Army Brig. Gen. Brandon Anderson of the 2nd Infantry Division welcomes 3rd Cavalry Regiment soldiers to Osan Air Base, South Korea, Jan. 23, 2024. (Cayden Hall/U.S. Army)
SUWON, South Korea — U.S. Army Strykers were unloaded from a transport ship in South Korea on Tuesday, marking the start of a nine-month tour for troops from the 3rd Cavalry Regiment out of Fort Cavazos, Texas.
Photos from an Army news release Wednesday showed 3rd Cavalry Strykers being unloaded at an undisclosed port the previous day and its soldiers debarking an aircraft from Osan Air Base on Jan. 23.
The 2nd Infantry Division did not respond to a phone call and email seeking further information Thursday.
Third Cavalry, part of III Armored Corps, operates at a distance as a reconnaissance element or in close combat as a Stryker Brigade Combat Team, according to its website.
The organization replaces the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash., and becomes the 13th rotational brigade since the Korea Rotational Force program began in 2015.
Soldiers guide a Stryker vehicle to a staging area after being unloaded from a transport ship in South Korea, Jan. 30, 2024. (Cayden Hall/U.S. Army)
The rotational force supports 2nd ID, headquartered at Camp Humphreys roughly 40 miles south of Seoul. Around 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea, most of them at Humphreys.
The Army began transitioning its rotational force from armored brigade combat teams to Stryker teams in 2022. The shift was made to “maintain capabilities on the Korean Peninsula to respond to any acts of aggression,” the Army said at the time.
The eight-wheeled Strykers are a significant improvement in South Korea’s mountainous terrain over the vehicles in an armored brigade combat team, such as the M1A2 Abrams tank, soldiers from the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team told Stars and Stripes during a live-fire exercise Jan. 10, 2022.
The 2nd ID commander, Maj. Gen. William Taylor, said he was “excited to welcome [3rd Cavalry Regiment] in their very first deployment to Korea.”
“The 3rd Cavalry Regiment is a historically battle-hardened organization and I look forward to seeing them train alongside our [2nd Infantry Division] soldiers and [South Korean] allies,” Taylor said in the release.
The regiment deployed to Iraq in 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2010, and to Afghanistan in 2014, according to its website.
