Could a surprise nuclear attack on the US by the North Koreans completely wipe out the country's nuclear defenses?

T. Clancy wrote:

If NK launched anything nuclear toward the U.S. which actually impacted our soil, they would cease to exist within an hour or two.

NK would get nuked first even if they launched first. It takes less than 5 minutes for us to determine that they're launching something nuclear our way but 20-25 minutes for those missiles to actually hit the West Coast.

Retaliatory nukes launched from subs near Japan and/or South Korea would obliterate NK in 10-15 minutes, so Rocket Man Kim won't even know whether his attack succeeded.

I have learned to take nothing for granted. Many people in the US think that it's the "greatest country in the world" but have you ever been to other countries? I have. Some populations are very motivated, way more then the population in the US. It's not necessarily who has more but who uses whatever in the right way. That's why I am a strong proponent of eradicating any situation anywhere in the world that violates the rights of anyone.

Let's tell it like it is wrote:

For the NK's long-range multi-stage ICBMs, the U.S has the futeristic GMD system that will stop anything they would throw at us in it's tracks:

That's Star Wars II, a complete fantasy, only difference is they actually built something and claimed it worked.

ICBM payloads enter the suborbital phase at 4000 m/s, faster than a speeding bullet, and they only accelerate from there. You have to be very, very lucky - not to mention quick - to hit that thing with speeding bullet going the opposite way. Only a fool would depend on it.

All the idiots saying the US would "obliterate" the North are idiots. For starters, they're not going to want to drench South Korea or Russia with radioactive fallout. And even if they did launch lots of bombs, they'll still pick real targets, such as developed areas and missile launch sites, not attempt to set fire to 10,000 square kilometers of rural farmland.

Chief NK Rocket Engineer Bad Wigins is not a genius wrote:

Bad Wigins wrote:

They have launched satellites into orbit, genius. That means they have rockets that can put a warhead anywhere.

You shouldn’t comment on matters you know nothing about. The ability to launch something into orbit doesn’t automatically mean they can launch a multi-ton nuclear warhead “anywhere”. Even we do not have the ability to hit anyplace on the globe from the U.S. And no, they cannot yet reach the U.S. But go ahead and keep showing your “genius”.

The only reason our ICBMs have a maximum range is because we agreed not to "weaponize space." That puts an artificial range limit on our ICBMs, since we cant put nukes into orbit. If we ignored that agreement, we would have had the ability to bomb anywhere in the world 60 years ago, although not very accurately back then.

I seriously doubt North Korea cares about international agreements against weaponizing space. So they probably dont have the ability to so it yet, but our lack of ability to send nukes on circles around that globe is irrelevant, that was by choice, not because the technology is too difficult.

From what is made public, NK's nukes are too big to make it to orbit on any of their rockets. But that is only given current public info, its entirely possible they do have the ability, either from improved miniaturization, or bigger rockets. From the public info, they weren't very far off, so it isnt ridiculous to suggest they secretly have the ability.

OP: you are an embarrassment. Retard would be an accurate description of you. Retard.

Let's tell it like it is wrote:

No worries - the U.S. hasn't spent trillions of dollars on defense for nothing. We're the modern day Roman Empire...militarily speaking - no one is going to mess with us!

It ain't like that. The spending is due to corruption. Lots of the shite doesn't work at all.

Not like that wrote:

Let's tell it like it is wrote:

No worries - the U.S. hasn't spent trillions of dollars on defense for nothing. We're the modern day Roman Empire...militarily speaking - no one is going to mess with us!

It ain't like that. The spending is due to corruption. Lots of the shite doesn't work at all.

Yeah...sure -- then why hasn't Russia or China started a war with us? The U.S. put crippling economic sanctions on China and Russia. The sanctions on Russia, first started back in 2014, has significantly hurt their economy. And Putin sits back and doesn't nothing - he's a scared rabbit of the powerful U.S. military powerhouse.

