Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has signed an order sending 850 more American military personnel to Afghanistan as a stopgap measure to fill vacancies in the high-priority effort to train local security forces, Pentagon officials said Monday.

Officials said the decision reflects Mr. Gates's assessment that while European allies have made substantial commitments to support the war effort, some nations have asked for and deserve more time to fulfill their pledges to supply trainers for the Afghan Army and police.

The additional American personnel - about 150 Marines and an Army battalion - have a specific and limited deployment schedule. They will serve for 90 to 120 days between now and September...

More at The New York Times.

The Way Out - New York Times editorial.

... Illiteracy, corruption and other problems are not unexpected in a country as poor and undeveloped as Afghanistan. But a disturbing Pentagon report to Congress last week acknowledged that one of the "most significant challenges" to fielding qualified Afghan security forces is a shortage of "institutional trainers."

The training effort - like everything else about Afghanistan - was shortchanged for years under President George W. Bush. It has received more attention and resources under President Obama. In November, the United States and NATO opened a new integrated training mission. Its leader, Lt. Gen. William Caldwell IV, who previously led leadership schools and training programs at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., was a West Point classmate of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top American and allied commander in Afghanistan.

General Caldwell has brought a new coherence and purpose to the mission by revamping the Afghan Army leadership program and standardizing police instruction, among other innovations. And he has managed to double his number of trainers from 1,300 when he started to roughly 2,700 today. But he - more to the point, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and General McChrystal - is having a very hard time getting the rest of NATO to deliver on commitments...

More at The New York Times.

By Jim Garamone

American Forces Press Service

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md., May 3, 2010 -- The Navy and Marine Corps are going to have to question some embedded thinking, such as whether the Navy needs 11 carrier battle groups or whether the Marines ever will launch another amphibious landing, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said here today.

Gates spoke at the Navy League's annual Sea-Air-Space Convention at the Gaylord National Convention Center.

The world is changing, and the sea services must be on the leading edges of those changes, Gates said to an auditorium full of Navy and Marine Corps officers and defense contractors that was just a bit smaller than an aircraft carrier's hangar deck.

Gates made a case for examining the bedrocks of naval strategy, noting that carrier battle groups have been the Navy's main fleet formation since 1942.

"Our current plan is to have eleven carrier strike groups through 2040," Gates said. But a look at the facts is warranted, he added. The United States now has 11 large, nuclear-powered carriers, and there is nothing comparable anywhere else in the world.

"The U.S. Navy has 10 large-deck amphibious ships that can operate as sea bases for helicopters and vertical-takeoff jets," he said. "No other navy has more than three, and all of those navies belong to allies or friends."

The U.S. Navy can carry twice as many aircraft at sea as the rest of the world combined, Gates said. Under the sea, he told the group, the United States has 57 nuclear-powered attack and cruise-missile submarines -- more than the rest of the world combined, and 79 Aegis-equipped surface ships that carry about 8,000 vertical-launch missile cells.

"In terms of total-missile firepower, the U.S. arguably outmatches the next 20 largest navies," Gates said. "All told, the displacement of the U.S. battle fleet -- a proxy for overall fleet capabilities -- exceeds, by one recent estimate, at least the next 13 navies combined, of which 11 are our allies or partners."

The United States must be able to project power overseas, Gates said. "But, consider the massive overmatch the U.S. already enjoys," he added. "Consider, too, the growing anti-ship capabilities of adversaries. Do we really need 11 carrier strike groups for another 30 years when no other country has more than one?"

The Marine Corps is now 202,000 strong. It is the largest force of its type in the world, and exceeds in size most nations' armies. Between the world wars, the Marine Corps developed amphibious warfare doctrine and used it to great effect against the Japanese during World War II. Whether that capability still is needed, however, is worthy of thought, the secretary said.

"We have to take a hard look at where it would be necessary or sensible to launch another major amphibious landing again -- especially as advances in anti-ship systems keep pushing the potential launch point further from shore," Gates said. "On a more basic level, in the 21st century, what kind of amphibious capability do we really need to deal with the most likely scenarios, and then how much?"

The sea services must be designed to meet new challenges, new technologies and new missions, Gates said.

Nations and terror groups are not going to challenge the conventional might of the United States, he noted. Rather, they are working on asymmetric ways to thwart the reach and striking power of the U.S. battle fleet.

"At the low end, Hezbollah, a non-state actor, used anti-ship missiles against the Israeli navy in 2006," Gates said. "And Iran is combining ballistic and cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles, mines, and swarming speedboats in order to challenge our naval power in that region."

A bit farther up the scale, the virtual monopoly the United States has had with precision-guided weapons is eroding, the secretary said, especially with long-range, accurate anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles that can potentially strike from over the horizon.

