The International Security Assistance Force – otherwise known as the American-led NATO force in Afghanistan – launched Operation Moshtarak in the Helmand province last week.  The largest military operation in Afghanistan since the initial invasion in 2001, Operation Moshtarak is the debut of ISAF’s new “civilian-friendly” attitude.

NATO announced that their new strategy was to center on protecting civilians and building up local support rather than focusing predominately on pursuing insurgent militants without explicit consideration for the largely non-combatant populations in which they take refuge.

However, the strategy has proven messier to implement than the military’s rhetoric suggested.  In Marjah, civilians have been used as human shields, while the economic and social infrastructure of the town has been riddled with bullets and laced with improvised explosive devices.  The Associated Press reported that:

Shops were riddled with bullet holes. Grocery stores and fruit stalls had been left standing open, hastily deserted by their owners. White metal fences marked off areas that had not yet been cleared of bombs.

Avoiding negative impacts on civilians during a massive urban operation is impossible, it seems.

However, while an explicit effort to minimize civilian casualties is to be lauded, General McCrystal’s strategy seems to have wholly neglected the displacement of civilians that his operation has caused.  For instance, General McCrystal rapidly apologized to President Karzai after a NATO airstrike today killed at least 27 civilians – most, if not all, of whom were women and children– but has been silent on the forced internal migration that the operation has caused.

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Iraq & Afghanistan (all tags)

The third of occasional postings
Guest Post by Afghanistan Ag Man

Today marks a change for me here in Afghanistan. After a few months working and living with a 173rd Airborne platoon (wherein my daily routine has consisted of walking through minefields, meeting with villagers, scoping out projects, sleeping on a roof side-by-side with members of the platoon in severely inadequate sleeping bags, sharing a cigarette on guard at 0300, and playing non-stop RISK tournaments until 0100), they have left my outpost for a new assignment. My original "co-workers" are now on their way to train the new soldiers that will comprise the Afghan National Army (ANA), and have been replaced by a new platoon.

With this change in my environment, I cannot help but address the President's State of the Union address and how it has impacted – and continues to impact – us here on the ground. Admittedly an unwatched speech at our outpost due to a lack of satellite television (and due to the aforementioned RISK tournaments!), I finally got around to reading a transcript the next morning. I also read some of the Monday morning quarterbacking on the speech.  One column by a veteran who served in Afghanistan stood out...

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Iraq & Afghanistan (all tags)

In case you haven’t heard, the President’s FY 2011 budget request was released this week.

For a full report, see my budget briefing book online.  

For Fiscal Year (FY) 2011, which begins on October 1, 2010, the Obama Administration has requested a base budget of $548.9 billion for the Department of Defense (DoD). This is approximately $18 billion, or 3.4 percent, above FY 2010 appropriations.

In addition, the administration has requested $159.3 billion to support Overseas Contingency Operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, which brings the FY 2011 defense budget request to a total of $708.3 billion.

Including an expected $33 billion in supplemental appropriations, the planned percent increase in total DoD spending for FY 2011 will be 2.1 percent over FY 2010.

Adjusted for inflation this amounts to a $9 billion, or 1.3 percent, increase over FY 2010.

In addition to an initial $708 billion, the administration has requested $18 billion for nuclear weapons activities at DoE and $7 billion for additional non-DoD defense related activities. This brings total non-DoD defense related spending (053/054) to a total of $25 billion, a $2 billion increase over FY 2010.

Though the numbers are large, particularly compared to non-military discretionary spending, let’s look at the bright side of things...

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Security Matters, FY 2011 Budget Request, Iraq & Afghanistan (all tags)

The second of occasional postings
Guest Post by Afghanistan Ag Man

As it stands today, much of Afghanistan is at risk of experiencing a spring and summer drought on a scale not seen in over a decade. Agriculturally, the full impact of a continued lack of precipitation will not reach its apex until the planting season begins in February and March; however, the security ramifications of a lack of snow for the Integrated Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) in the country have already been felt…

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Iraq & Afghanistan (all tags)

The first of occasional postings
Guest Post by Afghanistan Ag Man

On December 1 of last year, President Barack Obama spoke to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on the future of American military operations in Afghanistan.  In the course of outlining the resources that would be required to implement a population-centric counterinsurgency strategy, the President stated:

We will work with our partners, the UN, and the Afghan people to pursue a more effective civilian strategy, so that the government can take advantage of improved security...we will also focus our assistance in areas — such as agriculture — that can make an immediate impact in the lives of the Afghan people.

It is due to these lines in the speech that I am here in Afghanistan today. As an agricultural advisor from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), I have been assigned to a province in the mountains of the Hindu Kush in Eastern Afghanistan.

Ultimately, I hope to use these blog  posts as an outlet to tell the stories of local Afghans and the troops that I live with, as well as my own story as an average American farmer that is now part of a civilian-military (re)development strategy in Afghanistan.  

My identity and location will remain anonymous to protect not only myself, but also the Americans and Afghans that I am working with. I will, however, try wholeheartedly to report as completely and factually as possible...

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Iraq & Afghanistan (all tags)

Friend-of-NOH and IT guru Gil Wilson responds below to the WSJ report that insurgents have been hacking U.S. drones…

[The insurgents] didn't hack the drones. They ease dropped on an unencrypted (or badly scrambled) video feed. That's different…

The Pentagon's response? "But the Pentagon assumed local adversaries wouldn't know how to exploit it, the officials said."

I haven't decided yet if this is the age-old “security through obscurity” line or if the Pentagon is dumb enough to think that people who can make remote bombs with cell phones aren't smart enough to use a satellite dish and laptop to capture over-the-air data.

