You’re dictating my own intentions and ideas while not knowing me much at all.
You’re making a mistake, and if you make one, it’s sure others will follow unless you manage to correct it.
I think this can give us a little insight to the technological advances of North Korea. A photo supposedly taken 3 days ago of Kim inspecting military equipment. Note : the mouse, and that to the rear of this superb mystery appliance, 3 cables - one power, one coax from antenna, one from the brown (transformer or modem?) box. Could this be something as sinister as North Korean Laptop? 
You know Dan, since you’re the one who insulted me you could just admit it and apologise rather than continue making out this is somehow my fault. I’d have a lot more respect for you if you did that, but whether that makes any difference is up to you.
I could respond to this by pointing out that you’re assuming just as much about my intent in saying that I’m making a mistake as I am assuming in saying you insulted me. But I won’t. Instead, I’ll give you a choice: find the flaw in my reasoning, or admit your mistake and apologise.
Yes it was a mistake. I didn’t word my comments ideally. I’m sorry. This isn’t about me being wrong, or you being wrong. It’s about successful communication. I find that actually difficult at ILP.
What makes the threat from North korea real and ominous,is that the kind of country it is. It does not hesitate to stoop to forgery, drug trafficking, prostitution. In other words it has no standards of descent behavior.
Proliferation is the most pressing nuclear problem in the world, and given Murphy’s law, it is almost certain, that if things are allowed to drift on as they are, a nuclear incidence will occur in the foreseeable future.
NK has no problem with it and there is a side divide between the sophistication that goes on to building a nuclear capability, and the leadership, including the military, whose intelligence is at best questionable. The fact that Kim jung was able to attain power is not a merit owed to his intelligence, rather it’s based on dynastic succession, a process reminiscient of the middle ages in England and the continent. They may be up on military strategy, but it’s the lack of reality in international political awareness that’s missing, and is worrisome.
I’m going to go with an unofficial Warning for personal insult for Dan as he has no Warnings. The next one will be a Board Warning.
Dan is about as threatening as Tofu… I can’t believe you just gave him a warning. Whatever…
The device is hooked up to a electric converter box (the picture your showing) meaning that whatever he is playing with is likely designed for the US… this means it’s probably more than one computer system in it. It’s likely boarder surveillance cameras given the coaxial hookup so they can respond in real time, along with a radio hook up. You can use tanks to relay the signal from that point on if it’s the towers are knocked out- hence why it’s built on a mobile platform, so they can push it around when the building starts crumbling.
We got just as awkward looking stuff in out arsenal as well. It’s doubtful it’s the most high tech stuff in the world, but it will work.
And by the way, the DPRK does make computers now… they are a joke, look them up on youtube, but they do work.
A simple networked camera system is all you need to direct artillery in real time on troops on either side of the DMV. Fuck, smoke signals could work and still knocks out hundreds of thousands of lives and seriously fuck up Seoul.
This is what we have to counter their surveillance capacity:
A hot Air balloon we send up into the air, anchored into spot, with a night vision camera dangling off it, with a similar set up in the head quarter’s building to watch what’s happening around out base. Yeah… we’re about as primitive as North Korea is in this department, except I will note they are wheel base, we just drop the monitors and computers on a desk. I think we should have a arms race and slap wheels on the bottom of Communications desks as well. North Korea can retaliate by slapping cameras on cats and catepalting them across the DMV to see what we’re doing, and we can train lemurs to be forward observers.
Our drones don’t fly high enough to dodge NK anti-air, so we’re stuck with old fashion techniques ourselves alot of the time. It’s saddening consider how much we throw into the defense budget, but that’s really what we use half the time- just old fashion, simple stupid tech. The high tech crap they would toss to us in Iraq didn’t do shit half the time, and so remained unused.
Actually that is our argument. If you look at the type of country it is, you’ll see it’s a country stuck in some Tinseltown dimension with technology from the 40’s-late 90’s.
They pose literally no threat.
Wow… I mean really… just wow.
…I can’t believe that one. 
While the absolute most insulting person on the entire site floats freely ranting, the person who merely says, “I don’t think he is THAT deluded and Gobbo isn’t uninformed”, gets a warning for being insulting… Geeezzz…
I suppose there are absolutes. Whod’a thunk it?
CN is correct, in my mind, in his strategic thinking. The Norks have been virtually thrown under the bus by the Chinese because they no longer fit in with Chinese goals. And NK is a throw-back to the time of the cease fire between the segments of the now divided country and the present (hidden?) ‘cold war.’ NK achieved its status as a separate “country” because of China–but China is changing its focus toward economic superiority rather than ideological and/or military superiority.
However, I doubt very seriously there are any ‘factions’ within NK biding their time for a coup of any sort. The Norks are entering into the 3rd generation of military dictatorship. Kim Jong-un isn’t the ruler–the military is. No real steps have been taken to change the power hierarchy.
Activating the anti-missile bases along the West Coast is a response to our fear, which also goes back to the Cold War. We’ve been taught to fear any sign of aggression. That’s why 9-11 was a successful act of terrorism. Fear is keeping people away from peace.
