Japanese government warns North Korea missile headed toward northern Japan

[Deleted]

I was previously fairly certain that they were just trying to move up from the kids table, get a seat with the real global powers. By launching a missile over Japan however, this is more than an 'idle threat', this is picking a fight. Even for propaganda purposes, Japan and South Korea now have every justification to launch military action against N.K, since they seem to willing to fire the first shot.

Japan, South Korea, then US, then the whole NATO, I don't know what he aspires to do with a pair of meciocre missils

[OrcsRLame]

North Korea's antics are largely for North Korean consumption. Honestly whenever you see a foreign leader acting in a manner that makes no sense to you, assume they are doing it for their local audience.

Some people buy into their own bullshit though. Never underestimate a crazy person.

Ever heard the tale of Jan Matthys the Anabaptist "prophet" of the Munster rebellion in the 1500s? Claimed all kinds of crazy shit like being able to hear directly from God in real time. Like people would ask him a question, he would turn to the side, ask God out loud, and then deliver God's answer. A lot of people would have claimed that he was a charlatan, until he rode out with like 10 guys to fight an army of several thousand, claiming that the armor of God would protect him.

Jan Matthys was of course cut to pieces almost immediately and his head mounted on a spike. The point though, is that until push comes to shove, you can't really tell if a dictator truly believes what they're saying or if they're just saying that to keep the masses in line. I'm not sure we want to play nuclear chicken with that kind of crazy.

Not that I have any real solutions as to what could be done about North Korea. Seems like the definition of a no win scenario to me.

[Deleted]

South Korea also just bombed an area close to the border with NK as a warning.

[Mormolyce]

There was never going to be any war with North Korea. This is about missile defense and conventional / nuclear deterrence.

Bush pushed to advance all three. Obama became President and cut investment and procurement. None of it had anything to do with Iraq.

Iraq eroded the public's appetite for another WMD hunt, and the US's standing on the world stage from which to denounce North Korea.

I didn't say war, though it might've come to that.

[Skroe]

I mean if anything I would assume the cost of those projects would be shared with Japan and South Korea right?

No, not necessarily.

The Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense program is a "fork" of the 40 year old Aegis Combat System used on ships (US Destroyers, Cruisers and those of many allied nations). The ACS is an integrated combat system... basically when you think of a ship detecting, targeting an incoming airplane or launching a cruise missile, it's the computer/sensor/weapons system that actually "does" it. Aegis BMD uses more powerful sensors and different missiles, to shoot down ballistic missiles. The US, which needed the the ACS to fight, created the A-BMD to resolve the "tyranny of the missile"... that is, how a $500,000 missile could conceivably destroy a $2 billion ship. The first priority was to defend ships, but over the past 15 years its matured to the point the US is starting to build "Aegis Ashore" facilities in Europe and North America... that is to say, basically the Aegis Ballistic Missile defense system, with Mark 41 Vertical Launch tubes and all, minus the actual boat.

See?



Even kind of looks like part of a Destroyer.

The US built it first, but Japan is very interested in them. The US and Japan have been working on a new interceptor for ith, the SM-3 IIA, which is more capable than the existing SM-3 IB used in Destroyers and in Europe. Because of Japan's location, Aegis Ashore (rather than THAAD or GMD) is the optimal system for them.


Groundbased Midcourse Missile Defense, which is designed to protect North America from missile attack, the most direct legacy of the Strategic Defense Initiative. It's the "biggest' system and US only. That's US only. It's also the most expensive and technically challenging system system.

The Aegis BMD system was largely left alone during the Obama era because for the most part, it's been a Navy program, and inside the Navy budget. GMD, being the direct legacy of "Star Wars", was targeted for cuts, pauses, doubts, and a whole lot of other crap because Democrats spent most of the 2000s living in a fantasy world when it came to the slow motion ballistic missile threat, which has been warned about for 30 years.

And by the way, it's going to get worse. 3D Printers have arrived that are starting to replace machining for rocket parts. Developed world space programs have been experimenting with them for the past decade. That technology will spread first to rogue nations, and then to terrorist groups. That's not going to say that Al Qaeda will have an ICBM, but Israel, for example, will find Hezbollahs missiles suddenly have a lot better range and reliability, and that killing of skilled machinists isn't a very effective tactic anymore.

The future of North American security is this.
- Ground based midcourse defense, four installations, two for the east coast, two for the west coast (both for the north).
- Five Aegis Ashore facilities on each coast line, one in Hawaii, one in Guam and Japan will have their own.
- THAAD or something like it guarding most major cities.

