The Surge is on

WEST POINT, N.Y. -- Declaring "our security is at stake," President Barack Obama ordered an additional 30,000 U.S. troops into the long war in Afghanistan Tuesday night, nearly tripling the force he inherited as commander in chief. He promised an impatient public he would begin bringing units home in 18 months.

The buildup to about 100,000 troops will begin almost immediately - the first Marines will be in place by Christmas - and will cost $30 billion for the first year alone.

In a prime-time speech at the U.S. Military Academy, the president told the nation his new policy was designed to "bring this war to a successful conclusion," though he made no mention of defeating Taliban insurgents or capturing al-Qaida terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.

"We must deny al-Qaida a safe haven," Obama said in spelling out U.S. military goals for a war that has dragged on for eight years. "We must reverse the Taliban's momentum. ... And we must strengthen the capacity of Afghanistan's security forces and government."

The president said the additional forces would be deployed at "the fastest pace possible so that they can target the insurgency and secure key population centers."

Their destination: "the epicenter of the violent extremism practiced by al-Qaida."

"It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak," the president said.

It marked the second time in his young presidency that Obama has added to the American force in Afghanistan, where the Taliban has recently made significant advances. When he became president last January, there were roughly 34,000 troops on the ground; there now are 71,000.

After the speech, cadets in the audience - some of whom could end up in combat because of Obama's decision - climbed over chairs to shake hands with their commander in chief and take his picture.

Marines to go in first

Even before Obama unveiled his plan before West Point cadets, the wheels already were set in motion for the surge, with sources indicating that Marines would be the first to send fresh troops in country.

While there were early reports that the Leathernecks would be from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Brigade, Camp Pendleton, Calif., officials have since said they would primarily be from Camp Lejeune, N.C.

The early surge elements are expected to be on the ground in southern Afghanistan around Christmas. They will bolster a force of about 8,000 Marines who deployed to the region in July to knock back Taliban gains in Helmand and Kandahar provinces where insurgents linked to Mullah Mohammed Omar threaten Afghanistan's second largest city.
 
Sources told Military.com that the Army will likely send three additional Infantry Brigade Combat Teams, or about 9,000 more combat forces and 5,000 support troops -- including police and military trainers, bomb squads and engineers -- as well as around 7,000 headquarters staffers to manage the war more effectively.

The Soldiers will likely deploy to eastern Afghanistan, which is under the command of Maj. Gen. Curt Scaparrotti from the 82nd Airborne Division. According to Gen. McChrystal's strategic review, RC-East includes the key provinces of Khost, Paktia and Paktika where Taliban insurgents are vying for control.

Military officials say the Army brigades are most likely to be sent from Fort Drum in New York and Fort Campbell in Kentucky.

The surge in the air

Along with Army and Marine Corps units, the Air Force’s Air Mobility Command also is anticipating beefing up operations with the surge.
 
"We're waiting ... to hear what the overall plan is going to be," Tech. Sgt. Scott T. Sturkol, spokesman for the command at Scott Air Force Base, Ill., told Military.com. "Then we can be in a better position to answer questions [such as] how it'll be drawn out, how many troops [need to be moved], what the [mobility] needs are."
 
Afghanistan has two airports -- Kandahar and Bagram -- but few roads, and these frequently targeted by insurgents using improvised explosive devices to slow convoys and kill Americans. For these reasons Central Command began several years ago to reduce the need for convoys by moving more personnel and equipment by air.
 
But while the Air Force will have to ratchet up mobility ops in Afghanistan, it will not have to create them out of whole cloth. In fact it has already had recent experience surging there. Last February President Obama ordered 17,000 additional troops into the war -- a surge that was pretty much completed by June. And as equipment and troops moved into the country, mobility kicked up the pace moving them forward.
 
According to Sturkol, AMC went from moving 16,702 tons of cargo and 24,200 passengers in February -- the month the order was given -- to 22,100 tons of cargo and 32,400 passengers the next month. The increased ops connected to the earlier surge also was reflected in aerial refueling missions, as tankers went from pumping about 60 million pounds of fuel into receiving aircraft in February to just over 80 million in March.
 
