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North Korea (DPRK — Democratic People's Republic of Korea) has launched an SLBM (Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile) from a submarine in the Sea of Japan, according to a Reuters story. The missile travelled about 300 miles (500 km). A similar launch last month seemed to fail.
Having the ability to fire a missile from a submarine could help North Korea evade a new anti-missile system planned for South Korea and pose a threat even if nuclear-armed North Korea's land-based arsenal was destroyed, experts said.
The ballistic missile was fired at around 5:30 a.m. (2030 GMT) from near the coastal city of Sinpo, where a submarine base is located, officials at South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Defence Ministry told Reuters.
The projectile reached Japan's air defence identification zone (ADIZ) for the first time, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a briefing, referring to an area of control designated by countries to help maintain air security.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Thursday August 25 2016, @02:14AM
honestly, why is anyone bothering to even reason with NK leadership at this point? we should crush their meager forces while we still have the chance.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday August 25 2016, @02:21AM
What do you think is going to change? They already have nukes. Is it OK for them to be detonated as long as they can't reach the continental U.S.?
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(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 25 2016, @01:06PM
Australia is not worried since the NORKs use Bing maps for targeting.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JNCF on Thursday August 25 2016, @02:31AM
honestly, why is anyone bothering to even reason with NK leadership at this point? we should crush their meager forces while we still have the chance.
Because China would be forced to at least bomb/invade a close US ally, or admit that it is afraid of defending all of its allies from US aggression. All out armageddon would not be off the table. Do you really want to poke the dragon? Do you really want to be the nation that started WWIII? You could try negotiating with China before the bombs drop, but they're going to need something really big in exchange for ditching an ally -- especially one that geographically close. I doubt the US is willing to sacrifice a queen for a pawn, and that's what it would take.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Thursday August 25 2016, @03:18AM
Because China would be forced to at least bomb/invade a close US ally, or admit that it is afraid of defending all of its allies from US aggression.
Yeah, I get this. Then again, a couple of well placed cruise missiles would end the North Korea Problem, and let China defend it's actions concerning obvious nutjobs looking for nukes. Not to mention if China goes after South Korea over something the US did their GDP might drop 0.01%, which would cause much suffering world wide.
A side effect might be millions of people get fed more than starvation rations, and China might rethink creating islands in the middle of the fricken ocean.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 25 2016, @04:04AM
> a couple of well placed cruise missiles would end the North Korea Problem,
Its thinking like that which killed a quarter million iraqis and brought us ISIS.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 25 2016, @04:19AM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JNCF on Thursday August 25 2016, @04:19AM
Yeah, I get this. Then again, a couple of well placed cruise missiles would end the North Korea Problem, and let China defend it's actions concerning obvious nutjobs looking for nukes.
That's quite a gamble you're proposing.
Not to mention if China goes after South Korea over something the US did their GDP might drop 0.01%, which would cause much suffering world wide.
What if they invaded Saudi Arabia and went straight for the oil? What would that do to American GDP?
A side effect might be millions of people get fed more than starvation rations
Do you think China cares about that? Do you think the US cares? We're talking about state level actors here.
China might rethink creating islands in the middle of the fricken ocean.
Not likely. Those islands are probably very important to future mineral claims. China knows the seafloor much better than you and I do, they've been mapping it for years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 25 2016, @04:25AM
The only 'clean' way out for the US and China at this point is a collapse of the NK leadership. China is not interested in that at this point. As more than likely it would end up carving off a part of china at some point to what would end up as Korea. So China will continue to kick the ball down the road for awhile and see what happens. They really have nothing to lose. The only people who lose in this situation are the people of NK.
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Thursday August 25 2016, @05:40AM
Good point but not the whole thing. Consider also that the US has been very aggressive in courting other nations (Philippines, Vietnam, etc.) to take a stand against China in parallel with expanding NATO against Russia. China has no option but to keep the DPRK close to its bosom.
