South Korea and the U.S. conducted a joint military exercise in which the South Korean Army assigned U.S. troops to combat teams under its command for the first time.

According to the Army, the training exercise, which took place from last Friday through Monday, involved two brigades engaging in simulated combat against each other at the Army's Korea Combat Training Center(KCTC) in Inje County, Gangwon Province.

The drills involved four-thousand-300 South Korean troops from the 51st Brigade of the 12th Division and the 81st Brigade of the 28th Division, as well as 300 U.S. troops from the First Armored Brigade.

The allies mobilized some 100 combat vehicles, ranging from tanks, armored vehicles and self-propelled howitzers to attack helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles.

The lethal components on various U.S. weapons and other combat equipment were interchanged with South Korea's “multiple integrated laser engagement system” to enable scientific analyses of incoming training data.