About your point regarding the Air Force, yes I agree. The joke (or the truth?) is that US has not won a war since separate Air Force was formed. Korea, Vietnam, etc etc.
However, the next Korean War will be different. Let me pause here and say that I pray there will not a Korean War 2.
1st, NK will certainly not get the support it got during KW1 from China/Russia.
2nd, advanced technology. Yes it’s over rated sometimes but it does matter here. Up until 1980’s, it was routine for NK agents/guerillas to infiltrate across the DMZ. Ever heard how 30 men team from NK crossed the DMZ in 1968 to try to raid the Blue House (SK version of White House) and kill the President Park? Just a little foot note is that the team crossed through the sector US 2nd Div was in charge… Than ROK started employing radar/infrared devices to monitor DMZ and the infiltration across DMZ basically stopped. It was relatively easy to sneak across at night when all that could be used to watch was human eyeballs. But a different story when radar/nightvision devices were used. Just a small example of how tech does really work.
And than there’s the smart bombs/choppers etc etc. We won’t see the repeat of SK/US troops getting trapped somewhere due to difficult terrain. There are choppers. And GPS guided parachutes to resupply troops.
3rd, during the early part of KW1, battle fronts moved back and forth quickly. But during 1952 and 53, it was mostly fight for the highest ground in the area. Battle fronts barely moved much. They fought for highest ground because it allowed the owner to monitor the lower area and call in artillery etc. With the UAV/satellite/2000lbs-smart bombs, that kind of tactic will not be repeated.
And the terrain in SK isn’t as bad as Afg. Sure there are mountains in SK but they are nothing like Afg.
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Dba: While I certainly agree that the terrain in Afghanistan is worse than Korea, the terrain in Korea largely prevents a war of maneuver (and, sadly, the US Army is still fighting the Soviets in Western Europe in terms of mission profiles and force posture) and that is where the US Army excels.
If you look at the war in Iraq, the US Army easily won the “set piece” element of the war (US Army versus Iraqi Army), but rapidly bogged down when the counterinsurgency element of the war began.
North Korea is smart enough to recognize that a “force on force” approach vis-a-vis the US military (Army, Marines and USAF/USMC/USN air support) is suicidal and they’ve therefore organized their army into loose battalion and brigade size units that are meant to freely maneuver and use the terrain to their maximum advantage.
Again, while Korea is nowhere near as funky as Afghanistan, terrain-wise, there are major problems with a lack of road networks and maneuvering through the various defiles, ravines, small towns/villages, etc would be a nightmare.
The key point here is when you bog down M1s and M3s in this environment, they became relative easy to “mission kill”, meaning you knock out treads with RPGs or AT weapons. Happened in Iraq far more than anyone in the Army wanted to admit. The Marine LAVs are much better vehicles for this environment, but, again, you’re now fighting units that are smaller, more maneuverable and less dependent on technology and support than you are.
NK’s strength here is their willingness to bleed and that is why I agree with you and pray that we don’t have a repeat of the Korean War. My dad was there from 1950 – 1951 with the Marines. He landed at Inchon, fought through Seoul and wound up at Chosin Reservoir that winter. He told me that Korea was way worse than WWII for him (he was with the 6th Marines at Okinawa in 1945). I would have to imagine that this go-round would be exponentially worse than that.