Central Command has caught one important logistics break when it comes to mobility. In July the U.S. and Russia finalized a deal to permit U.S. Air Force planes to pass through Russian airspace for the first time. The agreement signed by Obama in Moscow permits the U.S. to move troops and weapons over Russia en route to Afghanistan, the White House said in July.
 
The deal, which permits up to 4,500 flights a year, resulted in an inaugural flight Oct. 7, when a C-17 Globemaster from the 437th Airlift Wing, Charleston Air Force Base, S.C., bound for the Afghan theater over flew Russian territory. The agreement is expected to save the Pentagon up to $133 million a year in fuel, maintenance and other transportation costs, according to the White House.

Calls for more NATO aid

In addition to beefing up the U.S. presence, Obama has asked NATO allies to commit between 5,000 and 10,000 additional troops. The war has even less support in Europe than in the United States, and the NATO allies and other countries currently have about 40,000 troops on the ground.

He said he was counting on Afghanistan eventually taking over its own security, and he warned, "The days of providing a blank check are over." He said the United States would support Afghan ministries that combat corruption and "deliver for the people. We expect those who are ineffective or corrupt to be held accountable."

As for neighboring Pakistan, the president said that country and the United States "share a common enemy" in Islamic terrorists. "We are in Afghanistan to prevent a cancer from once again spreading through that country. But this same cancer has also taken root in the border region of Pakistan. That is why we need a strategy that works on both sides of the border."

The speech before an audience of cadets at the military academy ended a three-month review of the war, triggered by a request from the commanding general, Stanley McChrystal, for as many as 40,000 more troops. Without them, he warned, the U.S. risked failure.

'Afghanistan is not lost'

The speech was still under way when the general issued a statement from Kabul. "The Afghanistan-Pakistan review led by the president has provided me with a clear military mission and the resources to accomplish our task," it said. McChrystal is expected to testify before congressional committees in the next several days.

Obama referred to a deteriorating military environment, but said, "Afghanistan is not lost."

The length of the presidential review drew mild rebukes from normally amiable NATO allies. There was sharper criticism from Republicans led by former Vice President Dick Cheney, who said the president was dithering rather than deciding.

Obama rebutted forcefully.

"Let me be clear: There has never been an option before me that called for troop deployments before 2010, so there has been no delay or denial of resources necessary for the conduct of the war," he told his audience of more than 4,000 cadets seated in Eisenhower Hall.

Obama's address represents the beginning of a sales job to restore support for the war effort among an American public grown increasingly pessimistic about success - and among some fellow Democrats in Congress wary of or even opposed to spending billions more dollars and putting tens of thousands more U.S. soldiers and Marines in harm's way.

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and liberal House Democrats threatened to try to block funding for the troop increase.

Sen. Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who chairs a military oversight panel, said he didn't think Democrats would yank funding for the troops or try to force Obama's hand to pull them out faster. But Democrats will be looking for ways to pay for the additional troops, he said, including a tax increase on the wealthy although that hike is already being eyed to pay for health care costs. Another possibility is imposing a small gasoline tax that would be phased out if gas prices go up, he said.

The United States went to war in Afghanistan shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida terrorist attacks on the United States.

Bin Laden and key members of the terrorist organization were headquartered in Afghanistan at the time, taking advantage of sanctuary afforded by the Taliban government that ran the mountainous and isolated country.

Taliban forces were quickly driven from power, while bin Laden and his top deputies were believed to have fled through towering mountains into neighboring Pakistan. While the al-Qaida leadership appears to be bottled up in Pakistan's largely ungoverned tribal regions, the U.S. military strategy of targeted missile attacks from unmanned drone aircraft has yet to flush bin Laden and his cohorts from hiding.

Military.com Managing Editor Christian Lowe and Associate Editor Bryant Jordan contributed to this report.