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Gates backs 3-year tours to Korea

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said it’s time to stop the one-year, unaccompanied tours that forces currently serve in Korea.

“As a matter of principle, I think it’s past time” to extend the tours to three years and allow troops to bring their families with them, Gates told reporters traveling with him on the plane to Seoul. “It communicates that ... our view of the reality here is that the Republic of Korea is literally safe enough for our families to be present.”

But Gates may be talking only about the Army. Back in March, when the idea was first floated to extend soldier’s tours in South Korea, the Air Force said it could not follow suit because it did not have the infrastructure to support three-year tours for airmen.

Though the number of accompanied tours at Osan Air Base will increase slightly during the next three years – from 5 percent to 10 percent – the Air Force is not moving toward “normalized” tours on the Korean peninsula, Capt. John Ross, a spokesman for the 51st Fighter Wing at Osan, told Air Force Times in March.

And Kunsan Air Base will remain at 100 percent one-year, unaccompanied tours, Ross said in an e-mail.

Gates said Tuesday that Washington’s security commitment to South Korea will remain unchanged even after the Asian country takes back full operational control of its military by 2012. The planned transition will not undermine the closeness of the alliance, in which the U.S. has “an unshakable commitment” to South Korea, Gates said in a speech at a change-of-command ceremony in Seoul.

The U.S. stations about 28,500 troops in South Korea to deter aggression from North Korea.

Gates was visiting South Korea on the final leg of an Asian trip that included stops in Guam, Singapore and Thailand.

Meanwhile, Army Gen. Walter L. Sharp, who was promoted to four-star general Monday, took over as the new commander of U.S. forces in South Korea, replacing Gen. B.B. Bell. Sharp, who previously served in the Pentagon, will also head the U.N. command and the combined U.S.-South Korean forces command.

“We must be prepared to fight and win,” Sharp said. “We’re ready to respond quickly and decisively against any attempt to threaten the security of the Republic of Korea.”