North Korean troops may soon fight alongside the Russian military against Ukrainian forces, but it remains to be seen how the two countries’ militaries will mesh at the tactical level, especially given the language barriers.
About 10,000 North Korean troops have arrived in Russia so far, of which about 8,000 have deployed to the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces have captured some Russian territory, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken told reporters on Thursday.
“We’ve not yet seen these troops deploy into combat against Ukrainian forces, but we would expect that to happen in the coming days,” Blinken said at a meeting of top U.S. and South Korean foreign and defense officials. “Russia has been training DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea] soldiers on artillery; UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles]; basic infantry operations, including trench clearing, indicating that they fully intend to use these forces in frontline operations.”
Although North Korean and Russian troops could be fighting together, building a truly joint force requires years of effort, retired U.S. commanders told Task & Purpose.
NATO, for example, spent decades integrating troops from its 32 member nations so they could truly work together on the battlefield, said retired Navy Adm. James Stavridis, who served as the Supreme Allied Commander at NATO from 2009 to 2013.
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Developing such a level of cooperation among so many different militaries has required constant exercises and training, dedicating English as the single language for operations, and developing procurement systems to make sure that each nation’s troops can communicate with each other and all their equipment works together, Stavridis told Task & Purpose.
“To simply throw 10,000 North Koreans on the battlefield will demonstrate how challenging it is to achieve the kind of operational proficiency that NATO has,” Stavridis said. “I don’t think the North Koreans, therefore, are going to make a significant range difference in the fight. Most of them will be thinking about how they can survive in what will appear to them to be a very bewildering war. They will be, quite literally, strangers in a strange land.”
Adjacent units vs. shoulder-to-shoulder
While Russia and North Korea have a history of military cooperation dating back to the Korean War, it’s nowhere close to what the alliance between the United States and South Korea looks like, said retired Army Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, who led U.S. Forces Korea from 2016 to 2018
“I suspect that Russia and North Korea are going to struggle on coordination,” Brooks told Task & Purpose. “They’ll find some ways to work through it. They may have some liaison officers, for example, who have studied in Russia. But if it’s side by side, it will be two adjacent units side-by-side as opposed to shoulder-to-shoulder fighting in the assault.”
North Korea and Russia do not have any of the commonalities that underpin U.S. alliances, Brooks said. The two do not have a history of training together, they have not designated a single language for operations, and they do not even share a similar ideology.
“In terms of generational connectivity, rehearsal, common doctrine, common language, it’s not going to be there,” Brooks said. “But they do have common calibers of weapons, equipment, and so, they’ll find that to be interoperable, but that’s about it.”
By contrast, the alliance between the United States and South Korea shows what a true military coalition looks like, Brooks said. The 2nd Infantry Division is a combined American and South Korean unit. Every U.S. Army combat unit on the peninsula has also included South Korean soldiers since 1950.
“There’s an overlap at integration that happens at the top,” Brooks said. “That’s at the human level. Beyond that, there’s also significant doctrinal overlap. We train together. We train with each other’s weapons. We train with each other’s tactics. That creates a very different circumstance than what North Korea is going to experience.”
Working with allies vs. working with ‘allies’
Each spring and fall, U.S. and South Korean troops conduct large-scale military exercises to make sure they are prepared to defend against any threat, according to a statement from Eighth Army, which oversees all U.S. Army units deployed to the Korean peninsula.
“For decades, U.S. and Republic of Korea (ROK) troops have honed their skills and strengthened their partnership to operate seamlessly as one warfighting force, each complementing the other’s strengths,” the statement says. “There is no other U.S. Army duty station in the world that works and trains with allies as closely as we do here in South Korea.”
A critical element of the partnership between U.S. and South Korean forces is the Combined Forces Command, or CFC, a unified command where leaders from both militaries work together.
