WASHINGTON — Gen. Xavier Brunson, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, said the primary mission of the U.S. Multi-Domain Task Force being considered for deployment to the Korean Peninsula would be to build layered sensing capabilities. The MDTF is an Army unit that conducts multi-domain operations across land, sea, air, space, cyber and electronic warfare.
Speaking at a forum hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on the 13th, Brunson said the rationale for deploying an MDTF was "to layer sensing capabilities on the peninsula." According to The Wall Street Journal, the 2nd MDTF, which is stationed in Germany, is among the three U.S. multi-domain task forces and is the one being considered for deployment to Korea. There have also been indications that some elements have already arrived as an advance party.
Brunson stressed the importance of "the ability to operate in space, cyber and electronic warfare — the key capabilities required in each of those domains," adding that the resulting "sensing, and particularly enhanced sensing, is very important." In the space domain, he said, such capabilities provide positioning, navigation and timing, or PNT, data. In the cyber domain, they cover "not only defensive but also offensive operations." Electronic warfare, he said, is the ability to maneuver signals and signals intelligence in the electromagnetic spectrum.
"The issue facing the peninsula is not about subtracting from the 28,500 troops, but about adding," he said, calling the MDTF "incredibly attractive" in terms of placing the right capabilities on the peninsula. He added that the aim of bringing in such assets was "to better understand not just the operating environment on the peninsula but the broader environment around it." The remarks suggest the deployment is aimed at China and Russia as well as North Korea. Brunson also said high-altitude balloons could be operated alongside manned and unmanned aircraft as part of the MDTF's layered sensing architecture, saying, "Imagine tethering a high-altitude balloon near the Demilitarized Zone."
"If you just draw a line on a map, you can see the distance from Beijing to Seoul," Brunson said. In May, he described South Korea's geographic and strategic significance by saying that when China looks out from its eastern seaboard, what it sees is Korea, a dagger at the center of Asia.
Brunson said North Korea's combat capabilities have evolved through its involvement in the war in Ukraine and that South Korea and the United States must respond by dispersing their forces. "As Kim Jong-un develops hypersonic glide vehicles, the threat continues to spread," he said, calling for a joint response not only from South Korea, the United States and Japan but also from members of the United Nations Command. "On the battlefield of the future, forces will be dispersed. We have to be able to change the character of the operating environment by generating military effects from places that are not intuitively obvious," he said, adding that dispersing forces "gives us endurance in combat."
"We could repair military equipment within the region rather than sending it back to the United States. Imagine conducting maintenance, repair and overhaul across every operational domain," Brunson said, stressing the need to "build a regional logistics hub that can draw on the strength of Korean industry and provide support to other regions as well."
On the transfer of wartime operational control, Brunson reaffirmed his standing position that he "fully supports a conditions-based transfer," while noting that "time is also a condition." He added that if the transfer were carried out without fully meeting the established conditions, including securing the necessary core capabilities, "I will explain to the president what the attendant risks are."