US military would like 10,000 more troops for Afstan/No more French

For next year:

Military Wants More Troops for Afghan War
Request for 10,000 Not Yet Submitted To White House

Gen. David H. Petraeus disclosed yesterday that American commanders have requested the deployment of an additional 10,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan next year, but he said the request awaits a final decision by President Obama this fall.

Petraeus acknowledged that the ratio of coalition and Afghan security forces to the population is projected through 2011 to be significantly lower than the 20 troops per 1,000 people prescribed by the Army counterinsurgency manual he helped write.

"If you assume there is an insurgency throughout the country . . . you need more forces," Petraeus, who oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as head of U.S. Central Command, said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. He said the Pentagon has not yet forwarded the troop request to the White House.

Michele Flournoy, undersecretary of defense for policy, testified that the new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan is based on a plan to concentrate forces in "the insurgency belt in the south and east [emphasis added]," rather than throughout Afghanistan.

Obama "doesn't have to make a decision until the fall, so the troops would arrive, as planned, in 2010," she said.

The U.S. military has 38,000 troops in Afghanistan, and the number is projected to rise to 68,000 with deployments scheduled for this year. Those deployments include a 4,000-strong contingent of trainers from the 4th brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division [see middle of this post (Update: some "will operate in NATO’s Regional Command West, based in Herat, and Regional Command South, based in Kandahar, emphasis added)], 17,000 other combat troops, a 2,800-strong combat aviation brigade [ordered deployed under President Bush] and thousands of support forces whose placement was not publicly announced, the Pentagon said.

[US Army 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, also ordered deployed under President Bush, arrived earlier this year--more here.]

If approved, the additional 10,000 troops -- including a combat brigade of about 4,000 troops and a division headquarters of about 2,000 [emphasis added]-- would bring the total approved for next year to 78,000, officials say.

In a television interview Sunday, Obama voiced some skepticism about further troop increases, saying he had "resourced properly" the strategy. Asked how he would handle requests from commanders for more troops, he said: "What I will not do is to simply assume that more troops always result in an improved situation...There may be a point of diminishing returns."..

From an earlier post:

...
A British general will take over the southern command this fall, but U.S. and NATO military officials said they expect the No. 2 commander, U.S. Brig. Gen. John Nicholson, to be the real decision-maker [emphasis added--more here, here and here].

"This will become an American headquarters," one non-U.S. military officer in southern Afghanistan said of Kandahar [I've heard from someone knowledgable that the US will set up a divisional HQ - MC]. "They're going to have almost three times as many troops as any other NATO member here. And that's going to mean they'll be in charge."..

As for the French:

Sarkozy rules out more troops for Afghanistan

French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday ruled out sending more troops to Afghanistan, days before a NATO summit in France is due to discuss the alliance's Afghan strategy.

"We will send no other reinforcements," Sarkozy told Europe 1 radio in an interview, confirming previous remarks by Defense Minister Herve Morin.

Here's a post about current French operations.