

On the other hand, a nuclear, ground penetrating bomb could possibly take out dozens of the caves and tunnels per shot. Knowing the geology of the area would give war planners a better idea of how effective those weapons would be.

They would potentially save tens of thousands of South Korean lives in an all-out war. But there are also a number of other issues, especially including political ones, that make the use of nukes a bad idea.


Posted by: Jack at May 21, 2003 11:38 AM
Using nukes is only politically viable AFTER the NKors have shelled Seoul for a couple hours and killed a few tens of thousands of people.

Posted by: Dishman at May 21, 2003 09:31 PM

Quoted:
It doesn't mean we are going in, the military planning types look out as far as they can to plan for "things"

Quoted:
I hope they know about all the tunnels From NK that go right under Seoul SOUTH Korea.

I am not kidding about this either. There are many tunnels from NK that have not yet been found.