This looks bad BOGUS!
North Korea threatened Wednesday to wipe the United States off the map
"If the U.S. imperialists start another war, the army and people of Korea will ... wipe out the aggressors on the globe once and for all," the official Korean Central News Agency said.
Have they started believing their own propaganda?
...
...this probably isn't my place to ruminate but I'm going to try. Just keep in mind that I'm no expert at these things and wholly expect this post to be debunked to a hilarious degree and/or end up in Jail.
So lessee here: Their military is about 1.2 million men strong (110,000 in the Air Force, 46,000 in the Navy - for comparison's sake, the SK standing army is about the same size as all four active branches of the US armed forces
combined) with about 3.5 million in the state-organized militias (or I suppose you could call them partisans, if things come to that). Roughly 4,500 tanks, 1,700 aircraft, 650 seafaring vessels (23 subs)... most of their aircraft dates back to at least the late 1980s in design, ditto their tanks (some of which are even older), with the navy mostly being a bunch of leftovers from Russia and China, some of which date back to the 1930s. That's what's threatening to fuck with us (by "us" I mean "U.S.").
Oh, and at least 800 ballistic missiles, but... well, everyone knows about them.
Considering how our tanks (the Abrams, mostly) performed in Desert Storm against the same tanks the DPRK is using we've probably got them beat there. Same with- ...actually, in terms of technology, we
do have them beat; most countries that aren't still using leftovers from the Cold War are either allied with us or know how dangerous it would be to start a war with us. Plus they haven't been doing much in the way of military drills out of fuel concerns (the issue not being readiness or training, but rather actually having the gasoline needed to do all this stuff); China cut off oil exports to them in '06 and while Russia is still exporting petroleum to NK, the amount has dropped drastically in recent years and will probably stop entirely if war actually flares up. Though they do have their own oil fields, the sudden spike in demand that war brings could hamstring them something fierce. Assuming of course that the reason haven't been drilling is that they're running low, rather than that they've been saving it up.
About 60 to 70 percent of their forces are along the South Korean border, but there's a lot - and I mean a
lot; at least 11,000 - of underground bunkers. Not only there, but across most of the country, so it's not like they're going to be nice enough to leave everything out in the open for us. What's worse, North Korea has one of the densest air defense networks in the world, so things may not play out quite as much like Desert Storm as the USAF (bless their hearts) might hope. Plus, y'know, 3.5 million man militia armed with mortars and AA Guns scattered across the country.
Barring the Navy letting some landing craft hit Hawaii out of pity North Korea is going to be fighting a defensive war. Between the potential for an army of up to five million people, thousands of bunkers, a huge anti-air network and mountainous terrain, things could get ugly. Although the Army's probably had about fifty years to refine their invasion plans. Qui desiderat pacem praeparat bellum and all that.
Call me crazy, but part of me thinks that they could be trying to goad us into war just so we use South Korea as a staging point, then use that as justification to roll south.
At least this post wasn't
intended to be malicious.