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Col. Woo
Kyung Ha, Chief of Staff, 1st Marine Division, ROK Marine Corps
(right), discusses combined amphibious operations with Col. James
M. Lowe, Commanding Officer, 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, U.S.
Marine Corps on the flight deck of the USS Essex (LHD 2). |
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| Exercise
FOAL EAGLE primarily tests ROK-U.S. forces capabilities to defend
critical rear-area targets from invasion, commando attacks, or sabotage.
Here, U.S. Air Force security forces conduct a recapture recovery
maneuver at Osan Air Base. Photo by Sr. Amn. Sarayuth Pinthong, USAF |
FOAL EAGLE is primarily a rear-area exercise where troops defend against invading forces, hostile Special Forces and commando attacks, or sabotage operations against critical rear-area targets.
RSOI encompasses activities necessary to: receive equipment and personnel at air and sea ports; reorganize personnel and equipment into cohesive units following strategic airlift and sealift; move them forward to marshaling, staging, and tactical assembly areas; and integrate them into the command and control and logistics structures.
As one of the largest defensive exercises in the world, RSOI/FOAL EAGLE 2002 gave more than 315,000 men and women of the ROK Armed Forces and 18,000 U.S. military members, including about 4,200 deployed from the United States, the opportunity to train in a challenging and realistic environment. The major ROK units included the First, Second, and Third ROK Army, and the Marine Regimental Landing Team 2. The major U.S. units included the 2nd Infantry Division, 7th Air Force, and 35th Air Defense Artillery.
The ROK-U.S. Combined Forces Command (CFC) was established in Seoul in 1978 to provide an integrated Korean-American headquarters responsible for the defense of the ROK. CFC has operational control over more than 600,000 active-duty military personnel of all services, of both countries. In wartime, additional forces could include some 3.5 million ROK Reservists and U.S. forces based outside the ROK. CFC combined the two exercises "to boost training and maximize resources," said U.S. Air Force Col. Creid Johnson, HQ CFC, Exercise Division Deputy.
Linking the two exercises interjected unprecedented realism into the training as RSOI focused on how forces from the United States arrive in the theater and integrate into CFC. In the past, CFC simulated the reception portion. This year "we linked the [exercises] so that a unit physically moved from the southern end (rear battle area) of the Peninsula to a forward tactical assembly area," said U.S. Army Maj. Derrick B. Farmer, the exercise officer. "Now all these pieces are moving together so that the CFC staff has a big picture. Now we’re able to train across the entire spectrum from CFC staff to battalion level."
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