Battle simulator is focal point
of Ulchi Focus Lens exercise
By Jan Wesner Childs,
Seoul bureau
YONGSAN GARRISON — It sure doesn’t look like war.
Inside the Korea Battle Simulation Center here are some 400 soldiers,
Marines, airmen and sailors toiling away at maps, computer screens and video terminals.
They are at ground zero of Ulchi Focus Lens, the biggest annual U.S.
military exercise in South Korea. The exercise — involving about 10,000 troops here
and at other bases around the Pacific and in the United States — takes place on
computers.
Participants are called “gamers” and “players,”
and there are scriptwriters, controllers and observers who make the action happen and
evaluate it afterward.
The center at Yongsan Garrison operates the friendly forces.
Opposition forces are run from a smaller center at Camp Casey, north of Seoul.
“With each time the exercise is run there are technological
improvements,” Capt. John Neal, a spokesman for the battle center, said Monday during
a brief tour for the media.
In recent years the system was improved so that air, ground and sea
elements can interact.
Neal wouldn’t say specifically what scenarios are acted out
during Ulchi Focus Lens, which is geared at training senior staff and commanders.
For example, players at Osan Air Base might receive intelligence that
tells them enemy aircraft have been spotted flying toward the base. They then have to
determine whether the enemy is going to attack, and decide how to respond.
“In order to help them out, we have to give them indicators or
warnings of what might happen,” said 1st Lt. Jose Durbin, whose job is to check the
exercise scripts.
Neal said the Korea center, opened in 1991, is the largest and most
advanced of its kind in the U.S. Army.
The center runs dozens of smaller exercises for units in Korea
throughout the year. It’s normally staffed with about 200 people.
Neal said the center makes training easier. Without it, exercises
such as Ulchi Focus Lens would require the deployment of 20,000 or more troops into the
field, plus tanks, aircraft, ships and other equipment.
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