Drill to simulate power transfer to South Korea

Drill to simulate power transfer to South Korea
By Ashley Rowland, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Wednesday, May 7, 2008

SEOUL — Military leaders will get their first look in a few months at what a South Korean-led war with North Korea might look like, during the first of four computer-generated war games scheduled before South Korea takes over wartime control of all troops in the country.

Planners for Ulchi Focus Guardian say preparing for the late summer exercise is daunting, because U.S. and South Korean military leaders will operate from different headquarters for the first time. And they don’t know exactly what the two commands — which are supposed to be separate but complementary — will look like, or how they will interact.

“It’s hard to plan to test something that you don’t even know yet,” said U.S. Air Force Maj. Michelle “Xena” Vestal, part of a four-person exercise planning team. “We’re kind of putting the cart before the horse this year.”

If a war broke out in the Korean peninsula, the U.S. general in charge of 28,000 U.S. troops in South Korea, the Combined Forces Command and the multi-national United Nations Command would lead the war. That is scheduled to change on April 17, 2012, when the U.S. transfers operational wartime control — called OPCON — to South Korea.

UFG gives leaders a chance to spot and correct potential problems in the transformation, said Lt. Col. Michael Panciera, head of the exercise planning team.


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