“CFC embodies the trust and integration between our nations, enabling us to coordinate and deploy our forces as a unified team,” the statement continues. “Through its oversight, CFC ensures that U.S. and ROK troops are aligned in planning, preparation, and readiness to meet any challenge.”
Beyond South Korea, the U.S. military has a long experience of working with allies and other partners, said Brooks, who trained with a total of 88 foreign militaries during his nearly 40-year Army career. His first experience training with an ally occurred when he was a lieutenant during an 82nd Airborne Division deployment to Germany
“At some point in time, we were side by side with some German infantry battalions,” Brooks said. “We did some parachute drops. They jumped on our parachutes and our equipment. We then jumped with their parachutes, their jump masters and their equipment. And we exchanged jump wings. In the U.S. military, that experience will be continuously updated at every rank and every assignment as it was for me.”
Effective allies meet the same standards
A key component of NATO’s success in integrating different militaries at the tactical level has been developing a series of standards that all 32 members must meet, said retired Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, who served as head of U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO Allied Command Operations from 2013 to 2016.
“This, in turn, drives commonality and compatibility of equipment, because if you’re going to work alongside another nation but your radios don’t talk on NATO-standard frequencies, then you’re not going to be a part of what NATO does,’ Breedlove told Task & Purpose. “Everything we do in NATO drives everyone to the same set of operating standards and operating compatibility when it comes to kit.”
These standards are emphasized during NATO exercises, such as Trident Juncture, in which member nations are unable to participate unless they can operate within the alliance’s framework, he said.
“It’s all latched together in how we do day-to-day business to prepare us so that when we’re on the battlefield, everything works,” Breedlove said.
The U.S. military has also spent decades combining the separate military branches into a joint force, he said. American officers must complete joint assignments to be considered for promotion to senior leadership positions.
“This business of jointness and this business of working in a coalition or an alliance is how Western officers are birthed and raised,” Breedlove said. “I would tell you that in the autocratic nations of the world, the jointness is not so apparent and the ability to work in coalition is not so apparent.”
Don’t underestimate the North Koreans
North Korea’s deployment of troops to Russia is not unprecedented. North Korea has sent its troops on several overseas combat deployments over the years, said Bruce E. Bechtol Jr., a political science professor at Angelo State University in Texas.
North Korean pilots flew combat missions during the 1973 Yom Kippur War; up to 3,000 North Korean troops participated in the Angolan Civil War in the 1970s and 1980s; North Korean crews operated multiple rocket launchers for the Syrian army in Lebanon in 1982; North Koreans operated Ethiopian tanks during the Ethiopian-Eritrean war from 1998 to 2000; and North Korea reportedly deployed two battalions to fight in the Syrian civil war, Bechtol told Task & Purpose.
It would be wrong to play down the capabilities that the North Korean troops will bring to the battlefield in Ukraine, said retired Army Gen. Robert B. Abrams, who led U.S. forces in Korea from 2018 to 2021.
“As a rule of thumb, I never underestimate an enemy, and I think in this case there is reason to not underestimate the North Korean troops,” Abrams told Task & Purpose. “Without the benefit of classified intelligence, I’m still confident in stating Kim Jong Un likely sent some of his best troops. North Koreans are conditioned for cold and harsh conditions. This is a reputational event for North Korea, and they don’t want to be embarrassed on the world stage by having their troops fail miserably.”
It is not yet clear how the two sides will overcome interoperability issues, such as the language barrier, Abrams said. The Russians could try to use interpreters and issue the North Koreans Russian radios.
Still, Abrams said he did not expect the North Korean troops to change the tactical situation on the ground in any significant way given how lethal the battlefield is. He noted that the Russians are suffering about 10,000 casualties every 8-to-10 days.
“I think there will be a strategic impact — principally by raising the profile of North Korea on the international stage and by whatever technology Russia has promised to give North Korea in return for deploying those North Korean troops,” Abrams said. “This has the potential to raise tensions even higher in northeast Asia.”
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