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Originally Posted by Snuffleupagus
You would have to think they would know exactly where every artillery batteries are though, the B-2 can carry 80 500lb GPS bombs that each one can strike within 1 meter of it's target, after as you said "take out their communications" sneak 5 B-2's in to pop the artillery and radar with 400 bombs and they'll think the world is ending and will likely run for the hills.
The war machine the USA has is absolutely ridiculous.
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Ok lets play this through so that we can all figure this one out.
Right now the North Korean military has about 12,000 artillary pieces, and I'm not talking about the mortar stuff attached to their infantry units. I'm talking about artillary pieces ranging from about 120 mm self propelled guns to about 170 mm howitzers. On the MLRS side they range from small type 63's to monstrous 300 mm KN-9's.
Out of their 12,000 artillary pieces I would argue that their vaunted belt of Seoul killers made up of howitzers and 300 mm MLRS which have 8 rockets per pod comprise of 700 pieces in Harts (Hardened Artillary sites).
The North Korean's pretty much publicly display these hardened sites on Satellite because its part of their deterrence message.
These type of sites are dug into mountains and built into concrete emplacements. They are designed to shoot, retract, reload, extend and fire. Its logical to assume that the men that man these are the elite members of North Korea's artillery core. Which means that their reload speed is fast, because these guns are pre-targeted they don't worry about siting and aiming and shifting fire. Each piece has a designated killing area.
On top of that each weapon is designed to fire a different sort of mission. some will ground impact, some will variable detonate in the air to create massive shrapnel bursts, some will fire chemical weapons which North Korea has a lot of especially binary nerve gases and droplets and some will probably drop bio agents. As well, at this point, there is no guarantee that some of these weapons are tasked with firing tactical nuclear rounds of between 5 and 20 kt's each.
Right now those guns are at strategic alert because of the situation that is happening right now, that means basically rounds are loaded and lanyards are attached.
for the American's to go after 700 or possibly more of these HARTS, they will probably need deep penetrating bombs.
The BLU-109, BLU-116 and maybe the GBU-57A.
Using 700 deep penatratrrs would probably extend the Us Inventory.
The B-2 isn't going to be carrying 80 of these things by the way, they're carring a lot less and they're designed to be precision dropped not carpet dropped, which means each bomb has to be manually aimed to hit the HART preciselly.
The US also has deep penetrater artillary and cruise missile pieces.
However right now the B-2 and the F-35 are really the only stealth platforms that can carry them.
If America wants to use artillery or counterforce, to be truly accurate they need the enemy to pretty much fire first, otherwise they're using satellite or drones to do the aiming. They would also have to move these artillary pieces into range to fire, which means mobile guns or open air, which would expose them to brutal counter fire from the North Korean's who have invested a lot of money into that technology.
You can fire cruise missiles from subs or aircraft, but North Korean radar would probably be able to pick up the firing.
I would say that right now there are two issues.
1) If the North Koreans are truly locked and loaded, they might not be able to shoot down an F-35 or B-2. But the minute that those two platforms open their doors their radar signature goes from the size of a bee to the size of a three car garage and its a launch apparent, which means in the time that those bombs fall and penatraters are high altitude deployment the North Korean's who are alert will be able to fire at least a thousand rounds or more of rockets and artillary with multiple types of rounds. So Seoul could be hit with ground, variable fuzzed, chemical, biological, and nuclear payloads.
Now even if your first strike is successful and by successful you knock out half of North Korea's long range artillery belt and reduce them to 300 guns that retract, reload and fire, then in theory Seoul could be hit with another lets say 800 to a thousand rounds.
2) we don't know the command and control authority. I would think that it would be little bit more open for interpretation then launching a ballistic missile. Which means that the on site commanders might have the authorization at high alert to fire on imminent threat, which means the minute a launch is detected from a US Ship, or sub, or the minute any kind of radar signature appears over top of the artillery sites. I doubt that "Rocket Man" would be willing to lose his biggest hedge card because they had to wait for command to go through a pretty shaky communication system.
I'm not saying its an impossible task, I'm saying in all likely hood that America doesn't have the capability to take out that artillary belt before a good number of rounds are fired.
Frankly the only way to succeed and be sure would be for a massive time on target barrage from Artillery, panes in position, cruise missiles fired from the sea and not only the use of deep penetraters, but nuclear war heads.
Just my two cents though.
This is equivalent to 4 bandits two machine guns at your family and they're wearing bullet proof vests. You might get one or two before they fire on your family, but someone is going to get hit. Is America willing to take that chance.
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