The Marmot’s Hole

15 Comments

1. mins0306
   Posted December 28, 2006 at 4:02 pm | Permalink

   Out of 2281 tanks in its inventory only 1208 can be considered modern battle tanks and out of that only 35 T-80UDs from Russia are equipped with NBC equipment.

   So you can understand why some Koreans are not eager to see the USFK leave.

2. Haksaeng
   Posted December 29, 2006 at 2:07 am | Permalink

   Both the K1 and K1A1 can operate in an NBC environment. Both tanks use an NBC filtration system. The T-80s use an overpressure system to accomplish the same task.

   While mins0306 is correct that roughly only 55 percent of South Korea’s armor force is modern, Seoul’s main adversary–North Korea–has no modern armor systems. North Korea’s most modern main battle tank (MBT) is the T-62, which is inferior in firepower, fire control, and mobility to the M-48A5, and roughly equivalent or slightly better in armor protection. The main guns on any of North Korea’s MBTs cannot penetrate the frontal armor of the K1 or K1A1 MBTs.

   The rest of North Korea’s armor force is made up of T-54/55s and T-34/85s. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to take on the South Korean Army in a WWII-era tank. The T-34/85 is not a match for any anti-armor weapon in the South’s inventory. A T-54/55 and M-47 matchup would be fun to watch, though.

3. Zonath
   Posted December 29, 2006 at 6:22 am | Permalink

   And here’s much of the same information, only in English: http://www.globalsecurity.org/.....ipment.htm

   You can also follow the link to find out what kinds of non-tank ground armour/artillery units the ROKA has, just so you know what you’ll be dodging on the roads once the shooting starts.

4. mins0306
   Posted December 29, 2006 at 9:30 am | Permalink

   Both the K1 and K1A1 can operate in an NBC environment. Both tanks use an NBC filtration system. The T-80s use an overpressure system to accomplish the same task.

   Haksaeng, the K-1 and the K-1A1 can be fitted with an NBC system but they are an option not part of the standard package. And the ROK military is well known to take out options in order to reduce the cost of buying weapons.

   Here is a link to a Korea Times article regarding the lack of NBC equipment in most of ROKA tanks.

5. Haksaeng
   Posted December 29, 2006 at 12:02 pm | Permalink

   mins0306, thanks for the link. I hadn’t seen the article before.

   While this is certainly worrisome if true, the likelihood that North Korea would use NBC weaponry is pretty low (not impossible, though). North Korea is even less prepared to fight in an NBC environment than the South. It is very unlikely that the North maintains the stockpiles of MOPP suits and protective mask filters needed to conduct military operations in contaminated environments (both MOPP suits and filters to be maintained and replaced on occassion).

   North Korea also doesn’t have the funds to train its force sufficiently to fight in a conventional environment, much less a contaminated one. The South Korean military would benefit greatly from greater training, particularly extended training periods, but what it gets is substantially greater than what the North Korean military gets.

   I’m a bit worried about some of the initiatives that have come out of the Blue House in recent years, though. President Roh seems bound and determined to reduce the South’s readiness by reducing conscription times and not fully funding the defense initiatives that he set in motion. I thought the optional year in service was inspired, and I congratulate whomever came up with that, but the ROK military will need more long-serving professionals to man the “information-age” force that the MND says it is trying to form. With technology comes greater training requirements, and more training means longer training periods. These longer training periods eat into the limited amount of “useable” time left in the already short conscription period.

   Anyway, this is a long way of saying that the South can handle the threat from the North, but it will need more work if it is worried about other threats.

6. wjk
   Posted December 29, 2006 at 2:18 pm | Permalink

   I remember the 88 (pal pal) juncha. The K1. Believe it or not, it was featured in South Korean magazines for kids, such as So Nyun Joong Ang or Bo Mool Sum as special pictorials. Remember, these were more or less comic book magazines for kids, simlar to their Japanese counterparts. They also had a feature for the South Korean made fighter jet. I think it was a South Korean made licensed, but less powerful version of an American fighter jet.

7. Haksaeng
   Posted December 29, 2006 at 11:03 pm | Permalink

   The South Korean jet, the T-50, was a joint venture with General Dynamics. It was designed to compete against the F-16 and is an air superiority fighter. You can see a photo of the T-50 at http://www.koreaaero.com/.

8. mins0306
   Posted December 30, 2006 at 11:52 pm | Permalink

   the likelihood that North Korea would use NBC weaponry is pretty low (not impossible, though).

   Haeksaeng, your assumption depends on North Korea acting rationally and not needlessly sacrificing its troops, which we know they won’t.

