USFK commander discusses dispersed training with South Korea, citing North Korea's battlefield experience in Ukraine

US Forces Korea Commander Gen. Xavier Brunson said he is in discussions with South Korea on shifting joint military exercises to a more dispersed format.

Speaking Monday at the annual Association of the United States Army conference in Washington, Brunson said the current US-South Korea joint exercises are held twice a year as large-scale command post exercises, and that "we need to move away from that."

Acknowledging that the security environment has changed — in part because North Korea is gaining real combat experience through its deployment to the war in Ukraine — Brunson said he is discussing with CFC Deputy Commander Gen. Kim Seong-min how to conduct operations in a dispersed manner.

"What would it look like if we trained from Jeju to Gyeonggi Province?" Brunson said. "Imagine if we were training across the entire Korean Peninsula and could tell them, 'You can't apply what you learned in Ukraine to us.'"

He added that the goal is to "learn those same lessons and disperse ourselves in a way that we don't become targets — not being fixed in one place."

Brunson also raised the question of what would happen if additional training were conducted between the two large-scale annual exercises, and said he recently flew out by helicopter to conduct a "no-troops strategy drill" simulating contingency scenarios.

His remarks suggest he sees a need to supplement the current CPX-based joint exercise format with dispersed training elements, and that he is actively discussing the change with South Korea. The comments come as President Donald Trump signaled in August his willingness to resume dialogue with North Korea and ordered a reduction in joint exercises, raising questions about whether the training format will in fact change.

Brunson also outlined USFK's concept of "regional sustainment hubs," noting that South Korea possesses a world-class defense industrial base and production capacity.

"In the future, particularly in a fight in the Pacific, the ability to sustain matters — whether that's the ability to protect what's forward-deployed or the ability to be self-sufficient within the first island chain from Korea," he said.

He added that the regional sustainment hub concept "means bringing those means of production into the theater" and "leveraging what our partners do well and applying it to our equipment."