Showing posts with label REDFOR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label REDFOR. Show all posts

Friday, May 28, 2010

Korea

I have been asked by several folks about my take on the situation on the Korean Peninsula. The three reasons for this are that I have been there (stationed at Camp Stanley for a year), I am in the military, and I constantly study stuff like this. So I will put in my two cents worth.

My humble opinion is that militarily the North Koreas are in a world of hurt, but the situation is really bad politically for the US.

The NKs have two strong military cards to play. The first is the King Of Battle, their artillery. They have Corps of Artillery, and by that I mean whole Army Corps made up of nothing but FA, and its all aimed at Seoul. Thousands of MRLs (Multiple Rocket Launchers) and tube artillery (cannons) that can range Seoul and do a world of hurt. These units are in hardened positions (bunkers and caves) and have pre-surveyed firing positions and stockpiled ammunition. It would take a lot of counter-fire missions and air strikes to knock them out, figure (my estimate here, not anything offical) at least 48-72 hours to knock out over 50 to 60% of them. In that time, Seoul would be pretty badly banged up.

However, this isn't as war winning as it seems for several reasons. First off, most of this artillery is OLD, 1960s technology, and so is the ammunition. A high dud rate can be expected and accuracy is not all that (of course with this many guns and rockets you don't need much). Plus there is the fun fact that the really heavy Koksong guns have a design flaw that makes them brust after about 6 to 8 rounds of rapid firing. We know exactly where all these weapons are so knocking them out is just a function of shooting a lot. The ROK and the US Army have some pretty good systems in place to do this. Our Air Forces of course (NK ADA is probably about as good as Iraq's was and their AF is a joke), but also our counter-fire artillery systems. We and the ROKs have MLRS systems that were pretty much designed for just this. And we now have GMLRS that can outrange the NK artillery (80 Km range to their 40 to 60 kms) and never miss. 1 MLRS load of GLMRS will destroy 12 NK FA Systems and it can be fired in less than 1 minute. Computing data is already done since we know were everything is already. The only issue is there is so much of it.

The second big punch the NorKs have is their Special Forces (SF). This is a big item to worry about. They have one of the largest Special Forces in the world and they train constantly to do their worst to the South in the event of a war. They have commandos, ranger-types, SEAL-types, sniper-types, recon troops, fifth column types and air-assault types. They have special miget subs (one is suspected of the torpedo attack that started this), they have Hughes Helocopters modified to look like ROK army or civilian models, they have a whole mess of spies and people who have been passing info for years. Nasty stuff.

However, historically these guys have turned out to not be as good as thought. In 1968, the so called "Second Korean War" was fought. Lots of raids, ambushes on the DMZ, and commando raids into the South to attack ROK government facilities and an attempt on the ROK President. The deep raids failed miserably and no one in the world really noticed because this was a side show compared to Vietnam. While the SF has been training more than the standard army, they have still been cut back on. Worse, the effects of the famine have hurt them as the eligible pool of recruits is much smaller to pick from. The ROK has been training on defending against these guys for years and have gotten better at detection and interception. Even these tunnels dug under the DMZ are not such a big deal as they don't go that far behind them (if you pop up in the middle of a battalion defensive position you are in trouble, SF or not). Once they have shot their bolt, there is no way home. No sub could make south after the shooting started, and the AF would be shot down after about 2 days. Once you are on the run, you are going to get hunted down. The South doesn't have anywhere to hole up and their are no guerrilla bands to join. They would do some damage, but not enough.

And that is the main point. The two major strengths of the NorKs are not enough combined to finish off the south, only enough to do damage and make them MAD. Mad enough to decide to finish the stupidity once and for all and END it. The ROKs have enough men to do it, and their equipment is now 50 years more advanced than what the NorKs can throw (think WWII armies fighting the Coalition in Desert Storm).

The NorK Nuke threat only works on the defensive by the way, they have no method of delivery. No missile they have can carry their bomb design, they have no planes that can carry it. They could bury it and set it off after someone rolls over it, but even that is limited thanks to the mountainous terrain (blast would be channelled so small area of effect on your own soil).