Consider also the recent rash of "hacking" by Russian agents. Say what you will about Putin and his government, but grant me that he is not stupid enough to leave fingerprints all over his work to overtake the U.S. via Trump or by hacking the NYT. Propaganda in preparation for war?
Being ignorant of how the high echelons manage things (An nescis, mi fili, quantilla sapientia regitur mundus?, Julius III) I would suspect that they are driving China and Russia closer together to bring Armageddon in our lifetimes.
After all, most of the hawks are fundamentalist Christians…
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Thursday August 25 2016, @06:45AM
Good point but not the whole thing. Consider also that the US has been very aggressive in courting other nations (Philippines, Vietnam, etc.) to take a stand against China in parallel with expanding NATO against Russia. China has no option but to keep the DPRK close to its bosom.
If part of this paragraph is supposed to disagree with me, I'm legitimately unsure what part. I don't necessarily disagree with it. I was giving shitty armchair analysis of the sorts of things the US would have consider were it going to become aggressive, but I wasn't saying that I actually expect the US to crank up aggression towards North Korea at the moment. I think the situation discourages it. Hacking with sabotage maybe (I'm sure there's surveillance hacking already), but not bombing.
Consider also the recent rash of "hacking" by Russian agents. Say what you will about Putin and his government, but grant me that he is not stupid enough to leave fingerprints all over his work to overtake the U.S. via Trump or by hacking the NYT. Propaganda in preparation for war?
I really don't know how to model that one. I don't think it's unreasonable that the US could catch Russia in the act of hacking, or vice versa. A recent string of tweets by Snowden seemed to suggest that the auction of NSA hacking tools could be response to the DNC hack. And I'm still not even sure if we can trust Snowden (he contracted for the CIA before the NSA, and could be an attack from one agency on another -- though I don't think he is). Here's what Snowden had to say (emphasis original):
The hack of an NSA malware staging server is not unprecedented, but the publication of the take is. Here's what you need to know: (1/x)
1) NSA traces and targets malware C2 servers in a practice called Counter Computer Network Exploitation, or CCNE. So do our rivals.
2) NSA is often lurking undetected for years on the C2 and ORBs (proxy hops) of state hackers. This is how we follow their operations.
3) This is how we steal their rivals' hacking tools and reverse-engineer them to create "fingerprints" to help us detect them in the future.
4) Here's where it gets interesting: the NSA is not made of magic. Our rivals do the same thing to us -- and occasionally succeed.
5) Knowing this, NSA's hackers (TAO) are told not to leave their hack tools ("binaries") on the server after an op. But people get lazy.
6) What's new? NSA malware staging servers getting hacked by a rival is not new. A rival publicly demonstrating they have done so is.
7) Why did they do it? No one knows, but I suspect this is more diplomacy than intelligence, related to the escalation around the DNC hack.
8) Circumstantial evidence and conventional wisdom indicates Russian responsibility. Here's why that is significant:
9) This leak is likely a warning that someone can prove US responsibility for any attacks that originated from this malware server.
10) That could have significant foreign policy consequences. Particularly if any of those operations targeted US allies.
11) Particularly if any of those operations targeted elections.
12) Accordingly, this may be an effort to influence the calculus of decision-makers wondering how sharply to respond to the DNC hacks.
13) TL;DR: This leak looks like a somebody sending a message that an escalation in the attribution game could get messy fast.
Possible explanations of the DNC hack I've considered, in no particular order:
As should be obvious, I'm not even sure which US political party the (apparently Russian) DNC hack was a net positive for.
Being ignorant of how the high echelons manage things (An nescis, mi fili, quantilla sapientia regitur mundus?, Julius III) I would suspect that they are driving China and Russia closer together to bring Armageddon in our lifetimes.
After all, most of the hawks are fundamentalist Christians…
If the US wanted armageddon, the US could make it happen. Though there are parts of the US that want that, I can't model it as being the overarching goal of US policy. If it were, we'd be there already.
