Korea — Enhancing Mission Capability of Militant Field Forces

Recent­ly, bit­ter cold of about 10 degrees below zero has con­tin­u­al­ly swept along even in rear area. How­ev­er, army units’ inten­sive cold weath­er tac­ti­cal drills are on the go.

Sol­diers of the 37th Infantry Divi­sion of Kore­an Army car­ry out a search-and-destroy train­ing oper­a­tion dur­ing an inten­sive cold weath­er tac­ti­cal drill. Pro­vid­ed by the unit Click to enlarge

Each unit under the 37th Army Divi­sion is con­duct­ing inde­pen­dent­ly its cold weath­er train­ing from Jan. 16 to Feb. 17. For exam­ple, Joong­won Reg­i­ment over­came an adverse con­di­tion of bet­ter cold to car­ry out its cold weath­er train­ing, which was designed for them to improve their win­ter oper­a­tion capa­bil­i­ty. In order for its train­ing to be con­duct­ed in real world sit­u­a­tions, the reg­i­ment was giv­en both region­al infil­tra­tion and total war situations. 

In addi­tion, the reg­i­ment cre­at­ed its aggres­sor forces for its sol­diers to be trained for five days under con­di­tions that close­ly resem­ble real com­bat. The unit also did not use heat­ing appa­ra­tus­es at all for being more suc­cess­ful actu­al fight training. 

In fact, before the train­ing began, the unit had got its sol­diers to pre­pare for the train­ing through such activ­i­ties as over­com­ing a bit­ter spell of cold, run­ning at dawn, dis­cussing tac­tics, and improv­ing their com­bat skills on the basis of indi­vid­u­als and small groups. 

“I came to not only know what to do when con­front­ed with a war­fare, but, by feel­ing direct­ly the body tem­per­a­ture of my fel­low sol­diers, have a clos­er friend­ship with them as well,” said a sergeant, who had par­tic­i­pat­ed in the training. 

In addi­tion to Jung­won Reg­i­ment, Wol­gin Reg­i­ment under the 50th Army Divi­sion has ful­ly pre­pared the oper­a­tion capa­bil­i­ties appro­pri­ate for real world sit­u­a­tions by con­duct­ing a severe cold weath­er drill. 

The reg­i­ment took the train­ing this time as a good oppor­tu­ni­ty to cor­rect the defects of its oper­a­tion plans, by val­i­dat­ing and ver­i­fy­ing them, as well as to expe­ri­ence a win­ter com­bat situation. 

In par­tic­u­lar, the unit had vital­ly pre­pared for the train­ing to attain a com­plete suc­cess. As a prepa­ra­tion, the unit explained the spe­cif­ic exam­ples in the book The 1996 Kan­glung Counter-Infil­tra­tion Oper­a­tions to the entire exec­u­tive-lev­el per­son­nel and, then, had them dis­cuss what they had heard the­mat­i­cal­ly, thus mak­ing them broad­en their knowl­edge of tactics. 

Also the reg­i­ment had its per­son­nel cer­ti­fy their own abil­i­ty to deal with sit­u­a­tions by oper­a­tional phase. For this pur­pose, the sol­diers had to be inten­sive­ly trained to improve their small-unit com­bat skills. 

Con­duct­ed around Uljin and Yeongdeok, North Gyeongsang, the train­ing was con­duct­ed like an actu­al war­fare, which was close­ly con­nect­ed the wartime and peace­time mis­sions. This real­is­tic train­ing ranged from counter amphibi­ous oper­a­tion to an inva­sion upon the nuclear pow­er plants at Uljin, in which both the shore par­ties and the land forces participated. 

“Through the train­ing con­duct­ed this time, we built com­plete­ly a mis­sion-cen­tered unit spir­it, focus­ing on the unit’s pri­ma­ry pol­i­cy of ‘No oth­er than com­bat readi­ness and edu­ca­tion and train­ing,’” said Col. Kim Seong-soo, com­man­der of the Uljin Regiment. 

Kim went on to say, “we will keep car­ry­ing out impec­ca­bly our mis­sions as the birth­place of the rig­or­ous defense against the east sea.” 

Source:
Min­istry of Nation­al Defense, Repub­lic of Korea 

Face­book and/or on Twit­ter