The U.S. and South Korean militaries form one of the most intimate and sophisticated alliances in the world but lack command-and-control capabilities that will enable them to seamlessly operate in the event of war, according to a former Pentagon official.

Tommy Ross, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for security cooperation and now a senior associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ International Security Program, said the two militaries do not have a “satisfactory answer” to command-and-control and logistics challenges of operating alongside the Republic of Korea’s (ROK) armed forces.

F-35Bs belonging to the U.S. Marine Corps fly in formation alongside South Korean and Japanese aircraft during a show-of-force mission over the Korean Peninsula on Aug. 28. (Photo by Republic of Korea Air Force)
F-35Bs belonging to the U.S. Marine Corps fly in formation alongside South Korean and Japanese aircraft during a show-of-force mission over the Korean Peninsula on Aug. 28. (Photo by Republic of Korea Air Force)

Solving those issues should be a focal point for cooperative research-and-development efforts in the future, Ross said Dec. 11 at a CSIS event focused on security cooperation between the two nations.

“It doesn’t attract as much attention as the sexy, long-term artificial intelligence and robotics kinds of discussions,” he said. “But it is one that will have as much or more impact on how we will fight together if we are ever in that situation.”

He suggested establishing a “feedback loop” to identify operational concerns through cooperative military exercises and then aim R&D funding toward those areas of concern. The solutions developed would then be tested in future exercises.

“In my mind, the most important place to focus on develop that feedback loop is thinking about how we conduct bilateral and multilateral exercises,” he said. “Those kinds of exercises need to be able to really focus on testing and assessing operational concepts and using those exercises to identify where there are weaknesses and transferring those weaknesses into further research and development.”

Command-and-control and logistics are weaknesses that already have been identified as areas where the alliance “falls short,” he added. Those systems and skills are often ignored in large-scale exercises in favor of weapon system development. It is also taken for granted that the longtime allies are able to communicate and operate jointly, he said.

“We just assume that our troops will be able to be in communication with each other and able to jointly deploy and resupply each other without putting those systems to the test,” he said. “It turns out that in a lot of cases those assumptions are just not true for policy and planning reasons and for technological reasons.”

Aside from a substantial U.S. troop presence on the Korean Peninsula that has been in place since the end of the Korean War, the two militaries have similar equipment. Korea operates more than 1,000 U.S.-made military aircraft and has plans to buy 40 Lockheed Martin [LMT] F-35 Joint Strike Fighters.

South Korea also has also grown its domestic defense manufacturing base to include aircraft, combat vehicles and other high-tech weapons and systems.

Command and control in particular is an area in which the U.S. military has invested significant time and money in an effort to establish coalition-friendly C2 networks, without a “satisfactory answer,” Ross said.