By delaying tests, cutting tests, and cutting funding, Obama set back America's defense against this inevitable threat by years. Take GMD. The kill vehicle used in our interceptors is, technically speaking, a mass-produced version of what amounts to a early 2000s proof of concept. It was never supposed to be an operational kill vehicle (it actually completely sucks). It was supposed to be replaced, during the Obama years, by a successor kill vehicle. That program was put on hold until 2016. We'll have our interceptor... in the 2020s. Thanks to Obama.

The US co-funds with Japan on the SM-3 IIA, and with Israel on some smaller ballistic missile defense programs, and did a modest program with Germany to develop a Patriot missile replacement for tactical defense (the MEADs system, which the US left for a number of reasons). But Ballistic Missile Defense is so expensive that most country's can't afford to participate.

[Blobfish]

I say good on North Korea ..its Payback time

Beheaded at whim and worked to death: Japan's repugnant treatment of Allied PoWs

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/columnist...lied-PoWs.html

As the men of the victorious British 14th Army advanced through Burma on the road to Mandalay in January 1945 they encountered Japanese savagery towards prisoners.

After a battle, the Berkshires found dead British soldiers beaten, stripped of their boots and suspended by electric flex upside down from trees. This sharpened the battalion's sentiment against their enemy.

Back in Britain it was beginning to emerge that such inhumanity was not confined to the battlefield.

Men who had escaped from Japanese captivity brought tales of brutality so extreme that politicians and officials censored them for fear of the Japanese imposing even more terrible sufferings upon tens of thousands of PoWs who remained in their hands.

The US government suppressed for months the first eyewitness accounts of the 1942 Bataan death march in the Philippines on which so many captured American GIs perished, and news of the beheadings of shot-down aircrew

Their liberators were stunned by stories of starvation and rampant disease; of men worked to death in their thousands, tortured or beheaded for small infractions of discipline.

More than a quarter of Western PoWs lost their lives in Japanese captivity. This represented deprivation and brutality of a kind familiar to Russian and Jewish prisoners of the Nazis in Europe, yet shocking to the American, British and Australian public.

It seemed incomprehensible that a nation with pretensions to civilisation could have defied every principle of humanity and the supposed rules of war.

[Skroe]

Iraq eroded the public's appetite for another WMD hunt, and the US's standing on the world stage from which to denounce North Korea.

I didn't say war, though it might've come to that.

Who said anything about a WMD hunt? I'm talking about throwing billions of dollars a year on the table to develop ballistic missile defense. From the diplomatic and military perspective, there are lots of things we could have done, should NOT have done and so forth with North Korea (and others) since 1992. But Missile Defense has always been a no-brainer. If all else fails, we would have that.

That is what my first post excoriating Obama over is about and that is what I am excoriating him about now. There has long been this liberal... embarrassment... I'd call it, about spending money on weapons and defenses that disproportionately tip the balance towards us. It's like a liberal frustration that we live in a world that such spending is necessary, when here we are, in 2017, the people who started the Cold War are mostly all dead, and you'd think we'd be used to the idea that strategic defense shouldn't have a price-tag attached.

We saw it in the 2000s and 2010s with missile defense. We saw it in 2000s with cluster munitions. We're seeing it right now, yet again, with the "debate" about the new Stealthy Nuclear Air Launched Cruise Missile, even though it is replacing the 40 year old AGM-86, which the US has had since the 1970s. Hell, in a sense, we see it now with "drones".

Liberals need to learn sooner or later that there are times your beliefs matter, and there are times we can say "piss on your beliefs, they're irrelevant". Strategic defense is one of those times. We should work towards threat reduction, disarmament, conflict resolution and all that stuff. But if all that fails, the fight should never, ever be fair. The "Arsenal of Democracy" should have no equal and inspire terror in our adversaries. We need far fewer smiling slick sons of bitches telling us our beliefs will protect us, because against some of the most significant threats there are, alone, they never have and they never will. And the next President to get up on stage, like Obama, and pontificate some nonsense to that extent, needs to be egged.

[Belize]

Is this not an actual attack? Time to retaliate and get rid of this crazy kim

Unless a missile hit something, China would step in and defend NK.

First strikes again them are really not an option

[Bakis]

Japan previously said they would shoot down any missile flying over Japan, wonder why they didnt.
Maybe just as good though but still weird.

[CostinR]

As long as both political parties in the US treat the idea of raising taxes as the worst form of blasphemy, social democrats will always face the budgetary constraint that defense spending is NOT welfare spending. The solution of course is simple (raise more taxes and pay for both) but it seems that the US political reality cannot fathom that concept any longer; you either need to issue debt, or cut expenses apparently .

Social Democrats have been and will always be complete and utter fools on the issue of defense spending and that's across the globe not just in one country or another. It's driven by ideology and not budgetary concerns.

