The Army has announced that the 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, with an estimated 3,700 soldiers will deploy to South Korea this summer.
“The 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team will deploy this summer to support the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command,” said Maj. Gen. Sean C. Bernabe, commander of 1st Armored Division. “1st Armored Division maintains ready forces capable of deploying worldwide. The Bulldog Brigade will provide a powerful capability to the combatant commander.”
The Fort Bliss, Texas-based “Bulldog Brigade” deployment is part of a regular rotation of forces to the Korean peninsula to support the U.S. ally.
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“The upcoming rotation will further maintain the ironclad alliance between the United States and the Republic of Korea,” said Col. Jabari Miller, commander of the 3rd ABCT. “The Bulldog Brigade is led by an exceptional team and will represent our division and our families in support of our nation’s allies in the Pacific.”
In mid-October, the brigade left its Fort Bliss home for the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California. The brigade took additional precautions and conducted testing ahead of their departure to limit COVID-19 cases.
Though commanders would not provide exact numbers of COVID-19 cases detected while at NTC, a soldier told Army Times that an estimated 20, mostly asymptomatic, cases had arisen.
Fort Irwin spokesman Jason Miller told Army Times in October that number was consistent with what the training center had seen in recent months among rotating units.
The 3rd ABCT sent an estimated 4,000 soldiers to Kuwait in summer 2016 after a stint that April at NTC.
The year before the brigade spent nine months as a regionally aligned force with U.S. Africa Command, taking part in large-scale training exercises in Africa and smaller training missions with African partner nations, Army Times reported in 2015.
Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.
