A month after President Donald Trump intervened to scale back joint military exercises with South Korea, citing a desire not to upset his “very good relationship” with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, the commander of Army forces on the peninsula said he’d like to go bigger – both in exercise frequency and geographic scope.
Speaking at the Association of the United States Army’s annual meeting here Monday, Gen. Xavier Brunson, commander of United Nations Command, Combined Forces Command, and United States Forces Korea, said lessons from Ukraine prompted interest in changing the shape and structure of exercises there.
“I think what we recognize is that largely the two big exercises every year in Korea focus on large command posts; we’ve got to move away from that,” Brunson said, in response to a question from a Korean journalist.
“So, what we intend to do is take advantage of the knowledge that we have of the threats that exist or that prevail in the Ukraine fight,” he continued. “We’re trying to say how might we train differently, and so [Gen. Kim Sung-min, deputy commander of the Republic of Korea–U.S. Combined Forces Command] and I talk about how we would operate in a distributed fashion.”
In light of the distributed fight and scope of battle in Ukraine, Brunson suggested a training exercise that spanned from Jeju Island to Gyeonggi Province — a distance of nearly 300 miles across nearly the full span of the Korean peninsula.
“Just imagine if we trained across the entirety of the peninsula and got ourselves in a shape where we would say, ‘You can’t utilize the things that you’ve learned in the fight in the battlefield in Ukraine on us, because we learn the same lessons and we’ve distributed ourselves in such a way that we don’t make ourselves the target,” he said. “We won’t be moored in place, and that’s what I’m talking about when I talk about positional advantage. It might not be the same place through the continuum. It might not be the same place when you’re in a crisis or conflict or competition; we might have to change that, and that’s what we’re learning.”
His remarks acknowledged ongoing collusion and information sharing between U.S. adversaries, including Russia, China and North Korea, as Russia continues its war of aggression in Ukraine.
Also on the table, Brunson said, were additional exercises, or a different schedule.
“For a long time, we trained for two big exercises every year. What would happen if we trained in between those exercises?” he said.
He cited a recent exercise conducted without troops that drilled, on a small scale, on what a mass garrison evacuation would look like in light of a major threat.
“We’re there to protect the Korean people on the peninsula, and so we’re there to defend both homelands, the United States of America and the Republic of Korea. But what would it look like … if our environment changed?” Brunson said.
While Trump’s Aug. 16 Truth Social post suggested a broad reduction in exercises with Korea, another general, Lt. Gen. Joe Hilbert, said earlier Monday that the order pertained to only one exercise in August, Ulchi Freedom Shield.
Hilbert, who commands the Korea-based Eighth Army, said the live portion of that exercise was reduced by half and some elements that had been joint became unilateral. He maintained that joint training writ large
“We continue to train on the peninsula. We continue to train with the Koreans,” he said, adding that troops from the Army’s 2nd Infantry Division were currently training on South Korean ranges in a rotational deployment.
“So we’ll continue to train and we’ll continue to build readiness for U.S. forces on the peninsula throughout the year, except from that particular timeline and that particular exercise,” Hilber said. “As we all are observing and watching how the war is changing in Ukraine and in the Middle East, the North Koreans are absolutely doing that too. So rest assured, we pay attention to that, and we work to stay ahead.”
