Iraq "Numbers Game"

[SWJED]

17 January The Weekly Standard commentary - Numbers Game (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/177sklvr.asp) by Frederick Kagan.


Critics of the plan proposed by the American Enterprise Institute's Iraq Planning Group (IPG) have been pointing to supposed discrepancies in the numbers of troops required to secure Baghdad in my writings, the IPG, and the Bush administration's statements.

I noted before (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/994zsofb.asp) the IPG met that it would require a surge of 80,000 additional troops to clear the entire Baghdad capital area, according to traditional counter-insurgency norms and under a variety of other unlikely conditions. I did not advocate such an operation. I noted consistently, again before the IPG met, that I thought it would take about 50,000 additional U.S. troops to clear and hold all of Baghdad, but I also noted that we could clear parts of the city with fewer forces in a rational, phased plan.

I then put together a team of military planning and regional experts in an attempt to determine with more accuracy exactly how many forces would be required. The results were published in our report, Choosing Victory (http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.25396/pub_detail.asp)...

[SWJED]

19 January NY Times - In Baghdad, Pressing to Meet, With Iraqi Help, Pentagon’s Own Standard for Force Levels (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/19/world/middleeast/19military.html?ref=world) by Michael Gordon.


When Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus assumes his duties as the new American commander in Iraq, he will be guided by a new military doctrine on counterinsurgency that makes the security of the population a chief objective.

But a pressing question that is likely to emerge when the Senate takes up his confirmation next week is whether the administration’s new Iraq strategy will draw on enough forces to ensure security — as measured against the general’s own guidelines.

The additional five combat brigades that would be sent to Baghdad under President Bush’s strategy would roughly double the size of the American force involved in the security operation there, about 15,000 troops. But as a whole, that would still represent only a small portion of the 120,000-strong force that would be required to secure the entire capital according to the force ratios outlined in the military’s new field manual for counterinsurgency, which General Petraeus helped to draft...

[jcustis]

My rough swag equates to about one company of combat arms or MPs, mixed in with reinforcing attachments of CA/PSYOP/SF elements, at around a rough total of 130-140 troops. Center them on key terrain in the city and control the streets and alleyways. Each of these elements should have a counterpart IP/IA element.

I don't have a map of Baghdad handy anymore, but does anyone care to crunch the numbers on how many companies it would require, at a ratio of one for every 4 sq kms?