More details on US forces for RC South/Black Watch at KAF

Further to the posts here and here, more learned from someone informed. The US Army's 5th Stryker Brigade Combat Team (more on 5th SBCT here, overall page for these brigades here) that is deploying to Kandahar, likely in August, will have five battalions. One will be deployed alongside the Romanian battalion in Zabul province, the rest at Kandahar.

Of those, one will be based at KAF and three will be deployed in an arc from north of Kandahar southeast down to and along the Pak border--one essentially at the border itself, around the key crossing point to Quetta in Pakistan, Spin Boldak (Taliban leader Mullah Omar is supposed to have his HQ in the Quetta area). The 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade, arriving any time, will have its helicopters mostly at KAF but some will be stationed at forward operating bases near the border.

Helicopters in the south, US Army and Marine, will roughly triple in the next few weeks (more on aviation increases generally here, note A-10s shifting from Bagram to KAF).

More on the Marines coming to Helmand, probably arriving in a month or so. One of the battalions in the 8,000-strong 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade (some 2,000 Marines are already there) will number around 1,400. The battalion will have four M1 Abrams tanks and four MV-22 Ospreys (arriving by "the end of the year").

In 2010 (November, I assume) the US will take over command of RC South permanently, likely with a Brit as number two; a multinational division or corps headquarters is planned. In fact an American division HQ, appropriate for the forces the US has in train, seems in the works now--see end of this article. A corps HQ could well fit the whole ISAF (read mainly...) RC South force by 2010.

Then there is the British battalion at Kandahar, the quick reaction force for RC South as a whole [preceding link gone, see here and here]:

The Black Watch, 3rd Battalion, The Royal Regiment of Scotland (3 SCOTS), took over as the Regional Battle Group (South) on 10 April.

3 SCOTS took over from 42 Commando Royal Marines as the battalion responsible for supporting a variety of operations across the whole of southern Afghanistan, not just those of the main UK Task Force in Helmand province.

The saltire is raised watched by troops from The Black Watch and their Dutch colleagues from ISAF

In steady Afghan drizzle, the flag of 42 Commando was lowered at Kandahar Airfield, 3 SCOTS's home for the next six months, before being replaced by the saltire of the Inverness-based battalion, raised by Regimental Sergeant Major (Warrant Officer Class 1) Lawrie McDougall, and to the sound of a lone piper, Corporal Rab Lindsay...

Update: Looks like Osprey acceleration (via GAP):

In a briefing yesterday [April 30] at the Pentagon, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway said the controversial V-22 Osprey will soon be deployed to Afghanistan.

The Osprey, Conway said, “is purposefully headed towards Afghanistan.”..