re: #133 Unshaken Defiance

Happy Caturday folks. Maybe cat pics later cause much of the news is pretty somber.

I was looking closer at the makeup of the task force sent to Korea. The Carl Vinson of course we know as a top line super-carrier. 60 or more strike craft. Plus her CG and Aegis DDG’s. Normally they also have Desron 1 another six destroyers. ASW in depth, mid course + terminal BMD. That is a strike group equipped to hold off a peer opponent like China. One of those ships in the group is the one that shot down a satellite.

I’m not saying any of this brinkmanship is the best plan, or that Trump is helping in any way. The US Navy is above the political fray, and is displaying a force designed to deter as loudly as it possibly can. That’s our sons and daughters doing what the Navy does. I have to admit I’m a little bit more hawkish than some about the DPRK and ICBM’s. But more as in making the missiles at Greely and Vandenberg more reliable than sparking a Korean land battle or worse. I’m old enough I really did duck and cover drills in elementary school.

I did duck and cover drills in elementary school as well.

I’m not sure which ship “shot down a satellite” (as I recall, there was a whole lot of noise from the US government when China did that, because of the huge mess of parts that now have to be tracked in space).

Navy task forces have traditionally been used to wave the flag and such. This particular task force being diverted from Australia to Korea, coupled with the bellicose statements from both Rexxon Tillerson and Donald Trump does not do much more than up brinkmanship.

North Korea was no threat to the USA, and still isn’t. As far as them trying to develop missiles, we certainly can’t go to war with every country that does that. Moreover, the loser in this scenario is South Korea. Regardless of whether we can pulverise North Korea or no, they will take out Seoul in the first few hours of an attack, a city with twenty million people.

And China has moved over a hundred thousand troops to the North Korean border. While pundits are claiming China is concerned about refugees streaming across the border, the last time China moved a mass of troops like that it was to defend North Korea from the US-led incursion into the North. I have no doubt that if the USA tried to attack North Korea that China would come to the North’s aid rather than either see it collapse or us take it over.