The U.S. military is a modern marvel. When we show up in an area the airwaves light up like Clark Griswold's house on Christmas Eve. There's no need for sophisticated wire tapping, just put a dipstick in the sky. That's why it's so damn important to encrypt the data. It shouldn't even be a question.

If the drones are sophisticated proprietary technology, as one person in the article states, then they should use pre-existing DOD communications systems that already use sophisticated encryption. If, on the other hand, drones use inexpensive "off-the-shelf" components, as others have said in the past, then they should use inexpensive "off- the-shelf" encryption (that is actually quite good).

Attackerman and Danger Room have more.

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Security Matters, Iraq & Afghanistan, Pakistan (all tags)

Here's a little number crunching on the Afghanistan troop increase. For additional budgetary analysis, see Chris Hellman at NPP and Todd Harrison at CSBA.

Cost of Increase (Updated 1PM)

Adding 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan will cost $30 billion during Fiscal Year (FY) 2010 (12/1 speech).

This $30 billion comes in addition to the previously requested FY 2010 defense budget of $68 billion for Afghanistan, $62 billion for Iraq, $534 billion for DOD’s “base” budget, and $22 billion for nuclear weapons and miscellaneous defense needs.

Altogether, the troop increase in Afghanistan will push total U.S. defense spending in FY 2010 to approximately $716 billion.

Fiscal Year 2010 Funding Levels

Estimated DOD war funding now required for FY 2010:
Iraq = $62 billion
Afghanistan = $98 billion
Total = $160 billion (CRS)

Putting Costs in Perspective
References are to fiscal years

In 2010 alone, U.S. military spending on Afghanistan will equal nearly one-half of total spending on the war since 2001.

The United States will spend 92 percent more on military operations in Afghanistan during 2010 than it did during 2009.

In 2010, the troop increase in Afghanistan will cost each individual American taxpayer $195 dollars. (IRS)

In 2010, the troop increase in Afghanistan will cost $2.5 billion per month, $82 million per day, $3.4 million per hour, $57,000 per minute, and $951 per second.

In the time it takes you to read this post, the troop increase in Afghanistan will have cost $85,500.

In 2010, the United States will spend more on Afghanistan than every other country in the world spends on defense individually, with the exception of China. Of course, total U.S. defense spending in 2010, at over $700 billion, will be roughly five times greater than China’s total military budget.

With the additional $30 billion to be spent in Afghanistan during 2010, the United States could:

•    Double the amount spent on nuclear nonproliferation, anti-terrorism, and demining ($1.6 billion)
•    Double U.S. support of migrants and refugees throughout the world ($3 billion)
•    Quadruple the Civilian Stabilization fund for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq ($1.5 billion)
•    Triple federal funding for renewable energy research and development ($7.4 billion)
•    Double overall contributions to international institutions like the WHO and IAEA ($2.1 billion)
•    Double federal funding for DHS First Responder and CDC Disease Prevention programs ($4.2 billion)
•    Strengthen capacity of Coast Guard to close off the far-more-likely route of nuclear weapons coming into the United States – through ports ($6 billion) (USB 2010 report)

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Iraq & Afghanistan, Defense Spending (all tags)

CACNP Fellow Christopher Hellman, who was in town to brief his new primer on military spending, made an interesting observation yesterday about war funding in the Obama administration.

For years, budget analysts railed on the Bush administration for submitting its war funding requests outside of the normal budget process (i.e. as supplementals). Supplementals undermined budget planning and eroded congressional oversight by omitting detailed documentation, obscuring the basis of requests and viable funding alternatives, and failing to portray accurately the long-term costs associated with military operations. When the Obama administration routed its war requests through the regular order, we applauded the move.

As Chris pointed out yesterday, however, bundling war requests with the “base” Pentagon budget presents President Obama with a political problem. Right now, the administration wants to keep certain congressional add-ons out of the appropriations bill. So it is threatening a veto. Yet carrying out this threat would require Obama to veto not only the objectionable add-ons in the “base” budget, but also the entire tranche of war funding that is part and parcel of the bill. In other words, executing the veto threat to keep pork out of the bill would require Obama to delay funding for troops in the field, which is a political death sentence.

There’s not really a work-around for this problem, unless you want to rehash fights over the line item veto. All the White House can do is work the Hill to try and keep pork out of the bill in the first place. But that’s probably a lost cause this late in the FY 2010 cycle.

(Title from this one by the Mighty Mos, which I’ve been looping for 2 days)

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Security Matters, Iraq & Afghanistan, Congress, Defense Spending, Acquisition (all tags)

As soon as it finishes work on the Interior bill, the full Senate is set to take up consideration of the fiscal year 2010 Defense Appropriations bill. I posted my analysis this morning.

Assuming that no major changes are made during Senate floor consideration, the differences between Senate and House appropriators on the C-17, Joint Strike Fighter alternate engine, DDG-51 destroyer, and Littoral Combat Ship will need to be worked out during conference negotiations. Check my analysis for the figures on those programs.

The overall bill provides $625.8 billion in total discretionary FY 2010 funding, of which $497.6 billion is for the DOD “base” budget and $128.2 billion is for Iraq and Afghanistan. The total does not include funding for nuclear weapons activities administered by the Department of Energy, military construction, or military housing.

Four interesting snippets for the arms controllers…

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Security Matters, Iraq & Afghanistan, Nukes on a Blog, Missile Defense, Defense Spending, Congress (all tags)

Now this is what a CoDel is supposed to look like.

Sens. Carl Levin, Jack Reed, and Ted Kaufman attend a shura with over 100 tribal elders and the District Governor of Garmsir in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

(Click to enlarge)

The full slideshow is here.

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Iraq & Afghanistan, Congress (all tags)