"This is a particular concern with aircraft carriers and other large, multi-billion-dollar blue-water surface combatants, where, for example, a Ford-class carrier plus its full complement of the latest aircraft would represent potentially $15 billion to $20 billion worth of hardware at risk," Gates said. "The U.S. will also face increasingly sophisticated underwater combat systems -- including numbers of stealthy subs -- all of which could end the operational sanctuary our Navy has enjoyed in the Western Pacific for the better part of six decades."

The sea services already are addressing many of the challenges of the 21st century, the secretary said. The Navy, for example, is building partnership capacity through the Africa Partnership Station in the Gulf of Guinea. Sailors are training with friends and allies to secure vital shipping lanes in Southeast Asia. Seabees and other sailors are digging wells and building schools in Djibouti. Naval officers lead the multinational efforts to counter the piracy around the Horn of Africa. Naval doctors, nurses and corpsmen that treated those injured in the Haitian earthquake and sailors also are helping with crises like the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Gates said.

"Then, there are the wars," he said. "With roughly 25 ships -- and more than 20,000 sailors -- in the [U.S. Central Command] area of operations, there is no doubt that this is a Navy at war."

Tens of thousands of sailors also have served on the ground alongside soldiers and Marines. The sailors serve on provincial reconstruction teams, as finance clerks, on riverine crews, as Seabees, as SEALs and as medical corpsmen. "These men and women are vital to the mission and helping to ease the strain on our ground forces -- and doing so without fail and without complaint," Gates said.

The secretary said the Marines have been "game-changers" in Iraq, and now in Afghanistan. "In March, I had a chance to meet with Marines at the tip of the spear in a town called Now Zad -- a place that had been, for nearly four years, a ghost town under the jackboot of the Taliban," Gates said. "Then came a battalion of Marines, who, after months of hard work and sacrifice, have slowly brought the town back to life -- creating a model for operations elsewhere."

The military needs more innovative strategies and joint approaches, the secretary said. He called the agreement by the Navy and Air Force to develop an Air-Sea Battle Concept encouraging. It has "the potential to do for America's military deterrent power at the beginning of the 21st century what Air-Land Battle did near the end of the 20th," he said.

But the military also must shift investments toward systems that provide the ability to see and strike deep along the full spectrum of conflict, Gates said.

"This means, among other things, extending the range at which U.S. naval forces can fight, refuel, and strike, with more resources devoted to long-range unmanned aircraft and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities," he explained.

It also means new sea-based missile defenses and a submarine force with expanded roles that is prepared to conduct more missions deep inside an enemy's battle network. "We will also have to increase submarine strike capability and look at smaller and unmanned underwater platforms," Gates said.

The secretary acknowledged talk that his push to rebalance the force to provide more resources to fight today's wars has gone too far.

"In reality," he said, "in this fiscal year, the Department of Defense requested nearly $190 billion for total procurement, research, and development -- an almost 90 percent increase over the last decade. At most, 10 percent of that $190 billion is dedicated exclusively to equipment optimized for counterinsurgency, security assistance, humanitarian operations or other so-called low-end capabilities.

"In these last two budget cycles," Gates continued, "I have directed a needed and noticeable shift -- but hardly a dramatic one, especially in light of the significant naval overmatch."

Resource discussions always foster debates about gaps in military capabilities, Gates said, and the solution usually offered is "either more of what we already have or modernized versions of pre-existing capabilities."

"This approach ignores the fact that we face diverse adversaries with finite resources that consequently force them to come at the U.S. in unconventional and innovative ways," he continued. "The more relevant gap we risk creating is one between the capabilities we are pursuing and those that are actually needed in the real world of tomorrow."

Gates said the sea services must remember that as the wars draw down, money will be required to reset the Army and Marine Corps -- the services that have borne the brunt of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"And there will continue to be long-term -- and inviolable -- costs associated with taking care of our troops and their families," he said. "In other words, I do not foresee any significant top-line increases in the shipbuilding budget beyond current assumptions. At the end of the day, we have to ask whether the nation can really afford a Navy that relies on $3 [billion] to $6 billion destroyers, $7 billion submarines, and $11 billion carriers."

Joshua's first post is The Battle for Kandahar.

The International Security Assistance Force - ISAF, as it's known in Afghanistan - hasn't been shy about its plans to "retake" Kandahar. But as with so many other operations in the country, there seems to be as much myth as there is fact about what the city is like, and what ISAF's plans are for occupying it. As the second-largest city in Afghanistan, rich with history both for Pashtun rule in the country and as the Taliban's birthplace, Kandahar holds tremendous symbolism. Here's what's important about Kandahar, and what the military is intending to do about it...