So why is this bad politically for the US? Simple, what if the ROK decides to pick a fight? Or vice versa? The ROKs have every right to confront a rouge nation and the world is actually standing aside on this one. If it escalates, the US is bound by treaty to aid the south. The ROKs are in the clear to DO SOMETHING right now if they want so their is no "we can't help because they are the aggressors".

So the POTUS would get another war, and a nasty, knockdown, bloody one at that. He can fight with the allies and loose support from his base, or he can pull out and loose a LOT of international clout and a LOT of independent votes. Loose Loose if you are the current POTUS. Even worse, he has a ROK that is set up to actually want to do something, and CAN do something this time around.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

The Lord's Resistance Army

This is a REDFOR post about a practically unknown group of terrorists/insurgents/guerrilla fighters that are responsible for destabilizing a rather large chunk of Central Africa. The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) was founded 16 years ago by a guy named Joseph Kony. It was one of the numerous militias that spun up around the time that a lot of the third world dictators left over from the Cold War starting dying off and their countries spun into civil war.

The LRA got its start 16 years ago in northern Uganda. Its roots are tribal (Acholi), and its started with the usual complaints that the government was favoring other tribes over them. Religion also played a part (this area is where Christians, Animists/traditionalists, and Muslims all meet). Kony started up a revolutionary movement that rapidly got nasty. The Sudanese government provided some support to destabilized Uganda and Southern Sudanese rebels and things got out of hand.

While I would normally go into detail about tactics, weapons and capabilities of this organization there isn't much to hit on. Kony's force is estimated to be less than 1000 hard core fighters, but they have had an impact way out of proportion to their numbers. The LRA has raided Uganda, Central African Republic, Sudan, Congo and Chad in its history (and all them in the last 2 years). They have raided for slaves (for their use and to sell on the slave markets in Sudan, yes they exist), child soldiers (they are one of the big users in Africa), food, supplies, and sometimes just blood. In 2007/08 Christmas season the LRA launched a series of attacks in various countries (mostly Uganda) where LRA fighters hacked dozens of people to death in churches (45 in one attack alone).

The LRA was based out of Garamba National Park in the Congo until early 2008 when Ugandan and Congo/UN troops swept the area. Since then the LRA has been constantly on the move hitting anyone and anything they can, usually civilians.

Despite numerous attempts to make peace with this group, the LRA appears to be a group that needs to be hunted down and wiped out. The main reason negotiations have failed is that Kony has been indited on numerous counts of War Crimes ranging from mass murder to using child soldiers. He is looking at life and since he can't get amnisty he appears to want to go down fighting. Uganda and the Congo are refusing to let the criminal charges go, so this won't end nicely.

This is prime example of how Africa was set up for failure when Europe left. One group with ties to various tribes in several areas has moved from place to place causing huge amounts of suffering and disruption. Kony's extended tribe is spread out over at least two countries and he has recruited followers from a total of five countries. He isn't a problem for one country, but for the whole region.

This is also a great example of the MSM's failure to provide real news. The LRA is something that should be front page and should be a major focus of effort to run down. The UN is kinda sorta involved in finding him, but if the US ran this bozo down and killed or captured him, that would do more good in central Africa than any 10 USA For Africa Concerts would. It would make us a lot of friends and do something tangible for regional security. But its Africa and the US MSM could care less.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Cracks Appearing

If you haven't read about this yet, you need to.

Give North Koreans A Chance - Forbes.com

BLUF: The Norks (North Koreans) have just instituted a currency exchange to fight inflation. You turn in something like 1000 Won (Korean Equivalent of a dollar) to get one new Won. However, there is a distinct limit as to how much you can turn in, something like 20000 Won personal cash, and then 50000 for a savings/bank account. This totally screwed lots of North Korean civilians, especially those who were dealing with the pseudo-free market places opened several years ago to offset the famine that was hitting NK (again). Well, it turns out that the markets worked really well and lots of folks were starting to make some money and get a leg up. This even pushed into the Communist Party pukes as they were taking bribes hand over fist.

