This cost savings number is a drop in the bucket compared to rest of the Pentagon’s budget:
The United States’ annual August military drills with South Korea canceled last month by order of President Donald Trump as his administration negotiates a halt to North Korea’s nuclear program would have cost the Pentagon about $14 million, according to defense officials.
Pentagon officials were unable last month to provide a cost-savings estimate for canceling the Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise. After Trump met with the North’s leader Kim Jong Un on June 12, the president announced he would halt all joint “war games” with South Korea so long as North Korea was negotiating in good faith.
On Wednesday, Army Col. Rob Manning, the Pentagon spokesman who provided the $14 million figure for the suspended military drill, did not have a breakdown explaining how defense officials arrived at that cost. Manning also did not have an estimate for cost savings for additional joint exercises in South Korea that could be canceled in the future. [Stars & Stripes]
South Korea and the United States have decided to suspend the Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG) exercise slated for August, Seoul’s defense ministry said Tuesday, amid dialogue efforts to denuclearize North Korea.
Shortly after his Singapore summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un last Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled his plan to stop “provocative, inappropriate and expensive” war games with the South, which Pyongyang has decried as an invasion rehearsal.
“Following close cooperation, South Korea and the U.S. decided to suspend all planning activities for the UFG, the defensive exercise slated for August,” the ministry said in a text message sent to reporters. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but remember these joint exercises like UFG can be turned right back on if the North Koreans shows signs of not negotiating in good faith.
Forget all the talk about denuclearization on the Korean peninsula following the Trump-Kim Summit in Singapore, the biggest news for me is President Trump announcing the stopping of joint military exercises:
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference in Singapore on June 12, 2018, in this photo captured from the website of The Straits Times. (Yonhap)
U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he will stop “provocative and expensive” war games with South Korea in a surprise reference to the joint military exercises Pyongyang has criticized as a rehearsal of invasion.
Trump made the remarks during a press conference that followed his historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on the Singaporean resort island of Sentosa.
“War games are very expensive,” he said, raising the issue of their cost.
“I think it is very provocative … You have a country that is right next door,” he added, referring to the communist state. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but President Moon has previously said that UFG would be scaled down and now President Trump has used to word stopped. I guess we will see what this all means, but for now it is pretty clear that the August UFG exercise will not happen the way it is normally executed.
If the joint exercises are stopped this is a big win for President Moon. His left wing base does not support the exercises while the political opposition conservative party does. So Moon’s base gets what it wants, for now and Moon can tell his political opposition that he was not the one that cancelled the joint exercises, President Trump did.
These joint exercise are important for USFK due to the high change over in personnel on the peninsula which these exercises help to keep personnel trained with their ROK military counterparts. However, just like everything that North Korea has committed to cancelling joint exercises are easily reversible from the US perspective. I don’t see President Trump committing to something non-reversible like troop withdrawals from the peninsula until the Kim regime does something non-reversible such as removing nuclear material to a third country for disposal.
It should continue to be an interesting year to see how this all plays out.
It looks like the UFG exercise this year will be very low key if the Kim regime continues to behave:
U.S. and Republic of Korean Soldiers conduct operations in the Combined Joint Task Force-Elimination Headquarters during Ulchi Freedom Guardian, Aug. 28, 2016, in Seoul.
South Korea will conduct annual war games with the United States as planned but will avoid publicizing them to facilitate diplomatic efforts over the North’s nuclear weapons program, the defense ministry said Monday.
North Korea has sharply denounced joint military exercises, which it considers rehearsals for an invasion, ahead of an unprecedented summit planned between Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump on June 12 in Singapore.
“We will be conducting the U.S.-[South Korean] joint military exercises normally in line with annual plans,” ministry spokesman Lee Jin-woo said during a press briefing. “But we’ll refrain from promoting the contents of the joint drills or opening them to the public as best we can.”
The comments came a day after North Korea criticized the South for planning to join upcoming international maritime drills in Hawaii known as Rim of the Pacific and a major joint exercise with the U.S. called Ulchi Freedom Guardian, which begins in August. [Stars & Stripes]
Complaining about the RIMPAC exercise is pretty stupid considering it is held in Hawaii and involves many more countries than just the US and South Korea.
The North Korean propaganda apparatus is working overtime with the UFG exercise kicking off this week:
Less than a week after backing off its threat to strike waters near Guam with a barrage of missiles, North Korea has released a video depicting such an attack on the tiny U.S. island territory.
The video – titled “What will the cost be for Americans, who are losing sleep at night?” – was released just before the start of Ulchi Freedom Guardian war games between the United States and South Korea. Pyongyang claims the annual computer-simulation drills, which kicked off on Monday, destabilize the peninsula and simulate decapitation strikes on its leadership.
A third of the way through the incendiary video, North Korean missiles are launched and then fly through clouds before coming down toward a map of Guam. Later, an image of President Donald Trump is shown overlooking a field of crosses as the words, “The fate of the U.S., with its many crimes, ends here,” are displayed in Korean. [Stars & Stripes]
Here is the North Korean propaganda video in its entirety:
Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon (L, front) speaks at a meeting of government officials and military commanders at a government building in downtown Seoul on Aug. 2, 2017, to prepare for the upcoming annual Ulchi exercise to train for national emergency situations. (Yonhap)
If you believe in the results of computerized wargames than the North Koreans do not stand a chance against USFK:
This year’s joint exercise with U.S. forces demonstrated that the military might of the two allies could bring the North Korean command to its knees, a senior military official said Tuesday.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the 2016 Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG), carried out between Aug. 22 and Sept. 2, and involving a simulated war game pitting Korea-U.S. joint forces against the North Korean military, was run with the Operation Plan (Oplan) 5015, which was first included in the UFG exercise last year.
Oplan 5015 calls for pre-emptive strikes against North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missiles facilities as well as its top leaders.
“At the early phase of the simulation war game,” said the official, “the two sides had a series of fierce battles. But as time went by, the allied forces were able to strike back and advance towards the north of Pyongyang and eventually annihilated the leadership in the capital.” [Joong Ang Ilbo]
The games are on and no I am not talking about the Olympics:
The U.S. and South Korea kicked off a new round of war games Monday despite protests from the North, which threatened a pre-emptive nuclear strike.
The annual Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercises come as relations between the two Koreas have sharply deteriorated since North Korea conducted its fourth underground atomic test in January. Tensions spiked again last week when Seoul confirmed that a senior North Korean diplomat had defected from his post at Pyongyang’s embassy in London.
About 25,000 U.S. servicemembers — including 2,500 from areas off the peninsula — and 50,000 South Korean forces will participate in the nearly two-week drills, which are mainly computer simulations.
The U.N. military armistice commission gave the North Koreans advance notice about the exercise, which runs through Sept. 2, and stressed its “nonprovocative nature,” the Combined Forces Command said in a statement. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read more at the link, but it will be interesting to see what provocation North Korea tries for this UFG.
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