2026 Korea-US Combined Warfighting Forum held in Yongsan

Forum addresses AI integration, information-sharing gaps

A USFK Stryker armored vehicle and a South Korean Army K200 armored personnel carrier cross a pontoon bridge over the South Han River in Yeonju-dong, Yeoju, Gyeonggi Province, during a combined arms river-crossing exercise on Aug. 27. The drill involved the Army's 7th Engineer Brigade and the 2nd Infantry Division/ROK-US Combined Division's 11th Engineer Battalion. [Yonhap]
A USFK Stryker armored vehicle and a South Korean Army K200 armored personnel carrier cross a pontoon bridge over the South Han River in Yeonju-dong, Yeoju, Gyeonggi Province, during a combined arms river-crossing exercise on Aug. 27. The drill involved the Army's 7th Engineer Brigade and the 2nd Infantry Division/ROK-US Combined Division's 11th Engineer Battalion. [Yonhap]

The Combined Forces Command has begun discussions on how to integrate land, sea, air, space and cyber capabilities into a future combined warfighting concept. Experts at the forum said the Korean Peninsula's compressed threat-response window — measured in seconds and minutes — demands a pre-configured force structure capable of immediate action across all domains.

Also highlighted were the need to remove constraints on information sharing between South Korean and US forces, and the challenge of ensuring that commanders' use of AI does not reduce human judgment to a rubber stamp.

CFC said Wednesday it held the 2026 Korea-US Combined Warfighting Forum at the Defense Convention Center in Yongsan, Seoul.

About 200 people attended, including CFC Commander Gen. Xavier Brunson, Deputy Commander Gen. Kim Sung-min, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Jin Young-seung, former CFC commanders and deputy commanders, senior officers from combined component commands, and military experts from industry and academia.

The forum was organized to discuss effective combined warfighting methods on the Korean Peninsula and the direction of capability development needed to support them, centered on CFC's Combined Joint All-Domain Operations (CJADO) warfighting concept.

CJADO is CFC's theater-level warfighting concept, expanding the traditional land, sea and air operational domains to include space, cyber and the electromagnetic spectrum. Its core is the integrated employment of operations across all domains, underpinned by advanced command-and-control systems.

CFC also emphasized linkages with non-military elements — diplomacy, intelligence and economics — alongside military power. The intent goes beyond simply connecting individual capabilities: forces are to be arranged in time and space according to operational objectives, imposing multiple simultaneous dilemmas on the adversary.

The peninsula's compressed response time was identified as the central challenge for applying CJADO there. KIDA researcher Ahn Byung-oh said the Korean Peninsula battlefield has a depth of only tens to hundreds of kilometers, and the Greater Seoul area is exposed to the enemy's long-range fires, leaving a threat-response window measured in seconds to minutes. He also noted that while the lack of a relatively safe rear area creates a strong need to disperse forces, the physical space in which to do so is severely limited.

Ahn said that in such an environment, synchronizing the effects of cyber and space operations — which require long preparation times — with physical strikes is no easy task. Forces must be able to sustain operations even when communications are severed and a commander's intent cannot be transmitted, or when it is difficult to confirm whether cyber and space operations have achieved their intended effects.

As a solution, he proposed first establishing a structure in which combinations of operational means are prepared in advance and selected at the execution stage. He said Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) capabilities must then be developed to allow real-time recombination of surveillance, detection and strike assets as the battlefield situation evolves.

The practical level of information connectivity between South Korean and US forces was also raised as a challenge. Ahn said current Korea-US connectivity is limited to specific missions and data types, falling short of the "kill web" standard.

"Effective connectivity must go beyond simple system-to-system access — it requires data flowing between machines," he said, calling for the identification and removal of the constraints blocking that flow.

The US side's presentation also focused on command and control and information sharing. Lt. Col. Casey Miller, chief of concepts development at the US Army Futures and Concepts Center, said CJADO is fundamentally a problem of C2 and information sharing.

Miller said the goal must go beyond deconflicting service-specific operations and move toward genuine integration. The objective, he said, is to rapidly identify enemy vulnerabilities, concentrate joint capabilities at decisive points, and change operations faster than the adversary can respond.

The risks of expanding AI use were also put on the agenda. Ahn assessed AI as a key enabler for transforming human-centric, periodic and sequential activities into continuous ones, but cautioned that "efforts are needed to ensure that formal approval does not collapse into automation in conditions where there is in effect no time to reject an automated recommendation."

CFC said it plans to continue developing CJADO concepts and combined warfighting capabilities suited to the Korean Peninsula's battlefield environment, based on the views presented at the forum. The aim is to strengthen combined defense posture and interoperability within the Korea-US military alliance.

Meanwhile, the forum's first session was chaired by former Special Warfare Command chief Gen. Jeon In-bum, and the second by CFC Chief of Staff Brig. Gen. Joseph Hilbert. Former CFC commanders Gen. Robert Abrams and Gen. Paul LaCamera, along with former CFC Deputy Commander Gen. Ahn Byung-seok, discussed the role and required competencies of commanders in an environment demanding the integration of multi-domain information and combat elements.


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