North Korea remains a fascinating, if disturbing, preoccupation in the world like a country that “time forgot” out of a 1950s film. That image was on display this week when Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un visited the pride of his submarine force — a Romeo class submarine that was abandoned over 50 years ago. As someone who like to follow military history and technology, the sight of a leader on a Romeo class sub is like President Obama riding on Civil War spotter balloon as a demonstration of our continued surveillance capabilities. What is also bizarre is that, after last week giving instructions the North Korean meteorologists on how to make more accurate predictions, the Supreme Leader reportedly taught submariners “new tactics.”
Romeo-class submarines were only in service for 48 months after being designed in the 1950s. They are considered laughable boats that are so loud and slow that they seem best designed as targets for exercises. Consider the fact that World War II had just ended when these things were designed. Indeed, in some of the pictures, you can see the rust on the boat. Inside are Yu-4 torpedoes, a Chinese-made weapon dating from the 1960s with a range of four miles.
The usual breathless state-controlled media reported out the Supreme One taught a “good method of navigation” and instructed on combat readiness. As a point of comparison, a Los Angeles Class nuclear-powered attack submarine can sink a ship 150 miles away. What I particularly love are the admirals carrying around the same notebooks shown with the meteorologists to take down the wisdom of the Supreme Leader on submarine technology and tactics. It is something out of a Saturday Night Live skit. (What is disturbing is that this over-stuffed moronic dictator is constantly being told how brilliant he is. At some point, you begin to believe your state-sponsored reviews and, with a large army, egotism and stupidity can be a dangerous mix).
As usual, Kim pounded the war drums and told the fleet to prepare for battle and repeated the official slogan of the “Year of Camouflage”. Romeo subs tend to be fully camouflaged when they rest at the bottom of the ocean as was the case a few years ago when one appeared to spontaneously sink in a military exercise.
Mike Appleton wrote “All he needs now to complete his navy are those little frogmen”
There are signs on the beaches of Yeonpyeong Island to the effect of “Beware of frogmen!” They are no joke, as North Korea has invaded the South many times before.
All he needs now to complete his navy are those little frogmen I had as a kid, together with a box of baking soda to power them.
Mike – a point for you. 🙂
Instead of basking in his obvious psychosis, we should be directing all the modern armament we can muster directly at our crazy friend.
As the US government is preparing to spend another 350 billion dollars on upgrading it’s existing stockpile of nuclear war heads over the next 10 years.
From the Guardian, 16Jun2014:
Nuclear powers modernising arsenals, says study
Richard Norton-Taylor
The US plans to spend up to $350bn (about £200bn) over the next decade on modernising and maintaining its nuclear forces, including designing a replacement for its existing Trident submarines beginning in 2031, the study says.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/16/modernising-nuclear-weapons-arsenals-sipri-study
The US government is a fraud. It is stilling it’s
citizensproductivity and squandering it on death and destruction.Republican + Democrat = Taxes, Lies and War
Dwight Eisenhower was/is right:
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. ~ 16Apr1953
“We are witnessing the Washington gangsters construct yet another threat like Slobodan Milosevic, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, John Walker Lindh, Hamdi, Padilla, Sami Al-Arian, Hamas, Mahkmoud Ahmadinejad, and the hapless detainees demonized by the US Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld as “the 700 most dangerous terrorists on the face of the earth,” who were tortured for six years at Gitmo only to be quietly released. Just another mistake, sorry.
The military/security complex that rules America, together with the Israel Lobby and the financial banksters, needs a long list of dangerous enemies to keep the taxpayers’ money flowing into its coffers.
The Homeland Security lobby is dependent on endless threats to convince Americans that they must forego civil liberty in order to be safe and secure.”
paul Craig roberts, Ass’t Treasury Sec’y in Reagan Amin.
i just want to see him take his buddy dennis rodman for a ride in his toy.
Saucy, I put Teddy ahead of FDR. He is in my top 5, maybe top 3. You apparently don’t get a second term in modern history if you can’t build a cult following.