   Now, if a ROKA K-1 tank battalion gets hit with a chemical weapon, then its combat capability will be seriously degraded, and if it happens to share the same area with a North Korean anti-tank unit equipped with the latest Russian or Chinese ATGW(quite easy to procure in the black market) and proper NBC gear, well the fact that the ROKA battalion tanks are not properly equipped for NBC won’t help much.

   They also had a feature for the South Korean made fighter jet. I think it was a South Korean made licensed, but less powerful version of an American fighter jet.

   I believe wjk is referring to the licensed produced version of the Northrop F-5E/F. KAL produced them during the late 80s, and for some reason was a subject of ridicule. Like wjk, I also remember seeing a picture of it in one of those children magazines.

9. wjk
   Posted December 31, 2006 at 5:56 am | Permalink

   mins0306, that’s the one !

10. Haksaeng
    Posted December 31, 2006 at 11:01 am | Permalink

    mins0306, I can indeed see a scenario or two in which the North may resort to a chemical attack, but mostly as a last-gasp effort as it collapses under assault. If it uses such weaponry early in the fight, it would invite a response in kind from either the South or the US–not impossible to envison, but unlikely. The South is better prepared to fight in an NBC environment than the North, so the North would not gain much advantage from the use of such weapons.

    While some 15 years ago or so I think it would have been a fair assumption that the North could procure the latest Soviet-block anti-armor weapon, that period has passed. Sure, it is possible it purchased a handful of systems recently, but it would have been cost-prohibitive to purchase enough to be militarily significant, particularly for so large a force. I think it also is safe to assume that the majority of the North’s “excess” budget went into its missile and nuclear programs, not to large-scale conventional arms procurement programs, regardless of how easy the weapons are to purchase. The North simply doesn’t have the hard currency.

    For largely the same reason, I don’t think it is reasonable to assume that the very large North Korean military has been able to sustain signficant amount of NBC-protective gear. Filters wear out and need to be replaced, as do MOPP suits. Additionally, you need more than one MOPP suit per person to operate in contaminated environments. That increases the cost to being ready for such an environment.

    Money also becomes a problem when training to fight on a contaminated battlefield. The North has difficulty training its force to fight the conventional war. It doesn’t have the opportunity or money to expand its training to more hostile environments.

    Looking to the South, the ROK military has its shortfalls in NBC operations, particularly a nuclear environment. It does have large numbers of MOPP suits, however, and is an exporter of MOPP suits. Additionally, operations in a chemical environment and chemical decontamination are regular training missions throughout the ROK Army. As an example of the South’s relative readiness to operate in this type of warfare, the US recently transferred the duty of rear-area decontamination over to the South.

    Just because an armored vehicle is not equiped with a filtration or overpressure system doesn’t mean it can’t operate in an NBC environment. The protection systems allow cremen to continue operations without having to “MOPP up.” The filtration systems are for crew comfort and to reduce crew fatigue in contaminated environments. To fight if you don’t have a protection system in the vehicle, tank crews just have to don MOPP gear, just like the grunts. This was standard practice in the US military until the introduction of the M-1. M-113s, M-577s, M-60s, M-48s, etc did not have NBC protection gear, yet the US was prepared to fight in an NBC environment. Crewmen were expected to wear their MOPP suits and keep on driving on.

    Thanks for correcting me on the aircraft. I hadn’t seen the magazines and have no reason why people would ridicule them. The F-5 is a capable airframe, if a bit out of date now.

11. mins0306
    Posted January 2, 2007 at 2:43 pm | Permalink

    Just because an armored vehicle is not equiped with a filtration or overpressure system doesn’t mean it can’t operate in an NBC environment. The protection systems allow cremen to continue operations without having to “MOPP up.” The filtration systems are for crew comfort and to reduce crew fatigue in contaminated environments.

    Haeksaeng, you are correct that armored vehicles don’t need NBC filtration equipment to operate in a NBC equipment, but won’t it be better for the ROK tank crewman to fight in a tank without being fatigued as a result of wearing a MOPP suit inside a cramped tank?

    If the shooting really begins, it is going to be very intense, and considering the fact that there are no guarantees that DPRK will not use chemical weapons, a ROK tank crewman will most probably welcome the fact that the tank he is riding in is properly equipped for NBC.

    Now if the ROK military brass expects its enlisted personnel to bear with it when it comes to crew comfort inside armored vehicles instead of investing the time and the money to improve fighting conditions like the US does with its own enlisted personnel, then we are going to have a lot of ROK grunts that most
    probably won’t give it their all when the shooting really starts.

