We're sending precision artillery rounds, chemical defense troops, and MRAPs to our troops in South Korea:
In recent months, the military has reported it is moving Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, Excalibur artillery shells and an Army chemical battalion into South Korea. The moves, according to 8th Army spokesman Lt. Col. Michael Sennett, are simply “part of the Army’s continuing rebalancing efforts in the Pacific region,” and not a coordinated response to anything happening north of the Demilitarized Zone.
First, let's get to the laughable part of the story:
Two pro-North groups responded with a statement claiming: “This is clearly aimed at practicing an invasion of (North Korea) by rushing across the minefields of the Demilitarized Zone and launching a frontal assault on (the North).”
Dudes. Seriously?
I needed a laugh today.
One, there are 80 MRAPs. Eighty.
Two, MRAPs are designed not to penetrate mine fields, but to allow occupants to survive mine (or IED) attacks.
In reality, North Korea's military potential had degraded over the last couple decades. They don't have nuclear weapons. Their conventional army is rotting away. And their air force is a joke.
The assets North Korea has to threaten South Korea are chemical weapons, special forces to infiltrate South Korea, and artillery.
A chemical battalion helps cope with the first threat, obviously.
The MRAPs could help us move troops around the rear and survive special forces attempts to plant mines behind the lines.
The Excalibur rounds will help knock out North Korean tube and rocket artillery pieces that bombard Seoul.
Increasingly, North Korea's threat to South Korea isn't invasion, it is inflicting civilian casualties and then collapsing to require South Korea to absorb North Korea (well, south of wherever the Chinese advance) and pay for fixing what the Pyongyang regime wrecked in the south during the spasm of violence and in the north during the last half century of self destruction.