More at PBS.

German troops are fighting the first pitched battles witnessed by the Bundeswehr since 1945 in the face of a growing Taleban insurgency in the north of Afghanistan.

Security has deteriorated in areas such as Badghis province in the northwest, Kunduz, Baghlan and some parts of Takhar and Badakhshan provinces.

In April there was heavy fighting in Kunduz province during Operation Towheed, in which seven German soldiers were killed. Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, the German Defence Minister, gave a warning last week of "new and greater risks" that German forces must bear. Recent opinion polls have put German public opposition to the country's 5,000-strong Afghan deployment at 62 per cent.

A spokesman for the German forces in Kunduz told The Times this weekend: "It was intensive fighting in April. The situation is not stable and not secure. It has been deteriorating for more than a year." ...

More at The Times.

What is This Thing Called War? - The Economist.

Slowly and painfully Germany's leaders and voters are coming to terms with being at war in Afghanistan.

German troops have been fighting in Afghanistan for eight years. But Germans have been slow to accept this. "Stabilisation deployment" was how the politicians described Germany's role in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), to which it is the third-largest contributor of troops. This was meant to convey the impression that the soldiers were helping Afghans build schools and dig wells rather than killing or being killed. Thus did ministers seek to reconcile Germany's duties as an ally with its instinctive pacifism, born of the horrors of the second world war.

The euphemism now lies buried beneath the rubble of reality. On April 15th the Taliban killed four and wounded five German soldiers who were escorting two Afghan battalions south of Kunduz in northern Afghanistan, the main area of German operations. Three soldiers were killed on patrol two weeks earlier. In September a German commander called an airstrike near Kunduz that killed and wounded as many as 142 people, some of them civilians. This was the bloodiest action involving the German army since 1945. German war deaths now stand at 43...

More at The Economist.

The American news media has made great use in recent years of a practice called embedding, in which journalists travel with the U.S. military to cover wars...

But embedding comes at a price. We are observing these wars from just one perspective, not seeing them whole. When you see my byline from Kandahar or Kabul or Basra, you should not think that I am out among ordinary people, asking questions of all sides. I am usually inside an American military bubble. That vantage point has value, but it is hardly a full picture.

I fear that an embedded media is becoming the norm, and not just when it comes to war. The chroniclers of political and cultural debates increasingly move in a caravan with one side or another, as well. This nonmilitary embedding may have a different rationale, but there's a similar effect that comes with traveling under the canopy of a particular candidate, party or community. Journalists gain access to information and talkative sources, but also inherit the distortions and biases that come with being "on the bus" or "on the plane." ...

More at The Washington Post.

Reporters on the Battlefield: The Embedded Press System in Historical Context - Christopher Paul, James J. Kim , Rand.

Clear differences between the missions and goals of the press and those of the military, particularly centering around the issues of access and operational security, make historical tensions between the two unsurprising and complete avoidance of tension unlikely. However, significant overlaps, including core goals of professionalism and public service, make cooperation a reasonable possibility. This book traces the back-and-forth interactions between the press and the military over the past several decades. In Vietnam, the press enjoyed high levels of access to events, largely because of the relatively amicable relationship that had developed between the press and the military, particularly in World War II. However, this relationship experienced a significant shift during the Vietnam War-news coverage critical of both the war and the military engendered tensions. The legacy of these tensions significantly influenced military-press relations in later operations in Grenada, Panama, and the first Gulf War. Another notable shift occurred during the first Gulf War, however, establishing the basis for new kinds of press access, which ultimately led to the embedded press system used in the second Gulf War. The outcomes and goals for the press and the military are also explored in relation to each other and those for the public.

Read the entire monograph at Rand.

Topics include:

1) The Pentagon sends mixed messages into space,

2) Does defending a village mean undermining Karzai?

The Pentagon sends mixed messages into space

April 23 was a busy day for the Pentagon's space program. First was a launch from Florida of the experimental X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle, a smaller robotic version of the soon-to-be retired NASA Space Shuttle. The Air Force hopes to develop a reusable robotic spacecraft that can carry satellites and cargo into space, stay in orbit for many months, maneuver to different orbital planes, and land on a runway for reuse. Second that day was the launch from California of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle-2 (HTV-2). The HTV-2 is an experiment to test whether the Pentagon can develop an extremely fast maneuvering glider-bomb that could promptly strike fleeting targets anywhere on the planet. Engineers lost contact with the missile 9 minutes after launch.

The Obama administration will soon attempt to explain two contrasting messages regarding the military use of space. On the one hand, it will call for international cooperation on a variety of space issues. On the other hand, as shown by the April 23 launches, it is hedging its bets by expanding the Pentagon's space power.

