Commander to Seek Expansion of Afghan Forces, Officials Say - Greg Jaffe and Karen DeYoung, Washington Post.
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the newly arrived top commander in Afghanistan, has concluded that Afghan security forces will have to expand far beyond currently planned levels if President Obama's strategy for winning the war there is to succeed, according to senior military officials.
Such an expansion would require additional billions beyond the $7.5 billion the administration has budgeted annually to build up the Afghan army and police over the next several years, and the likely deployment of thousands more US troops as trainers and advisers, officials said.
McChrystal has not yet completed a 60-day assessment of the war due next month. But Defense Department officials in Washington and in Kabul said he has informed Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, including in a status update this week, of the need to increase the Afghan force substantially. Officials spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss findings that have not yet been made public.
The Afghan army is already scheduled to grow from 85,000 to 134,000, an expansion originally expected to take five years but now fast-tracked for completion by 2011. Several senior Pentagon officials indicated that an adequate size for the Afghan force might be twice the expanded number...
Much more at The Washington Post.
Comments
I'm not convinced there should even be PRTs, honestly. From what I saw, they were far too ponderous and out of touch to be effective in a dynamic COIN fight. Push PRT capabilities out to the FOBs so they can actually gain appreciation of the unique challenges of each area, and delegate authority so projects can be timely and closely supervised.
ADM Olsen's idea to have the PRTs be SOF is so good its obvious. But why wasn't it set up like that in the first place? Anyone know? And now that the AF and Navy are beginning to see these as good opportunities, there might be a fight. I suspect the Air Force will turn them back over however. We'll see.