That belief, that ideology needs to be completely wiped out of existence. Take Germany for instance: A country with a budget surplus and yet despite the many security threats we face the Germany left has consistently refuses to raise defense spending to the level Germany needs. In Britain that fool Corbyn would put an end to his country's strategic arsenal if he could.

As for the United States? It's not even necessary to raise taxes to deal with the deficit: Reform Medicare and Social Security before they blow up the entire budget.

[Mormolyce]

The world was against it in the case of Iraq because it was an obvious lie. The same is not true for NK tbh. Never seen anyone doubt they have WMDs.

That's what I'm saying, the farce in Iraq sapped the legitimacy of the US in pursuing genuine rogue nuclear nations.

Who said anything about a WMD hunt? I'm talking about throwing billions of dollars a year on the table to develop ballistic missile defense. From the diplomatic and military perspective, there are lots of things we could have done, should NOT have done and so forth with North Korea (and others) since 1992. But Missile Defense has always been a no-brainer. If all else fails, we would have that.

That is what my first post excoriating Obama over is about and that is what I am excoriating him about now. There has long been this liberal... embarrassment... I'd call it, about spending money on weapons and defenses that disproportionately tip the balance towards us. It's like a liberal frustration that we live in a world that such spending is necessary, when here we are, in 2017, the people who started the Cold War are mostly all dead, and you'd think we'd be used to the idea that strategic defense shouldn't have a price-tag attached.

We saw it in the 2000s and 2010s with missile defense. We saw it in 2000s with cluster munitions. We're seeing it right now, yet again, with the "debate" about the new Stealthy Nuclear Air Launched Cruise Missile, even though it is replacing the 40 year old AGM-86, which the US has had since the 1970s. Hell, in a sense, we see it now with "drones".

Liberals need to learn sooner or later that there are times your beliefs matter, and there are times we can say "piss on your beliefs, they're irrelevant". Strategic defense is one of those times. We should work towards threat reduction, disarmament, conflict resolution and all that stuff. But if all that fails, the fight should never, ever be fair. The "Arsenal of Democracy" should have no equal and inspire terror in our adversaries. We need far fewer smiling slick sons of bitches telling us our beliefs will protect us, because against some of the most significant threats there are, alone, they never have and they never will. And the next President to get up on stage, like Obama, and pontificate some nonsense to that extent, needs to be egged.

You do spend more than your peers on defence by orders of magnitude, you know.

- - - Updated - - -

I say good on North Korea ..its Payback time

Beheaded at whim and worked to death: Japan's repugnant treatment of Allied PoWs

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/columnist...lied-PoWs.html

As the men of the victorious British 14th Army advanced through Burma on the road to Mandalay in January 1945 they encountered Japanese savagery towards prisoners.

After a battle, the Berkshires found dead British soldiers beaten, stripped of their boots and suspended by electric flex upside down from trees. This sharpened the battalion's sentiment against their enemy.

Back in Britain it was beginning to emerge that such inhumanity was not confined to the battlefield.

Men who had escaped from Japanese captivity brought tales of brutality so extreme that politicians and officials censored them for fear of the Japanese imposing even more terrible sufferings upon tens of thousands of PoWs who remained in their hands.

The US government suppressed for months the first eyewitness accounts of the 1942 Bataan death march in the Philippines on which so many captured American GIs perished, and news of the beheadings of shot-down aircrew

Their liberators were stunned by stories of starvation and rampant disease; of men worked to death in their thousands, tortured or beheaded for small infractions of discipline.

More than a quarter of Western PoWs lost their lives in Japanese captivity. This represented deprivation and brutality of a kind familiar to Russian and Jewish prisoners of the Nazis in Europe, yet shocking to the American, British and Australian public.

It seemed incomprehensible that a nation with pretensions to civilisation could have defied every principle of humanity and the supposed rules of war.

What the fuck? Seriously that is in bad taste even for you.

Would you be saying "good on ISIS" if they blew up a bunch of Germans because they were assholes back in WWII too?

[satimy]

Japan has no military

[Chinese Bootlickers]

I say good on North Korea ..its Payback time

-Snip-

Yeah, cause fuck everyone in a country for sins they weren't alive to commit. Sins of the father is bad, M'kay.

All part of America, South Korea and Japans grand strategy.
Step 1: Wait for North Korea to Nuke South Korea, Japan and Alaska off the map
Step 2: Actually start to do something about it.

It's a "damned if you don't, damned if you do" situation. We either strike first and kiss goodbye to Seoul and SK, and potentially the western and southern shores of Japan, or the above happens. Either way lots of dead people.

[Rhlor]

By the agreements of the end of the second world war the United States is bound to defend Japan