But these limitations on currency trade ins actually sparked something that has NEVER happened in NK before: actual protests. Not the big campus ones the US had in the 60s or the street riots in Iran, but in the marketplaces. Lots of people were actually putting up anti-government graffiti, handing out anti-government leaflets and the big one, buring old money publically rather than turn it in.

FYI: that is a federal offense in North Korea due to the fact that it has the pictures of the Ill Jung family (the original jackass and the current $%^&tard). Defacing pictures of the great leaders is considered treason and you face up to life in prison for doing it. And LOTS of people are doing it, including lots of party officals, police and security forces (who stand to lose lots of money off of bribes and taxes).

Maybe, just maybe, this is finally the beginning of the end for the Norks and the final Stalinist regime will go down and we will get yet another example of how Communism is a flat out failure. But then again, maybe the current jackass will keep in power, shoot the people protesting, and then launch a missile in order to get more food and fuel from the West while promising to stop his nuke program. I hate to hope (Hope is not a method after all), but still it is nice to dream about what could be.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Game Over

Well, as much as I was unsurprised by how things turned out I am still sorry they did. I am talking about Iran and the crushing of the protests. I am in no way surprised by this, I have held that the Iranian Clerics and the Revolutionary Guard was way to brutal and ruthless to be over turned by demonstrations for as long as I can remember. Unless the RG refused to do something, or the regular armed forces joined the protestors what happened in Iran was ineviable.

A couple of observations.

First, anyone who ever thought that peaceful protest and peaceful revolutions are the way to go always should have gotten a brutal wakeup call. When you are up against something like the RG and the Clerics, they don't care about bad press or world opinion or moral high ground. They care about POWER period. And they will use it whenever they can to maintain it or expand their own.

Second, the UN has again proven pretty weak. Not even so much as a nasty letter.

Third, I don't envy the POTUS on this one. For him, this was a lose-lose situation. He can't invade and put some bullets in some well deserving heads due to public opinion and the liberal establishment in his party base (ironic though, the guys who yell the loudest about freedom sure don't seem to be really worked up about this one). He can't really come out and give strong verbal support for partially the same reason, but also when he has to either put up or shut up he would loose a lot of face and pull when he has to shut up due to issue one. He has to say something, and since he was trying to balance he looked weak and/or waffling or like he didn't really care about the cause (liberty folks, Iranian version, but its liberty none the less). Really, no where he could really go on this one with out catching flak. I don't envy him for that. I would have done it differently, but I am not the president so it doesn't matter.

Fourth, this means trouble for our boys in Iraq and to a lesser extent Afghanistan. The Iranians will either use this as an excuse to try and divert attention by some overseas adventurism or will think that the POTUS is weak and they can start trying to cause trouble with the JAM again (Iranian backed militia that we have crushed before).

Its a shame we can't do some old fashioned gun-running to the other side here and foment some nice rebellions. Of course that didn't work to well for us the last time, but I can't think of a better group of people to cause trouble for.

Monday, May 18, 2009

And its Game Over

Well, if you are a typical American you probably missed this. But the world's longest running insurgency has finally been crushed. The commander, founder and singular reason it ran so long of the Tamil Tigers was killed by Sri Lankan Army forces this morning (our time anyway) and the last 300 meters of Tamil Tiger controlled ground was taken. For the first time in nearly 30 years the Sri Lankan government controls all of its territory.

This is awesome. The TT were a bunch of rat bastards. By that I mean that they were mean, motivated and tough as hell. And also, they were just nasty people, especially towards the end when they were herding the people they were supposed to be "protecting" into zone to use as human shields while they had Tamil Immigrant groups in Europe protesting to have the EU stop the government advance.

Several observations. One, time length was LONG. Folks, this is insurgency. Long, unpleasant and nasty. Also expensive. If you are a typical yank and you want a nice clean and quick solution to these problems, do us all a favor and leave the pool as it is adult swim time. Two, the British have again proven how far they have fallen. The end of the world's longest insurgency and Britain's first statement was about "disturbing" reports of human rights violations by the army and "possibly" by the TTs. Yeah, this is why no one really listens to England much anymore. The SL government then sat back and let a mob nearly overrun the British embassy and when they complained the response was "Sorry, celebrations got out of hand. It happens when you WIN."