In its forthcoming Space Posture Review (SPR), the Defense Department will describe how important space and its space programs are to military success. The SPR will very likely explain how dependent U.S. military operations are on the military's reconnaissance, communication, weather, and navigation satellites. The report will also discuss how these systems are increasingly vulnerable to disruption by U.S. adversaries.

In a preview of the SPR's likely content, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn recently discussed the need for international cooperation in space. Lynn called for "norms of behavior in space" that would include cooperation on space communication spectra, cooperation on navigation and missile warning, and protection of space assets from attack.

Having established the greatest range of space capabilities and with the most to lose from attacks on space assets, it is understandable that the United States government would now call for cooperation in space and the institution of a taboo on attacks on space assets.

In his speech, Lynn recognized that space has become a competitive military environment. Potential adversaries are likely to see a great advantage in offensive space capabilities that threaten the Pentagon's space assets.

As a hedge, the Obama administration has found itself supporting programs like those launched on April 23. In the future, the Air Force could use a spacecraft like the X-37B to rapidly replace military satellites destroyed by earlier enemy attacks. The X-37B could also have an offensive mission, to maneuver and linger near adversary satellites after a war has started, either to destroy them or to threaten them to deter escalation. The administration will hope that the HVT-2 eventually becomes an "Osama bomb," a weapon capable of rapidly destroying a fleeting target but without appearing on Russian or Chinese radars to be the start of a nuclear war.

The Obama team will attempt to sell a message of cooperation and harmony in space while simultaneously pursuing weapons programs that further expand the United States' dominant military space capabilities. No one should be surprised if America's adversaries hear the wrong message.

Does defending a village mean undermining Karzai?

An April 27 Washington Post article discussed a small victory for an Afghan village defending itself against Taliban intimidation. Two dozen Afghan men, trained by a small detachment of U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers, organized their own neighborhood watch and now patrol their village near Kandahar. Taliban fighters, who recently swaggered through the village and who seeded the village's dirt road with bombs, haven't been active there in months.

Although many top U.S. military officials in Afghanistan are eager to expand such local defense efforts, President Hamid Karzai has rejected any initiatives not under the authority of his Interior Ministry. Karl Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, supports Karzai's decision and has blocked U.S. funding for the military's plans. According to the article, the establishment in Kabul fears that the organization of local militias will bring about the return of warlords, whose marauding led to the Taliban takeover in the 1990s.

On March 24-25, the Small Wars Foundation (the parent organization of Small Wars Journal) co-sponsored a workshop featuring a wide range of experts to study "tribal engagement" in Afghanistan (the workshop produced a summary report and background research materials). The purpose of the workshop was to assess the wisdom of a U.S. government-sponsored "bottom-up" security and development strategy that would essentially bypass the Afghan central government. The workshop also examined what U.S. planners and operators would have to consider in order to implement such an approach.

The workshop participants were well aware that a local community engagement strategy might undermine the Afghan government's authority and risk political fragmentation. But with time running short and the Taliban very effectively implementing their own version of "bottom-up" community engagement, workshop participants concluded that it was unwise to wait for Afghanistan's central government, using a purely "top down" strategy, to provide security and economic development across the country.

So how would a "bottom up" community engagement strategy avoid political fragmentation? Most workshop participants agreed that a community-engagement strategy should focus on the district level, a level of government that is close to the population but also has connections to the provincial governments and to Kabul. Workshop participants also agreed that Afghanistan's government won't improve its legitimacy until district governors are elected rather than appointed by Karzai.

The logic behind a bottom-up strategy in Afghanistan is difficult to refute. Afghanistan is too large, too rugged, and its villages too dispersed from the main roads for Afghanistan's national security forces to effectively patrol. That is why Afghanistan has a long tradition of locally provided security. The conditions that have supported that tradition will not change any time soon.

U.S. military forces in Afghanistan are positioned to expand the kind of community-based "foreign internal defense" mission described in the Washington Post article. Such an effort would likely bring about a faster security increase compared with waiting for the arrival of Afghanistan's still-expanding army and police forces.

One would think that President Obama's staff would be especially interested in rapid gains in local security. The recent NATO conference in Estonia, no doubt informed by Obama's July 2011 Afghan pullout deadline, agreed to an aggressive timetable to turn over security to Afghan forces. This timetable has no chance without improved security, which, in turn, would seem to require more village watch militias like the kind organized by the Special Forces soldiers outside Kandahar. U.S. commanders want to expand this approach. Karzai and Eikenberry have said "no." If the Obama team is serious about its timetable, it will have to resolve this impasse.