Army to Clarify Combat Areas to Minimize Confusion Over Weapons and Personnel Requirements
The Army plans to define operational boundaries for brigade-level and smaller combat units to keep pace with force-structure changes driven by a shrinking manpower pool and the adoption of manned-unmanned combined systems. Making clearer the criteria for setting operational areas—previously left to commanders’ discretion—should help standardize future weapons procurement and unit organization. According to military authorities, Army Headquarters on the 6th commissioned a research study titled "Tactical Echelon Operational Area: Front and Depth Sizes." The terms front (전선) and depth (縱深) refer to an operation’s geographic extent; commanders set those boundaries based on the assigned unit’s surveillance and strike capabilities when combat occurs in a given area.
Until now, doctrine did not spell out precise operational limits for brigade-level and smaller combat units such as infantry brigades. The rationale was to preserve commanders’ discretion and enable multi-domain operations that aren’t constrained by rigid area sizes. But declining manpower, accelerating structural changes and a push to strengthen manned-unmanned integration have created a need to calculate personnel and equipment requirements for each operational zone more precisely.
The research plan says establishing combat-unit operational ranges will move forward after the completion of defense reform in 2028 or in line with the force-structure directions outlined under Defense Innovation 4.0. That initiative aims to build a technology-driven, stronger force—leveraging AI and other sciences to pair lighter organizations with advanced, asymmetric weapons and gain qualitative superiority.
When the study concludes, the Army expects to specify operational ranges down to squad level for conventional infantry brigades and to battalion level for mechanized infantry formations for both offensive and defensive missions. Officials say that would also clarify the basic building block for the Army’s envisioned "modular forces."
A joint December 2024 report by Army Headquarters and the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, "An Army Force Structure Fit for the Future Security Environment on the Korean Peninsula," described that future as modular forces that reconfigure by mission rather than follow the current layered structure from squad to corps.
Those modular formations would be organized by function—autonomous combat-robot units, manned-unmanned combined combat units, manned combat units, and swarm-drone units. Army Vision 2030 and Army Vision 2050 Revision 1 indicate these formations could be organized at brigade size or smaller. In practice, the Defense Ministry is already pursuing an AI-based shift to manned-unmanned combined systems under Defense Innovation 4.0, designating a unit of the Army’s 25th Division—the 70th Brigade—as an "Army Tiger" brigade for combat experimentation.
The Army said that clearer operational-area definitions will reduce confusion among the Defense Ministry, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA) when planning weapons-system requirements. It added that the study will comprehensively reflect equipment already approved and in the pipeline as well as systems demanded by future operational environments.