Maybe you will take comfort from knowing that there are plenty of people who agree with you, and no doubt could list other propaganda points that you didn’t mention.
bill mcwilliams wrote “The U.S. government and its MSM shills are demonizing N. Korea because of its cooperation with China”
On the contrary, we are demonizing the DPRK because it currently holds approximately 200,000 people in labor camps, allowed millions to die from starvation, routinely executes people who attempt to leave the country, and allows its military and elite to steal donated food and sell it on the black market. Prisoners in labor camps are routinely raped, tortured, and/or killed. China routinely returns North Koreans who managed to escape; most of them are executed.
The U.S. government and its MSM shills are demonizing N. Korea because of its cooperation with China. To much of the world, the U.S. government really IS “The Great Satan” — unfortunately, there is much evidence in support of that.
President Kennedy wanted to normalize relations with Cuba. Our recent Presidents have acted in ways that justify hostility towards our government – all over the globe.
He said – and I’m paraphrasing here:
“We shouldn’t be blind to our differences, but rather, we should focus on our common interests, and if we can’t resolve them, at least we should be about making the world safe for diversity.”
A little NK history lesson. Why did President Truman dismiss General MacArthur?
In 1951, President Truman and his advisors were preparing to engage North Korea and China in peace negotiations, in an attempt to resolve the ongoing conflict.
General Douglas MacArthur, the commander of the U.N. forces in Korea, issued an unauthorized statement containing a veiled threat to expand the war into China if the Communist side refused to come to terms.
His plan was to drop between 30 and 50 atomic bombs and spread a belt of radioactive cobalt for at least 60 years so there would be no invasion of Korea from the North.
“The South Korean ship Cheonan is believed to have been sunk by a torpedo fired from a North Korean submarine in 2010.”
Sky News
16 June 2014
Paul C. Schulte wrote “If we allow Japan to remilitarize, we would have a second armed ally in the region.”
We would, but South Korea might not. Did you know that SK President Park did not travel to Japan as was typical for the first state visit because Japan’s government continues to visit the Yasukuni Shrine and refuses to admit that it forced some 200,000 women into prostitution pre-war and during WWII?
And hey! JT or Darren Smith finally changed the photo to the Marshal himself! For the next post on the DPRK, include the photos of Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-Il, and Kim Jong-un, like the Three Stooges!
Fashion wars.
Submarines for midgets.
Year of Camo??!! We’re in Dear Leader! We’re in!!!
http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/236x/58/e6/30/58e6306ad09b5c4267623bb9f977728a.jpg
Paul C. Schulte wrote “I really don’t think either the US or S. Korea wants to enter N. Korea in a power vacuum”
You really need to read the Rand report I mentioned, and at the risk of blowing my own horn, “Could an implosion of North Korea result in WWIII?”
No, they don’t want to intervene, but they will have no choice. Would they really sit and watch the labor camp prisoners be slaughtered?
Do you know there are U.S. military plans to secure WMD after an implosion?
You are quite correct about the high cost. German reunification cost $2 trillion. South Korea has estimated that it will cost much more than five times that.
http://www.dw.de/cost-casts-shadow-over-korean-reunification/a-17628950
saucy – We always have a choice. We do not have enough troops in the area to move rapidly and would have to depend on the excellent S. Korean draftees. If we allow Japan to remilitarize, we would have a second armed ally in the region.
@Paul C. Schulte
Yes, I am well aware of that. The problem is that northerners are naive as heck. They fall victim to con-men. They are discriminated against because they do not understand the capitalist system of Seoul. Seoul gives them a small pile of cash, but it usually flies away like the wind. Seoul should take an attitude similar to that of a big brother to prevent the cons.
If anyone is interested in learning the truth about North Korea, I suggest Radio Free Asia and HRNK.
Glen:
Cool sub!
My dad toured a nuclear sub. Tight quarters. Right when the captain admonished, “Now nobody touch anything,” someone leaned against the wall and all the lights cut off. (I have to wonder if they staged it.) My dad said there was not a photon of light down there, couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. He was acutely aware of being in a cramped vessel under the waterline.
Tactically, they’re indispensable, but it takes very brave, solid people to man them!