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Thursday August 25 2016, @02:18PM
I’m sorry if it was not clear that I do agree with your comments. My observation was that the context is much larger than simply US-China-DPRK, as it involves other countries in the region, possibly including Russia.
And if Russia is involved, automatically NATO is dragged in as well.
Now, your thoughts on the DNC, I found them interesting. I suspect it was an inside job (i.e. NSA or some black ops) to discredit Trump and get HRC an easy victory. I never considered the possibility of China or another State actor being in the game…
And you are right, my comment about Armageddon was flippant but I can’t help thinking that things are escalating too close to disaster and the powers that be should be less sanguine about another world war.
Cheers
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Thursday August 25 2016, @03:23PM
I’m sorry if it was not clear that I do agree with your comments.
I took the following line from your original reply to be a lead-in to partial disagreement, which led to my confusion when it didn't seem to (emphasis added):
Good point but not the whole thing.
In hindsight, it seems obvious that you were getting ready to expand on my statements rather than contradict them. I was pretty tired when I first read it.
Cheers
Indeed, have a nice day!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 25 2016, @03:50PM
You are assuming "we" is the US, or a proxy there-of. I was thinking that the parent post was proposing "we" as the entire international community, and most specifically, South Korea and China (North Korea's two neighbors), and possibly Japan.
To this end:
1) China: They would face substantial condemnation from the world for taking on a war of aggression. Even if countries (most notably, the US) secretly wanted North Korea to topple, they would need to put forward at least token offense at an aggressive "unjust war." There is substantial anti-Chinese sentiment in the world, too (e.g. see Donald Trump's rhetoric), so some political opportunists would likely take the opportunity to attack them.
You also have the problem of millions of starving people in an anarchy across your border. Do you let refugees in (bad: they don't speak the language, have a huge cultural difference, and are starving and poor), or do you keep them out (bad: guarded fences are expensive, some deaths from attempted crossings will look really bad on the international stage, and international groups will be condemning you to no end for the tragedy you created).
2) South Korea: They don't want to fight their fellow Koreans. This effectively appears like a civil war. Also they have far fewer resources than a country like China or the US (in terms of manpower, if nothing else), so it will be a riskier fight. Seoul is incredibly close to the border, and a fight would be costly.
Plus, all of the international reputation risk that China faces, South Korea would face as well. China would need to provide at least token support to their nominal ally, and may opportunistically undermine South Korea's position.
3) Japan: They nominally are anti-war (this is debatable, but their constitution does suggest the self-defense forces are only for self defense). They would also face the same reputation risks and international repercussions of South Korea. They also have less to gain than South Korea, as they are substantially further away.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 25 2016, @03:00PM
Because North Korea has one of the world's largest armies; its paramilitary is roughly five times larger than the United States' entire active army. As active armies go, NK has about 1.2m to the USA's 1.5m. With our global commitments, we can't commit our entire active army to attack them, but they can commit almost their whole army to defend.
We'd probably win (if nobody interferes) but it would be very costly, unless we literally just level the entire country, and kill hundreds of thousands of non-combatants directly. At which point, we'd have to ask if we were really doing the right thing- it sounds like we'd be acting just like they pretend to act.
Gross oversimplification but I think that gets the gist of it.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday August 25 2016, @05:02PM
What, you think you can hand over NK to SK and happily reunite them with more war?
South Korea, Russia, and especially China would not be happy. Once the NK regime is gone, then what? Who fills the power vacuum? A that point you will have ~25 million ungoverned people. What percentage will attempt to flee to China, SK and Russia? They wont be happy with millions of refugees who have been brainwashed by a bat shit insane government. And what about staunch NK "patriots" who will undoubtedly resist any foreign influence and government.
The only way for NK to fall is if China cuts their life support or a miracle happens and a future leader stops the insanity.