Understanding operational environment beyond Korean Peninsula

Space, cyber, electronic warfare sensing capabilities to be bolstered

High-altitude balloons near DMZ floated as option

'Time is also a condition' on wartime operational control transfer

USFK Commander Gen. Xavier Brunson [Captured from US Senate Armed Services Committee website]
USFK Commander Gen. Xavier Brunson [Captured from US Senate Armed Services Committee website]

US Forces Korea Commander Gen. Xavier Brunson said Tuesday that building layered sensing capabilities would be the core mission of Multi-Domain Task Forces being considered for deployment to the Korean Peninsula — and pointedly suggested the effort is aimed not only at North Korea but at China as well.

Speaking at a forum hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday (local time), Brunson said the reason for deploying MDTFs comes down to "sensing, sensing, sensing" — specifically, building layered sensing capabilities on the Korean Peninsula.

MDTFs are units designed to carry out the US Army's "multi-domain operations" concept, conducting missions across land, sea, air, space, and cyber and electronic warfare domains. According to the Wall Street Journal, the US military is pursuing the deployment to the Korean Peninsula of the 2nd MDTF, currently based in Germany — one of three such units — and there are indications that an advance element has already arrived.

"The problem on the Korean Peninsula is not about subtracting from the 28,500 USFK troops — it's about adding," Brunson said. "In terms of deploying the right capabilities to the peninsula, MDTFs are extremely attractive."

He doubled down on the importance of enhanced sensing, saying that "the ability to operate in the space, cyber and electronic warfare domains — the key capabilities needed in each of those domains — are very, very important."

In the space domain, he said, the force can provide positioning, navigation and timing information, while in the cyber domain it can conduct not only defensive but also offensive operations. Electronic warfare, he added, involves leveraging signals and signals intelligence in the electromagnetic spectrum.

Brunson said the goal of bringing in these assets is to "better understand not just the operational environment on the Korean Peninsula, but the broader surrounding environment as well" — a remark that signals the MDTF deployment is conceived with China and Russia in mind, not just North Korea.

China and Russia employ anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) strategies designed to prevent US reinforcements from entering a theater or achieving military objectives in a given region. MDTFs were created to counter those strategies by integrating space, cyber and electronic warfare capabilities with long-range precision strike.

Brunson was particularly direct about the China dimension. "Just draw a line on the map and you can see the distance from Beijing to Seoul," he said. He had made a similar point in May, describing Korea — as seen from China's eastern coast — as "a dagger at the heart of Asia."

Brunson said the MDTF's layered sensing architecture could employ a range of manned and unmanned aircraft at various altitudes, as well as high-altitude balloons. "Imagine tethering such a balloon near the Demilitarized Zone," he said, laying out a concrete operational possibility.

He also stressed the need to disperse forces to counter North Korea's expanding missile threat.

Brunson assessed that North Korea's missile strike capabilities and reach are growing, bolstered by lessons from the war in Ukraine and Russian support.

"The threat envelope keeps expanding as Kim Jong-un develops the hypersonic glide vehicles he is currently pursuing," he said, adding that South Korea, the United States and Japan — along with UN Command member states — must respond collectively.

"On the future battlefield, forces will be dispersed," he said. "We have to be able to change the character of the operational environment by generating military effects from positions that are not intuitively obvious." Dispersed deployment, he explained, provides sustained combat capability.

Brunson said recent combined exercises with South Korea prompted him to think more seriously about force dispersal. He described asking himself what dispersed forces would look like and where they could be positioned, and floated the idea of using South Korean K9 self-propelled howitzers for some missions currently assigned to HIMARS, freeing the HIMARS for other tasks.

He also raised the need to build a regional logistics hub by leveraging South Korea's defense industry capabilities.

"We could repair USFK military equipment in the region rather than sending it back to the continental United States," Brunson said. "Imagine conducting maintenance, repair and overhaul across all operational domains."

He said it would be necessary to "build a regional logistics support hub that draws on South Korea's strong industrial capabilities and can extend support to other parts of the region."

Brunson also expressed concern about the combat experience North Korea has gained through its military cooperation with Russia.

He assessed that North Korea has obtained tangible gains from the war in Ukraine, including jamming equipment from Russia and real-world performance data on the KN-23 missile. He said Pyongyang has also accumulated strategic lessons — in long-range logistics, strategic and operational maneuver, and the value of being compensated for providing war support.

"These lessons are changing how North Korean forces train and how they employ their troops," Brunson said, arguing that USFK and the South Korean military must also shift to a more dispersed training model.

On the transfer of wartime operational control, Brunson reaffirmed the existing conditions-based approach.

"I fully support a conditions-based transfer of operational control," he said, "but time is also a condition."

He added that if the transfer were carried out before the required conditions — including securing key capabilities — were fully met, "I will explain to the US president what the risks of doing so would be."


sjy@heraldcorp.com