Quote Originally Posted by Wall Street Journal
Wall Street Journal: U.S. Military Proposal Seeks Shorter Afghan Stay

U.S. military leaders have presented the White House with a plan that would keep 10,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan after 2014

WASHINGTON—U.S. military leaders have presented the White House with a plan that would keep 10,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan after 2014, but then start drawing the force down to nearly zero by the end of President Barack Obama's term, according to senior officials.

The request reflects a far shorter time frame for a U.S. military presence in Afghanistan than commanders had previously envisaged after the current international mission ends this year. The new approach is intended to buy the U.S. military time to advise and train the Afghan army but still allow Mr. Obama to leave office saying he ended America's longest war, the officials said.

Military leaders told Mr. Obama that if he rejects the 10,000-troop option, then it would be best to withdraw nearly all military personnel at the end of this year because a smaller troop presence wouldn't offer adequate protection to U.S. personnel, said officials involved in the discussions.

The Pentagon's approach, discussed in White House National Security Council meetings last week, encountered pointed questions from some NSC officials who asked what difference 10,000 U.S. troops would make on such a temporary basis, U.S. officials said.

Vice President Joe Biden has been a leading skeptic within the administration about keeping troops in Afghanistan to train and advise Afghan forces after 2014, officials said.

A senior administration official declined to characterize Mr. Biden's position on the new Pentagon proposal, saying only that he "has asked questions and listened carefully to presentations" about possible troop levels. The official said Mr. Biden will make his recommendation to Mr. Obama "at the appropriate time."

Mr. Biden has advocated deploying special operations forces to Afghanistan for counterterrorism missions, officials said.

Afghan officials in Washington didn't immediately respond to requests for comment on the new Pentagon proposal.

As an important boost to the request, the 10,000-troop proposal has the backing of intelligence agencies and the State Department. They have told the White House that their activities on the ground inside Afghanistan will depend on whether the Pentagon gets the troops it says it needs to secure bases where military advisers, spies and diplomats would do their work.

Senior U.S. officials called it a "binary" proposal, meaning the Pentagon wants one troop level or the other, not a midpoint that they said will be too small to protect deployments and support the goals of the mission.

Defense and intelligence officials who disagree with Mr. Biden's approach said any future special operations force in Afghanistan will be of limited utility without a robust intelligence network to track militants and guide "kill teams" to their targets.

"To have an intelligence network, you have to have a footprint, and to have a footprint, you have to have force protection," said one senior U.S. official involved in the discussions.

Currently, there are about 37,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan and another 19,000 international forces. The U.S. is scheduled to draw down to 32,000 forces by the end of February.
Regarding the Pentagon's proposal for a MINIMUM of 10,000 troops in Afghanistan.

One does require more troops to keep an airbridge (that is to say a military base supplied only by air, with airfields, runways etc) open vs all foes.

20,000 French troops proved to be insufficient when in 1954 they were guarding one airbridge military base at Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam when the French base was overrun by the Viet Minh.


Wikipedia: Battle of Dien Bien Phu

If you have only one large base then fewer troops are required. You need to occupy a big area to defend the landing and takeoff fight paths vs enemy ground-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft gun-fire.

The area occupied by the French at Dien Bien Phu proved to be too small at only 2 x 5 miles.

Occupying a base area of at least 20 x 20 miles would be better, more practical to defend.

One does need to defend a large perimeter to keep the enemy guns out of range of the base's runways.

Typically 1000 guards are required to defend one 1 base in routine circumstances to defend the perimeter defences alone.

If the Taliban are surged massively, perhaps supported by regular troops of Pakistan, Iran or even Afghanistan, and the enemy army brings artillery to bear and concentrates a sustained attack on one base, as did the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu then the base would need 10,000 guards to defend the base and win the battle.

Fewer troops are required if engineers build impenetrable wide perimeter defences, meaning vehicle barriers anti-tank minefields, infantry barriers, barbed wire, anti-personnel mine-fields - to a mine field thickness of 2 miles all around the base, and that could be 40 miles or more of a perimeter circumference to build - and the perimeter watched over 24/7 by guards in hardened machine gun positions.

For Afghanistan, if I only had 10,000 troops to deploy then I wouldn't have enough for the proposed 9 bases.

Since each base would require 1000 guards in routine circumstances then 9 bases would require 9 x 1000 = 9000 troops just to guard the 9 bases, which would only leave me 1000 troops for operations outside the bases.

With only 10,000 troops I'd establish no more than 5 bases which would need 5 x 1000 = 5000 troops to guard the bases and leave 5000 troops for operations outside the bases, an average of 2000 troops per base.

In the event of a sustained assault as per Dien Bein Phu, if I could fly in reinforcement troops from reserves outside Afghanistan to the base under attack, I would fly in an additional 8000 troops to each base that came under a sustained attack.

If there were no troops available to fly in to reinforce the attacked bases then I would abandon some of the 5 bases, if necessary all but one, redeploying the troops from abandoned bases so that I had enough troops to defend the fewer remaining bases.