A few years ago, Trump authorized Tomahawk missile strikes on Syria's chemical weapons plants and Putin said he would retaliate with military force against the carrier group in the Medeterrian Sea. Nothing happened - - he was all talk because he knew that Russian military technology can't match up with America's advanced technology. No country will attack and start a war with the modern day Roman Empire!

Whether the US is the "greatest country on Earth" or not is not relevant to the conversation. At least for now the US is the most dominant world power in terms of its capability to destroy others.

Will this change? Of course it will. Maybe in 10 years, maybe not. But that's the way it is now.

Can other countries rattle the US or have the capability of destroying it? Sure. But they would not win a war at this point. In the future, sure, nothing lasts forever.

No.

Not all of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is within the U.S.

Portions of it are deployed with its allies around the world along with significant portions of the military.

They are moved around.

Unless the U.S. were to cut ties with NATO, bring all the missiles and troops home, they couldn’t be disabled in a single strike. That’s part of the strength which comes from maintaining strong relationships with other countries.

I'm more concerned about an "accidentally on purpose" explosion of a NK rocket releasing radioactive material in the jet stream that heads our way.

Let's tell it like it is wrote:

Not like that wrote:

[quote]Let's tell it like it is wrote:

No worries - the U.S. hasn't spent trillions of dollars on defense for nothing. We're the modern day Roman Empire...militarily speaking - no one is going to mess with us!

It ain't like that. The spending is due to corruption. Lots of the shite doesn't work at all.

Yeah...sure -- then why hasn't Russia or China started a war with us?

Why would they?

ever herd of the E6b Mercury? It's a Doomsday Plane and can launch nukes while aiborne from anywhere in the world. No chance, NK!

By nuclear defenses do mean the US's ability to intercept nuclear missiles or it's ability to retaliate? The US will always retain the ability to retaliate but the real difficulty with retaliation is that North Korea shares an island with the US's ally South Korea. I wonder whether President Trump's seeming distain for the US's allies actually increases the US's ability to deter North Korea because it gives the impression that he wouldn't soften the US's response to avoid collateral damage in South Korea. As far as ability to intercept missiles goes, I think that's a harder question to answer. I don't believe the true capabilities of the US's anti ballistic missile systems are publicly known.

I said "greatest country o earth" because that prevalent myth in the US leads most Americans to believe that nothing ever could make it anything less. I believe the answer to the original question would be no. On the other hand they could inflict serious damage. In retaliation we could make that country peaceful.

Rjimbo wrote:

DISARM NOW!!! wrote:

You can't hug your children with nuclear arms!

LOL

To the OP - the answer is yes but it would have to be a really, REALLY surprising nuclear attack. Like, the North Koreans themselves would also be shocked, given how completely implausible it is

No... the answer is NO. The NoKos could not wipe out our defences. We have more than 6,000 nuclear weapons, 1,600 of which are currently deployed, a significant (classified) number of which are likely in the APAC region.

The NoKos have like 20 nuclear warheads, none of which are currently deployed.

Their delivery method is extremely unreliable. They'd be throwing a 'Hail Mary' if they tried to reach just one US city (e.g., Honolulu or San Francisco). The US would probably not need to even deploy any countermeasures as the warhead would probably not make it. Nonetheless we do have the capability to take it out using various nuclear defence systems.

NoKo is a more plausible threat to SoKo or Japan. But even then, if they were to attack, the response would mean the end of NoKo. NoKo is basically a State Terrorist... they don't have the means to win a head-to-head armed conflict against anyone, so they just threaten to attack civilians - and that threat is enough to get them bargaining power.

Realistically, even 2019 NoKo - versus - 1945 USA would result in disaster for NoKo.

Like seriously, the question from the OP is laughably naive.

You said the OP's is laughable but you failed to point out all the nuclear powered subs that the US has.

That's a superfluous point, my friendly little pet imbecile.

Why wood they wrote:

Let's tell it like it is wrote:

It ain't like that. The spending is due to corruption. Lots of the shite doesn't work at all.

Yeah...sure -- then why hasn't Russia or China started a war with us?

Why would they?

Why wouldn't they?