Feel free to go back to complaining about socialism as though that means something anymore…
Unofficial, guys, unofficial. Lets not escalate this situation à la NKorea.
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But, C-N, I would have thought that just about every available satellite floating above that part of the world is on focused high definition now. Surely these balloons are just for ‘local’ security. Similar to guard dogs on the border where we have infra-red/motion and unattended ground sensors.
With respect to the NK threat, the question should be (from the armchair): Is there anything in the news (about NK) that requires the average American citizen to add extra matches or batteries to a grocery list?
Is the “38th parallel” thing, for example, one of these?
Yes, according to Billy Graham Jr. Who has spent trusted time with the current leader's grandfather, upon asked of the seriousness of the situation, answered, that in his opinion this is the most serious situation since the Korean war, and Mr. Obama should pick up the phone and call the Korean president immediately. Mr graham knew the regime intimately, inside and out.
Again, why?
Can no one give a response why we should be scared from the perspective of military tactics.
They have no way of really attacking any country.
You should consider that someone like myself doesn’t disagree that NK has inferior everything.
From that starting point and a decent, sober knowledge of history, you may begin to become scared, very scared.
North Korea is a real threat, but not in the way of needing to worry about American land all that much.
Yes, North Korea could reach places like Guam and Hawaii with possibly moderate accuracy, and maybe able to hit some outer-reaching areas in Alaska with a bit less accuracy, but the missiles that they use that reach this far are heavily modified Russian R-27 variant rocket.
Their biggest version is the taepadong-2 rocket, which could, in theory, reach America.
However, it’s failed testing in the past nearly immediately following launch.
It also lacks any guidance system; it guides itself using inertial guidance only with a diameter of around 7 feet and a length of just under 120 feet.
This is basically about like a 10 story tall small silo flying through the air.
It’s top speed is around 17,000 miles per hour.
The closest area, Guam, would take around 10 to 15 minutes to reach with this weapon.
Hawaii would be about twice that time; 20 to 30 minutes.
Alaska is around the same as Hawaii.
The accuracy is not really known, since this is such an ad-hock NK unique modification of some out of date Soviet rockets.
What we do know is that it’s been tested once, and it failed less than a minute after launch.
We also know that it doesn’t use a modern guidance system, being based off of old Soviet rockets; instead, as mentioned, it uses inertial guidance only.
So the ability to destroy this missile while it is in-flight to mainland America is rather good.
The larger threat would be their unknown size of submarine fleet (which we do know that they do have), and that fleet’s capacity of launching missiles from the submarines using smaller rockets.
But here still, the reason we don’t know their fleet size is because they don’t really use their submarines all that much because they are about as anti-stealth as it gets; making it unlikely for their submarines to sneak up on America with any number of them and shoot rockets out.
The anti-ballistic measures that America is taking are mainly precautionary just on the off chance of any intelligence having an undervalued estimate of NK’s capabilities.
The larger threat that NK poses is upon South Korea.
It could very easily obliterate Seoul, South Korea, even without nuclear weapons, in no more than one day. And this is without relying on a single infantry or cavalry unit.
Their mortar capacity is rather insane.
The other sizable issue with NK is that it’s very hard to penetrate the actual North Korea, as the vast majority of the industrial and military sectors are underground in what is probably the single largest underground network in history.
The geology of the rock on the Korean peninsula favors their defense as we cannot penetrate the rock well at all with any surveillance due to the nature of it (this is a random happen-stance).
If North Korea invaded South Korea on foot and cavalry, it is estimated that they could push hard for about a weekend to a week tops before supplies completely ran out.
However, the shear damage that could be caused is massive.
There are not enough medical and transportation systems in South Korea, between the civilian and military sectors, to accommodate even a mild estimate of medical needs during such an event.
Our luck is in knowing the greatest likelihoods of interest would be the rail system that runs from northern South Korea to southern South Korea.
But this equally poses a complication as that is also the single best method for evacuation and United States and South Korean military transportation of heavy units; so we cannot outright destroy that method of transportation, but instead are forced to take up defensive positions along it.
Arial bombing of North Korea won’t yield much in the way of success as most of what’s above ground are citizens, and not industrial or military infrastructure.
We can bomb some things, but nothing that would radically cripple them.
In short, North Korea is technologically inferior on many countless fronts, but their on-land defensive and offensive positions are incredibly sizable; especially considering their arms of anthrax and underground tunnels that lead from North Korea to South Korea, of which we know very few of in regards to locations (we only know of the ones we have caught, which are then no longer in use).
We also don’t know who in South Korea is actually a secret agent of North Korea; when I was over there for one year in the Army, there were two cases of catching secret agents, one who reached inside of a base and almost got away with base plans smuggled out in a picture they had purchased from the exchange on base.
So yes, they are a challenging threat.
They pose no military threat. You guys are all just repeating stuff you heard on television.
Nowhere in there do you present any real military threat. Because they have no technology.
Yeah that would pose a problem… if this was 1934.