Do you just make this **** up as you do along?
Quote:In any event, with the 2nd Brigade Combat Team going to Iraq in August 2004, the total number of troops declined by 5,000, to a total of 22,500 Army soldiers.
The Air Force has two wings located in the USFK region with some 8,300 personnel, operating a total of about 100 aircraft of all types.
Source at Global Security-dot-org.
That means that there are slightly in excess of 30,000 troops in Korea.
Additionally, there are the more than 40,000 troops in Japan. From the same source:
Quote:U.S. Forces, Japan, with its U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps elements, consists of approximately 47,000 military personnel, 52,000 dependents, 5,500 DOD civilian employees and 23,500 Japanese workers. There are roughly 350 aircraft from the Air Force, Navy and Marines located in the USFJ AOR.
You also display your typical stupidity with regard to military affairs. Do you think the American troops in Korea are intended to stop the DPRK single-handed? What a loon.
Once again, from Global Security, here is a detailed order of battle for the army, air force, navy and marines of the Republic of Korea. The South Korean army numbers somewhat in excess of one half million troops.
But you must think armies fight on chess boards, large flat spaces where the mere weight of numbers will always prevail. One million North Koreans don't mean much if they can't be brought to bear. The area in which the United States troops are deployed is the only logistically reasonable invasion route of the South by the North. Stacking up units in that narrow area just makes better targets.
The North Koreans only have three things going for them militarily, and as one is nukes, that leaves only two advantages in conventional warfare. Those two things are huge artillery concentrations (and i've already pointed out that both the United States Army and the United States Air Force are already prepared to deal with that), and medium range ballistic missiles (the Korean version of the old Soviet "Scuds," which is what Hussein used in Iraq in 1991--they are hardly to be considered an effective tactical weapon).
The mere preponderance of numbers is meaningless if they can't be deployed effectively. When the Allies landed in Normandy in 1944, they were vastly outnumbered both by the troops in the German Seventh Army, and the additional forces immediately available to react to the invasion. The 21st Panzer Division, formerly the heart of Rommel's Afrika Korps, was strung out on the road leading southeast from Caen. Despite being less than 30 kilometers from the English and Canadian landing beaches, it took them two days to assemble on the high ground
south of Caen, more than 10 kilometers from the beaches. In Brittany was the crack 6th Fallschirmjager (paratroopers)--they had about 60 kilometers to travel--and it took them five days, because they had to walk all the way, and they could only walk at night.
Why? Because the Allies had complete control of the air. On D-Day, the Germans flew 160 sorties in all of France (a sortie is one plane flying one mission--a plane can fly more than one mission a day, and can therefore have more than one sortie per day), and only two over the invasion beaches. By contrast, the Royal Air Force and the 8th and 9th United States Army Air Forces flew more than 14,800 sorties on D-Day. Nothing moved in the day time in Normandy without risking destruction. The 6th FS division suffered horribly just getting to the Cotentin penninsula, and they were almost wiped out in the fighting in Normandy.
If the North invades the South, they will face the same disproportionate balance of air forces. Having a million troops and massive artillery concentrations doesn't mean squat if you can't get your boys to the party. Most of the army of the DPRK would merely be targets for American and South Korean missile batteries and American and South Korean air forces. The quality of the American and South Korean equipment is far superior to anything the North has, with the exception of their artillery. Given that their artillery is either already in fixed positions, or is kept in hardened bunkers underground behind the border, they'd either be sitting ducks in their positions, or as they attempted to make the approach march. This is precisely what Rommel said about Normandy in his personal papers before the invasion--that all their resources should be poised to throw the invaders back from the beaches, because if they were in the interior, they'd never survive the approach march. If Joe jumps, he won't survive the approach march, no matter how many Americans he kills.
That's why Kim Jong Il rattles his saber so consistently with his threats of developing a nuclear arsenal. He knows that if he tries a conventional ground war, he's f*cked.
I'm not surprised that you don't know it, though.
