Army Preps for Underground & Urban Warfare on Korean Peninsula

By Kris Osborn

To potentially counter or destroy a North Korean ground invasion – by better enabling soldiers to operate underground in tunnel complexes and in dense urban environments.

While Army innovators and entities such as the service’s Rapid Equipping Force consistently look to address fast-emerging threat scenarios, the prospect of major ground war on the Korean peninsula has, quite naturally, taken on increased urgency in recent months, service weapons developers told Scout Warrior.

“We have been looking at Korean peninsula ops,” Col. John Lanier Ward, REF Director, told Scout Warrior in an interview.

As might be expected, this threat scenario has a particular impact upon Army units such as the REF – who exist to identify pressing soldier combat needs, quickly create requirements and work closely with industry and Army program developers to identify quick-turn, often interim technologies able to have an immediate impact.

Preparing for tunnel and urban combat against North Korea is, without question, not something to be seen as entirely new or recent. However, while specifics of military options for North Korea are naturally not being discussed by Pentagon war planners, many observers, analysts and experts are talking about various threat contingencies, combat scenarios and military strike possibilities.

“We really focus on the soldier on the ground. Any soldier can come to our website and say ‘I have a problem that I do not have a material solution to,’” Ward said.

There are clearly many facets, nuances and contingencies when it comes to the possibility of land war on the Korean peninsula, not the least of which are regularly echoed concerns that North Korean conventional missiles and artillery would pose a substantial threat to populated areas south of the DMZ. Any kind of ground incursion, with or without the anticipated barrage of conventional missiles, would bring similar threats.