US Army Preparing for ‘Battle for Seoul’ With South Korea Military Shake-Up
SputnikNews.com
05.05.2017
The relocation of US army forces further from the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) might seem counter-intuitive given Washington’s recent saber-rattling in the Korean Peninsula, but the move is sound from a military-tactical point of view, analyst Dmitry Verkhoturov told Sputnik.
On April 25, the Eighth U.S. Army started the process of relocating forces from garrisons in the northern cities of Seoul, Uijeongbu and Dongducheon further from the shared border with North Korea.
The US army will be based further south in the city of Pyeongtaek, where its new base, Camp Humphreys, is located.
The relocation, which is intended to consolidate the US bases that are scattered around South Korea, has been in the works since 2003.
However, the decision to finally get the move underway at this point, as the US ratchets up tensions on the Korean Peninsula, is a tactical one. It gives the US time to regroup its forces in the event of an attack by North Korean ground forces, analyst Dmitry Verkhoturov told Sputnik.
“Firstly, it should be noted that the US retreat is tactically expedient. Two American brigades north of Seoul [in Uijeongbu and Dongducheon] are clearly not enough to contain a possible North Korean offensive, and they could be easily destroyed by a sudden burst of long-range artillery.”
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