Tuesday, January 07, 2014

US Army increasing combat power in S. Korea.


via Global Post.
The US military will deploy 800 additional troops from an armored unit to South Korea to bolster its forces in case of a crisis with North Korea, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
The US Army soldiers, armored vehicles and tanks from the 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment will be stationed at camps Hovey and Stanley near the demarcation line with the North starting next month, military officers said.
The rotational deployment is part of a strategic shift towards the Asia-Pacific region "and allows for greater responsiveness to better meet theater operational requirements," the Pentagon said in a statement.
"This is a plus-up," spokesman Colonel Steven Warren told reporters, confirming that the US military presence would expand under the decision.
The move "is part of our rebalance to the Pacific," he said.
Read it all here.

Many have said it but I have to repeat.  The S. Korean military is one of the toughest, most professional and technologically advanced forces in the Pacific region.

Quite frankly, if they can't defeat the N. Koreans by themselves then something is terribly wrong....So why are we still stationing troops there and why is the Army seeing fit to increase the combat power on the border?  

Are there signs of N. Korea destabilizing that I've missed? 

Note:  Upon reflection, the youngster running that country probably doesn't have the full support of the military.  Having to "off" your uncle by feeding him alive to a starving pack of dogs and watching them devour his body over the course of a couple of hours probably indicates more than just a seriously warped mind.  Something obviously is going on there.

7 comments :

  1. Soloman, I think that the dog feeding story was reported to be a joke that started on twiiter on Hong Kong and tghen got reported.

    ReplyDelete
  2. There are two possibilities.

    1. Situations in North Korea is worse than reported and they are preparing for contingencies. Right now, the Southern press is reporting lots of North Korean scenario collapses and what would happen including detailed cost analysis; the ROK intelligence service's chief was quoted as saying that North Korea would collapse by 2015 at a private year-end party(Obviously, he knows what he's talking about); the ROK president was talking to press that the collapse of North Korea and the subsequent takeover was like hitting a jackpot and there was nothing to worry.

    2. Or the US Army is trying to unload its burdens by sending extra troops to Korea, whose cost is 50% subsidized by the ROK government. It's cheaper to have the US troops on Korean government's subsidy program than to base them in the US and have the US government pay 100% of cost.

    Make your pick.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The Army doesn't want to left out of the real fight, the budget battle for pivot bucks, and where else could the Army send a reinforced battalion? Only to good old South Korea, a friend indeed. And sending the troops to the northern armistice line takes attention off of the worsening ROK-Japan relations, which see South Korea alining with China over PM Abe's recent ancestor worship at a Shinto war shrine. Never a dull moment.

    ReplyDelete
  4. There are a lot of good reasons for a BN level task force to rotate through Korea.

    1, fewer and fewer active Army combat vets have a Korea tour under their belt. Rotating that experience through Korea will build institutional know how for units that have done the rotation, and individual know how for people as they disperse through the Big Green Machine.

    2, we only have one Brigade from the 2nd Infantry Division in South Korea, working directly for 2 ID HQ, working directly for a 4 Star. You go Colonel, MG, to General really damn quick. Adding another LTC billet functionally increases on hand maneuver combat power by 50%. The Brigade in question is an Armor Brigade Combat Team, and adding another Maneuver BN to the mix brings the force array in line with the Army's move to three maneuver Battalions per Brigade Combat Team (IBCT, SBCT, and ABCT).

    3, every Maneuver Commander plans the defense of South Korea as part of the Captain's Career Course. It is the only serious Defense we train on outside of CTC rotations. 800 men as part of a heavy mech defense can stand off a LOT of North Korean aggression. This buys time, and time is always in short supply if things get hot.

    4, yes we need to justify our relevance to Congress. Korea is the new Germany for stopping the Communist Horde in terms of deploying troops to monitor the "fulda gap" so to speak.

    5, as we learned with Desert Storm, OEF, and OIF, if you don't train to deploy overseas for training, it's a steep learning curve for deploying to combat. We have all sorts of support units in Korea ready to receive, and all sorts of support units CONUS ready to push. What we don't have is a routine relationship between those units and the BN level task forces that FORSCOM is responsible for arming, training, and providing to COCOMS (in this case USFK).

    Back in the old days, Soldiers leaving Korea wanted to go to either 2ID or 1st Cav, as the uniform fading on the BDUs meant that you needed to stay 2ID to wear the same BDUs, or go 1st Cav because that was the only patch big enough to cover up the 2ID outline....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That bradley is a bad mother f&*ker. And it only gets better when its next to an M1A2 and a M109. I want more ABCTs.

      Delete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.