South Korea, US stage allies’ largest-ever joint training in combat supply

POHANG, South Korea — South Korea’s Combined Forces Command conducted its largest-ever combined sustainment training this week, bringing together over 4,400 South Korean and U.S. troops to test the allies’ ability to keep their forces supplied during combat. 

The biennial field exercise was held Monday through Thursday in Pohang, roughly 210 miles southeast of Seoul, and in Hongcheon, about 190 miles to the north. It focused on sustaining combat operations in contested environments by integrating allied logistics across land, sea and air. 

The exercise — called Combined Joint Sustainment Training — jointly verified the allies’ interoperability under limited conditions by moving supplies from the coast to combat forces using aircraft and ground vehicles, Maj. Gen. Park Jin-won, the Combined Forces Command’s assistant chief of staff for logistics, said during a press briefing Wednesday in Pohang.

For the first time since 2017, this year’s exercise included combined joint logistics over-the-shore training, which tests the allies’ ability to unload cargo without a functioning seaport.

It also marked the first test of the South Korean navy’s joint logistics over-the-shore system, introduced in 2025, to verify interoperability with U.S. forces, according to a Combined Forces Command news release on Wednesday. 

“Interoperability” is an often-used military term describing the ability of a country’s armed forces to use another nation’s training methods and equipment.

This year’s training involved some 2,400 South Korean and 2,000 U.S. troops and more than 600 pieces of military equipment, making it the command’s largest combined joint sustainment exercise to date, according to the news release.

The stern ramp of a logistics support vessel lowers before docking in Pohang, South Korea on July 10, 2026. (Alexcia Rupert/U.S. Army)

U.S. Marines load into a medium tactical replacement vehicle following its beach offload during the Combined Joint Logistics exercise at Pohang, South Korea, July 9, 2026. (Matthew Borruso/U.S. Marine Corps)

The exercise employed a range of logistics equipment, including naval vessels, modular floating piers, amphibious cargo vehicles and Humvees. 

Troops used floating piers at Dogu Beach in Pohang to offload equipment and supplies directly from ships onto the shore before transferring them to a training area in Hongcheon.

“There is no substitute for readiness,” Maj. Gen. Frederick Crist, deputy director for logistics for the Combined Forces Command, said during the briefing Wednesday. 

This type of logistics operation “gives the combined alliance options,” Crist said. “It ensures that we are not dependent upon one seaport, not dependent on one single line of communication and that we have multiple ways of sustaining the combined alliance.” 

Asked why the over-the-shore training had not been held in nine years, Col. Carey Way, commanding officer of the 7th Transportation Brigade, said the operation’s complexity requires years of planning and capability development. 

It also requires strategic sealift to transport personnel, equipment and supplies from around the world to South Korea, Way said.

This week’s exercise also included simulated mass-casualty scenarios using South Korean and U.S. medical assets to evacuate and treat wounded troops.