The U.S. military has conducted a key wartime “deployment readiness” exercise in South Korea, the first such event involving U.S.-based troops since the last publicly known training in 2017, informed sources said Thursday, in an apparent move to strengthen defense against growing North Korean threats.
The exercise took place earlier this month, ahead of the annual South Korea-U.S. Ulchi Freedom Shield (UFS) exercise that kicked off Monday and is set to end on Aug. 31. The U.S. Army is known to have staged the last such public training in September 2017.
The 2nd Infantry Division/ROK-U.S. Combined Division, a U.S. Forces Korea unit here, posted a video clip showing the exercise under way on Aug. 17 on the Pentagon’s Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS). ROK stands for South Korea’s official name, the Republic of Korea.
The exercise demonstrated U.S. troops’ “fight tonight” readiness on the heels of a “no notice” Deployment Readiness Exercise (DRE), the division wrote on the DVIDS.
“The DRE enabled forces to rehearse routine processes for reception, staging, and onward integration in order to respond to any emergency in the Korean Peninsula,” it said of the exercise featuring troops from the 1st Battalion, 77th Armored Regiment based in Fort Bliss, Texas.
“Deployment readiness exercises are required by the Department of Defense in order to ensure that the U.S. military remains at a high state of readiness in support of peace and security across the U.S. Army Pacific area of responsibility,” it added.
Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor, commander of the combined division, said that during the exercise, the South Korean military facilitated the ability to conduct the exercise enabling the U.S. Army to “respond quickly to any emergency or requirement here on the Korean Peninsula by rapidly deploying combat troops.”
“The constant improvement of our planning or synchronization and using our rotational forces in coordination with our host nation really makes us better,” he added.
The latest DRE coincided with a crisis management exercise (CMX) that took place last week with a focus on a pre-war scenario. The CMX is a routine training program that is conducted before a major allied exercise, like the UFS.
The exercise came as Pyongyang has been ratcheting up tensions as seen in its failed but defiant launch of a claimed space rocket early Thursday.
With the Yoon Suk Yeol administration pushing for sturdier defense under its mantra of “peace through strength,” Seoul and Washington have been striving to reinforce allied drills and trilateral security cooperation with Tokyo.
Source: Yonhap News Agency