Korea — Combat-Oriented Force “Fighting as Much as be Trained”

A tank bat­tal­ion under the direc­tion of the 1st Marine Divi­sion made every pos­si­ble effort to exe­cute a win­ter com­bat readi­ness exer­cise con­sist­ing of inten­sive field tac­ti­cal maneu­vers and com­bat fir­ing drills. Con­duct­ed in an oper­a­tion range dur­ing Feb. 14–18, this exer­cise, com­posed of the whole per­son­nel and equip­ment of the tank bat­tal­ion, was designed to boost its com­bat abil­i­ty.

An armored K‑1 tank of the 1st Marine Divi­sion fires a shot, lay­ing down a smoke screen. The tank bat­tal­ion under the marine divi­sion has con­duct­ed field tac­ti­cal maneu­vers and com­bat fir­ing exer­cis­es since Feb. 14. Pro­vid­ed by the unit Source: MND, Repub­lic of Korea

The bat­tal­ion first set up the mis­sions and select­ed the loca­tion for this exer­cise, and then devot­ed itself to prac­tic­ing the pro­ce­dure for change to wartime, strength­en­ing many small-unit tac­ti­cal sit­u­a­tion­al train­ing capa­bil­i­ty, and enhanc­ing marks­man­ship. In addi­tion, the unit tried to pre­serve com­bat capa­bil­i­ties in unpre­dictable sit­u­a­tions and improve its prompt reac­tion abil­i­ty under var­i­ous sit­u­a­tions assigned to strike a blow to the enemy. 

In par­tic­u­lar, in a marks­man­ship prac­tice drill car­ried out in the mech­a­nized shoot­ing range of the Divi­sion, they put all of their efforts in con­sol­i­dat­ing enough shoot­ing skills to “hit the ene­my with the first shot.” 

The exer­cise was orga­nized to enhance skill of shoot­ing from the tank appro­pri­ate­ly accord­ing to a fixed, mov­ing, or unex­pect­ed tar­get, tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion fire sup­port and the enemy’s tac­tics from the break­through of the enemy’s trench­es to the seizure of the target. 

“All the Bat­tal­ion mem­bers strive to boost their mis­sion capa­bil­i­ty so that they can dis­play 100 per­cent of com­bat strength under any com­bat con­di­tion,” said Lt. Col. Kim Yeong-han, “through such improved capa­bil­i­ties, they will be able to achieve the intend­ed results of ele­vat­ing all-weath­er maneu­ver­abil­i­ty and marks­man­ship ability. 

On the oth­er hand, the 1st Marine Divi­sion set up a train­ing objec­tive for this year which is to enhance com­bat oper­a­tions capa­bil­i­ties of all of the bat­tal­ions and equiv­a­lent units, and also planned to revi­tal­ize field train­ing pro­grams such as a 100-km tac­ti­cal march, moun­tain field exer­cise, air­borne train­ing, and cold snow­ing weath­er train­ing. The Divi­sion made an addi­tion­al plan to estab­lish a real com­bat-ori­ent­ed troop, whose mis­sion is to per­fect­ly ful­fill assigned duties and roles, based on mis­sion com­mand of bat­tal­ion-lev­elled units. 

Source:
Min­istry of Nation­al Defense[MND], Repub­lic of Korea