There is no necessary relationship between the two. Wars are won when one side removes the ability of the other to wage war. the US does not need a general invasion for this.
That's not you would do it because you might not know all of the entrances and/or vents in an elaborate tunnel system. There are much better ways that are more effective and make more sense.
Uh you mean the tens of thousands of air vents and openings for EACH tunnel complex? How many sorties in enemy air space with SAM/MANPADS and high range AA artillery does our pilots need to fly to get accurate hits on these many thousands of locations?
The second they start using one of those entrances, if we've got a J-Stars anywhere nearby, we'd know where that entrance is too.
Strange concept of victory, and how will the US remove the ability of North Korea to wage war when it couldn't even do that to North Vietnam?
Well those SAM's and AAA aren't going to be in 70 foot deep tunnels, so they will get killed quite early. You don't have to destroy every air vent. Just enough to make sections of the sealed tunnels unable to draw enough air to support life.
So the North Koreans are going to turn into pure guerrilla fighters? Well those are going to cause Iwo Jima scale casualties.
Oh will they? Do you know that North Korea does have MANPADS? Those can hide in tunnels. The tunnels aren't "tiny". Some of them are large enough to drive trucks through, so mobile AA can definitely be maneuvered in and out. AA sites themselves will be extremely difficult to take down since any incoming indirect strike (such as cruise missiles) will be of little over-all effect. You have to be able to target and hit them before they pack-up and move from a distant strike that is seen on radar. And that means aircraft exposed to them directly.
Why are you trying to relate an invasion to North Korea in 2017 to Vietnam which occurred back in the 60's - 70's? They are not even closely related.
You mean like when Trump said Hillary Clinton was going to cause WW3 by bombing Syria? That kind of "sky is falling talk"?
You aren't going to be getting a lock on from a Manpad when you are down in a 70 foot deep tunnel. If tunnel entrances are large enough to drive vehicles through, they are large enough to be detected on MASINT/GEOINT radars.
They are very closely related. Why do you pretend that it would be magically any different? The technology is not VASTLY different from then and now. A little more accuracy on some guided bombs/smart missiles and that's about all that's changed. The cat-mouse relationship of radar/stealth has progressed but no one assumes the US won't have air superiority. Like it had in Vietnam. What about the two is so different then? Does the US have magic bullets or something?
And easy enough to repair. In WW2 the Germans were rebuilding bombed factories and putting them to work the very NEXT day. North Koreans are not incompetents.
The Vietnamese did not fight from their tunnels. They used them as bases. Also, they didn't achieve anywhere near the Iwo Jima casualty ratios you are claiming.
