Reply #38: So are you all excited and anxious about kicking some "communist ass" in Korea again?

[Better Believe It]

-Are you ready for this and ya think the Pentagon Generals should call the North Korean regimes "bluff"?

This is serious stuff and shouldn't be taken so lightly. BBI-


North Korea's military 'bigger, better, closer, deadlier,' says General Schwartz
April 14, 2001

Pyongyang's military machine is "bigger, better, closer, deadlier," Gen. Thomas A. Schwartz said in testimony last week before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Schwartz heads the United Nations and ROK-U.S. Combined Forces Commands and U.S. Forces Korea.

North Korea so far "has yet to discuss or implement any meaningful military confidence-building measures beyond agreement of the opening of a railroad corridor through the Demilitarized Zone," he said. Schwartz said 70 percent of the North's army — "approximately 700,000 troops, over 8,000 artillery systems and 2,000 tanks" — are based within 90 miles of the DMZ and are being reinforced. Most are positioned in more than 4,000 underground facilities from which they "can attack with minimal preparations or warning," he said.

Without moving any of its more than 12,000 artillery pieces, he said, "Pyongyang could sustain up to 500,000 rounds per hour against Combined Forces Command defenses and Seoul for several hours." Most dangerous, he said, "is the accelerated deployment over the past two years of large numbers of long-range 240mm multiple rocket launchers and 170mm self-propelled guns … along the DMZ."

He said Pyongyang's ability to attack the South "without warning and (with) nonconventional weapons continues to grow bigger and get better." The North has the world's third largest ground force with 1 million active-duty soldiers, an air force of more than 1,700 planes, an 800-ship navy that includes "the largest submarine fleet in the world," and a 6 million man reserve force, he said.

He called the North's special operations forces "the largest in the world" with more than 100,000 men. "During wartime, these forces … would fight on two fronts, simultaneously attacking both our forward and rear bases," he said.

Text source: Jim Osan, Stars & Stripes, March 30, 2001

http://www.checkpoint-online.ch/CheckPoint/J2/J2-0001-NorthKoreaDeadlier.html