MOP and MOAB drops on North Korea?

[HAB911]

MOAB - Massive Ordnance Air Blast
MOP, Massive Ordnance Penetrator

snip

“The MOAB and the MOP would be extremely effective against known North Korean nuclear and missile sites,” Gary Samore, the White House Coordinator for Arms Control and Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Obama administration, tells Newsweek. “The problem is that we don't know where all such sites are.”

Matthew Bunn, an eminent weapons scientist who worked on nuclear issues in the Bill Clinton administration, agrees with Samore. “Those above-ground facilities are quite familiar. The big problem is we don't know where the heck their bombs are.”

Bunn, now a professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, adds that North Korea also probably has a secret additional enrichment facility that the Pentagon hasn’t located, “so MOPs don't help if you don't know where to put them.”

But the first challenge in using the weapons is just getting them close enough to North Korea without them being shot out of the sky. “They need to be airlifted by cargo planes, which are easy targets for [North Korean] air defenses,” says Michael Krepon, a weapons expert and co-founder of the Stimson Center, a non-partisan policy research center in Washington, D.C.

http://www.newsweek.com/north-korea-nuclear-attack-donald-trump-kim-jong-un-south-korea-seoul-china-584671

[TexasProgresive]

1. The Massive Ordinance Penetrator is designed to be carried by a B-52

In another post I suggested that the MOABs could be deployed against the artillery tubes aimed at Seoul. The bombs could kill the personnel manning the guns but ground troops would have to go into NK to destroy the tubes. The MOAB is a fuel air bomb, which is designed to create a massive shock wave that kills people. It does not have any real shrapnel. The penetrator bombs might be effective but I believe there are only about 20 of each of these things made.

[KingCharlemagne]

2. I guess you're willing to write off the 10 million-some people who

live in Seoul and its proximity.

[HAB911]

3. I spent a year on the DMZ

we can't allow there to be a war with NK

[KingCharlemagne]

4. I seem to have misconstrued your OP. Please accept my apologies. On a

somewhat brighter note, my Korean students (many of whom come from Seoul) seem fairly sanguine about recent developments. Their reaction generally is "Yawn, we've seen this so many times before . . . " I'm not sure whether my alarm about Trump has merit, but I agree with you that war there, nuclear or traditional, will be an absolute catastrophe.

[HAB911]

5. yes OP was informational only

regarding the difficulty of using either type of ordinance, however TexasProgresive says the MOP is B52 capable.

I have read that Koreans are complacent, wish I could be, but I can't. We have two madmen on our hands.