Let them cheer, they have earned it. And England can shut its gob on this, SL deserves its moment of triumph. They won without any help so let them cheer.

I have been following this fight since I was in high school. It, along with Angolia and UNITA, were some of the first real-politic situations I ever studied. I honestly never thought it would end like this with such a absolute victory.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Hamas' Brain Trust

First attempt at an entry. Discussion point is an article I read on Strategypage.com titled "Hamas Aims to Look Sharp" (http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htlead/articles/20090427.aspx. The short and sweet of this article was the results of a Hamas internal study of the last round of fighting in Gaza against the IDF (Israeli Defense Force). Urm, if you want to call it a fight anyway. Hamas has figured out that they didn't do so well in all categories (including the media surprisingly) and have made some plans to fix this for the next round.

The major point is a complete and total failure of leadership at all levels of the spectrum of conflict. Strategically it was a embarrassment, operationally this was planned and executed at about the level of Mussolini's invasion of Ethopia, and decorum prevents me from using the most correct words to describe their "tactical" abilities. They couldn't communicate or synch their political and military leadership, goals or plans and once the IDF started rolling, Hamas gunmen were abandoning their uniforms and hiding.

Hamas fell into the trap of fighting the last war (in this case, attempting to do what Hezbollah did in 2006). Happens to the best militaries, so its hard to hit them that hard for that point. However, they also made the mistake of doing an exact copy of Hezbolla's plan and not doing any modifications for the vastly different terrain, and more importantly the different level of training they had. Hezbollah does actually train somewhat and has some trainers who are not bad (Iranians and Syrians), Hamas has some Dirty Harry Videos, a copy of Tom Clansey's Rainbow Six and the Third Edition Battletech as guides. Quality for Hamas is POOR in the realm of the standard, urm, fighter (they sure are not soldiers, and I even balk at calling them gunmen).

And they are fighting Israel, who proved that 1st class militaries CAN learn and adapt from when they mess up (all good militaries have to include Russia, England/UK, USA, Israel).

While all of that is painfully obvious, the article is talking about how Hamas is "learning" for the next go around. And it is looking like their reputation isn't going to be improving anytime soon. THe main conclusion they seem to have drawn is that they need more heavy weapons to take on the IDF's heavy mechanized forces (Engineering vehicles, Tanks, IFVs). This means rocket launchers, guided anti-tank missiles, anti-aircraft weapons (missiles or cannon/heavy machine guns). In short, they are moving to a stand-up fight with the IDF.

This may very well top out the bad idea scale from a group who makes a living off of getting high marks on it. Every Arab force that has fought the IDF in a stand up fight has been whipped badly. Some have pulled out a pseudo-draw (Egypt), but then made a permanent peace. Hezbollah didn't exactly win in 2006, but did better than many thought possible so got some street credit. But the IDF learned the right lessons and Hamas found that out in a bad way.

If Hamas is going to follow through on this line of thinking, they are going to get smashed up worse the second time. Sure heavy weapons can stop armored vehicles, but they can only do it if you have the right setup and support. Hamas has no air power, they have no supporting artillery worth mentioning (light mortars, not nearly powerful enough), they have no terrain advantage, and with the precision weapons the IDF packs they can't even hide so much anymore. And heavy weapons can't move. You set up a guided AT missile site and its going to stay there for awhile. If it doesn't move, it will be seen, it will be targeted and it will be taken out. If they put it on a truck, then the air force and drones get to play.

Yeah, I am beginning to think I need to lay off the French when I am bashing militaries.

Black Berry Test

Well this is test2. This post is coming from my bb at work (just before lunch so no I'm not being lazy, just in line). I am liking this bb more and more as I play with it. And my wife's phone is still cooler (she can watch realtime tv on her's). Technology rocks.

Which will be an upcoming topic. But first we will hit on Hamas...