The U.S. government has confirmed that North Korea has sent about 3,000 of its soldiers to Russia since October, and you can bet they are going to do more than just send poop balloons into Ukraine.
“We do not yet know whether these soldiers will enter into combat alongside the Russian military, but this is certainly a highly concerning probability,” National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby told reporters on Wednesday.
Ukraine’s spy chief Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov has told The War Zone that he expects about 12,000 North Korean infantry troops will be ready for combat operations starting on Nov. 1, with the first 2,600 deployed to the Kursk salient in Russia.
Although the Russian military’s initial performance in Ukraine can best be described as “FUBAR,” it has proven that it can learn from its setbacks. The Russians have adapted to battlefield conditions and learned how to jam precision-guided weapons provided to Ukraine by the West.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that the bloody conflict in Ukraine has become the testing ground for new technologies and techniques that might be used in a future large-scale conflict. Drones, unmanned boats, long-range fires, and electronic warfare could make a war between the United States and a near-peer adversary such as Russia or China much even deadlier than the Global War on Terrorism. The blossoming alliance between Russia and North Korea raises the possibility that North Korean troops could learn lessons in battle that they could later use against the United States and South Korea.
Learning how to breach defensive lines
Just as the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s served as “the laboratory for World War II,” allowing the fascists and communists to test new equipment and tactics, the Ukraine war could provide North Korea the opportunity to learn how to effectively use drones, artillery, and armor on a modern battlefield, said Bruce Bennett, an adjunct senior international/defense researcher with the RAND Corporation.
It’s likely that North Korean troops are also interested in learning how Russian missile attacks on Ukraine’s power grid have affected civilian morale in the hopes of replicating such tactics against South Korea, Bennett told Task & Purpose.
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One lesson that the North Koreans likely hope to learn from their combat experience in Ukraine is how to punch holes through front lines and achieve strategic breakthroughs, Bennett said.
“If they succeed, that’s a really interesting thing to take back,” Bennett said. “In this modern battlefield, how do you create a hole and how do you keep it open over time? With drones and so forth, the potential for sealing a hole is pretty good. The question that they’ve got to ask is: How do you create a breakthrough that really is strategic as opposed to tactical?”
North Korean soldiers stand atop armored vehicles during a military parade on Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang on Sept. 9, 2018.
AFP photo via Getty Images by Ed Jones.
However, whether the North Korean troops who fight in Ukraine learn how to smash through modern defenses depends a lot on how the Russians send them into battle, Bennett said.
“The Russians have been using their own troops as cannon fodder, kind of like the Chinese in the Korean War, just trying to achieve breakthroughs,” Bennett said. “I don’t think the Russians are going to respect the North Koreans. I think they’re going to treat them pretty badly. I think they’re going to tend to use them as cannon fodder rather than as what they’re trained to do.”
Given just how lethal the war in Ukraine has been, the North Korean forces could learn about casualty management from the Russians, or they could learn that the Russian military is so bad at treating its own troops that “once you’re seriously wounded, you’re dead,” Bennett said.
Heavy casualties expected
So far, U.S. officials have declined to comment about what North Korea’s deployment of troops to Russia could mean for American troops in South Korea.
Before we get too worked up about what the North Koreans might learn in Ukraine, it’s worth pointing out that Russia’s biggest advantage over its adversaries is its willingness to accept losses that most governments would not. Since invading Ukraine in February 2022, the Russian military has suffered at least 600,000 killed and wounded, a recent Congressional Research Service report says.
Thus, the main lesson that the Russians may impart on their North Korean comrades is how to get mowed down by machine guns, artillery, rockets, and drones.
Retired Army Col. David Maxwell, a former Green Beret, said he doubts the North Koreans will learn “magic tricks” to counter Western technology and the breaching tactics they will likely employ date back to World War I trench warfare.
It is also unclear whether the Russians plan to deploy the North Korean troops in distinct units or as individual replacements for Russian casualties, said Maxwell, vice president at the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy and a senior fellow at the Global Peace Foundation.
“Of course, those two methods there will also impact on what kind of lessons that they learn,” Maxwell said. “Because if they’re used as individual replacements, it’s likely they’re going to be cannon fodder and many will not survive. If they’re employed as operational units, in total, they will come through — if they survive — with lessons learned in command and control, in fire and maneuver, in employing, perhaps, combined arms.”
The better-trained army wins
To effectively make use of their battlefield lessons, North Korea’s military would have to invest time, money, and resources into training rank-and-file troops, Maxwell said. Because training is perishable, North Korea’s military would need to continue to expend resources to sustain such large-scale efforts over time.
“And so, even if they conduct training on the next winter training cycle, if they do not follow that up with sustained training throughout the year, they will never be at a level that will benefit from the relatively small number of troops that have combat experience,” Maxwell said.
Whatever lessons the North Koreans learn from fighting in Ukraine would give them an advantage on the first day of a war against South Korea, Maxwell said. But both sides would be equal starting on the second day of the war because the South Korean military is a better-trained fighting force.
Maxwell noted that relatively few U.S. troops had served in combat when the first Gulf War began in 1991, but their training was so good that they were able to defeat the Iraqi army, which had been at war against Iran for years.
“People make a big deal out of this because they’ll have combat experience,” Maxwell said. “But you have to remember that it is the better-trained army that will win, not the one who has some combat experience.”
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