12. Haksaeng
    Posted January 2, 2007 at 10:15 pm | Permalink

    mins0306, I agree with you completely; it is much better and safer for all involved to have some sort of NBC protection system on armored vehicles. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the opportunity to operate in a tank, but even under the best conditions they are hot and exhausting. The addition of a filtration or overpressure system definitely improves armor operations. Ironically, it was the Soviet Union that first decided to add NBC protection equipment on its vehicles. I don’t remember how many years it took for the US military to decide protection systems were a good thing, but it was more than a decade.

    I’m not sure I quite accept your last statement about ROK soldiers not willing to fight to their best ability because they are not equiped similarly to US soldiers. The reason I’m skeptical of this statement is because if this situation ever happened, the South Korean soldiers would be fighting to protect their country and their homes. Soldiers don’t adjust their level of effort based on what other nations have or don’t have. Once the South starts taking casualties, soldiers will get their minds “right” and devote their energies to defeating the enemy, which threatens their lives and the lives of their families, friends.

13. mins0306
    Posted January 3, 2007 at 8:27 am | Permalink

    The reason I’m skeptical of this statement is because if this situation ever happened, the South Korean soldiers would be fighting to protect their country and their homes. Once the South starts taking casualties, soldiers will get their minds “right” and devote their energies to defeating the enemy, which threatens their lives and the lives of their families, friends.

    Like you Haeksaeng, I once thought the ROK soldiers were disciplined enough to do their duty when things get hot.

    But a couple of incidents in the 90s changed my mind. First was an incident in the ROK Navy which didn’t make it to the press. The ROKS Taejon was moored in Chinhae when a small fire broke out. Instead of fighting the fire and saving their ship, the sailors, all conscripts, chose to abandon ship. Now in any Navy, the only time the crew can abandon ship is when they are ordered to. In this case, there was no such order. The sailors, instead of doing their duty, ignored all military discipline and protocols, and well ran away to save their own skins. Of course, unlike the US Navy, where its sailors don protective suits and masks, the ROK Navy, at that time, did not issue such gear to its own sailors.

    Another incident was during 1996, when North Korean commandos were beached at Kwangwon-do, which resulted in a massive manhunt by the ROK Army. It was reported that during firefights between regular(not Special Forces) troops and the commandos, the troops fired their rifles blindly over their heads sometimes resulting in friendly casualties.

14. Haksaeng
    Posted January 3, 2007 at 9:56 am | Permalink

    Thanks for the info, mins0306. I hadn’t heard about the incident with the ship. That is indeed distressing. The crew should not have left the ship without orders. Was there disciplinary action taken against the crew? If not, was there an explanation why not? This seems to me to be a serious breech of trust.

    To be fair about the 1996 incident, the vast majority of those involved in the manhunt were reservists. Nearly 1,000,000 reservists were mobilized within 48 hours to conduct that search. I view this as a very positive incident–Seoul was able to get that many soldiers mobilized in such a short period of time. I don’t think the US could mobilize so many reservists in such a short time.

    The US Army also had an issue with soldiers firing their rifles over their heads during the Vietnam War. If you look at some of the newsclips from the late 1960s and early 1970s, in particular, will see lots of examples of this blind shooting. The first time I can recall seeing it was shortly after the Viet Cong seized the US Embassy in Saigon in 1968. Many of the soldiers fighting to retake the building hid behind walls and fired their rifles over their heads.

    I think this may be a by-product of conscript militaries and rifles with limited recoil. I am unaware of over-the-head shooting since the US went to an all-volunteer force. I doubt that you will find any members of the ROK Special Warfare Command doing such things. Granted, this is not a fair comparison because of the extra training and the nature of the people attracted to the command, but it is the only all-volunteer force in the ROK Army so the only thing to use as a comparison. Additionally, if soldiers on any side during WWII tried to do the same thing, though, they would break fingers and other body parts due to the recoil of the weapons in use then.

15. mins0306
    Posted January 5, 2007 at 5:23 pm | Permalink

    Was there disciplinary action taken against the crew? If not, was there an explanation why not?

    Haeksaeng, I have not heard anything in regards to disciplinary action against the crew.

    I do know however that the CNO of the ROK Navy ordered every ROKN ship and shore station to carry out daily fire drills and that the drills were carried out.

    To be fair about the 1996 incident, the vast majority of those involved in the manhunt were reservists. Nearly 1,000,000 reservists were mobilized within 48 hours to conduct that search. I view this as a very positive incident–Seoul was able to get that many soldiers mobilized in such a short period of time.

    Yes, a lot of reservists were mobilized but they did not directly participate in the manhunt. Instead they were responsible for manning roadblocks and other second line duties.

    There was also the issue of a lot of reservists not showing up, which resulted in the toughening of the law governing reserve forces.

    And I do know from conversations from current and former reservists that most of them have no intention of showing up to their duty stations when and if the next war breaks out.