President Obama will announce his new strategy on Afghanistan and Pakistan sooner or later. Given that the key decision — at least publicly — will be how many more troops to send to Afghanistan it seems propitious to consider the Bush administration’s decision to surge roughly 30,000 troops to Iraq. How it worked and why is the subject of a new film, “The Surge: The Untold Story.”

Two influential analysts told lawmakers on Capitol Hill this week that America’s strategic position in the world is eroding. America is losing its technological edge and is in deep financial trouble, while purchasing power is shifting from the West to Asia. Those trends cannot be undone, they warned, so the U.S. must adapt and seek greater cooperation with allies and establish “rules of the road” with potential rivals.

The non-partisan CBO said defense budgets must grow by at least six percent beginning next year to pay for weapons programs currently on the books. The base defense budget would have to increase to an average of $567 billion annually for two decades. While that might not appear all that high, it must be viewed in the context of sluggish U.S. economic growth, record deficits, and the need to pay interest on that growing pile of debt.

DoD is sufficiently worried about the long term health of the helicopter industry that acquisition chief, Ashton Carter, wants to create a new intitiative, run from his office, that would corral the different services’ research and development money (altogether about $110 million) and funnel it to where it can have the most impact. The new initiative would include a partnership between government and an industry consortium.

Counterinsurgency adviser David Kilcullen spoke last night at SAIS in Washington and said the Taliban have proven capable of adapting to smaller U.S. and NATO troop increases in the past and coming back stronger. That’s why he believes a “middle ground” approach that sends less troops than Gen. McChrystal wants is destined to fail. To knock the Taliban back and regain the initiative requires sending around 40,000 more troops, he said.

A key part of the seemingly endless debate about Afghanistan and Pakistan — not to mention Iraq — has been just what forces are needed to succeed. Most analysts agree that mass — numbers of troops — is one key to success. Most thinktank analysts agree that a counterinsurgency (COIN) approach is best. Deploy close to the people and clear, hold, build. The part that doesn’t get a lot of attention in the public debate is just what it takes to do to the “clear” part. Read Doug MacGregor’s pungent comments on what he thinks the US needs to send.

Now that the V-22s have landed in Afghanistan, it’s time to take a look at how they will be used. Robbin Laird, a defense consultant who works for the Marines — among other clients — got a chance to interview the flight crews of VMM-261, headed by Lt. Col. A. J. Bianca, about the concepts of operations they expected to follow. We’ve got links to the interviews, an interview with Laird and links to video of the V-22 teams undergoing deployment to Afghanistan and some of their training.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has created a new counter-IED task force to do what the current counter-IED task force, run by the Army, apparently isn’t doing, namely, counter-IEDs. Gates’ is clearly frustrated with the current counter-IED effort that he says is slow to come up with solutions, not rapidly adaptable to different IED tactics and bomb networks in Afghanistan and has too many separate initiatives underway that are not collaborating.

Influential Australian counterinsurgency adviser, David Kilcullen, says the Obama administration risks a Suez style disaster if it fails to deploy the troop numbers requested by Afghan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal. The deep divisions within the administration and the long delay in answering McChrystal’s plea for more troops has created deep concerns among NATO allies and has presented an exploitable opportunity for the Taliban, Kilcullen tells Britain’s Guardian newspaper.

The American battle for Sadr City in 2008 and the Israeli war in Gaza later that year are being held up as models for future fights against irregular opponents. We take a look at some of the key lessons learned from both operations as well as an important factor that may limit where they can be replicated.

Updated: New “Gates Option” said to be Pentagon’s preferred choice.

Conflicting reports continue to come from the Pentagon and the White House as to whether Obama will give McChrystal his requested reinforcemnts. We take a look at where things stand nearly two months after McChrystal requested more troops.

A report by GAO cites enemy initiated attacks in Afghanistan as a useful metric showing a deterioriating security situation there. Yet, increased contact with the Taliban results from more troops moving into more areas and aggressively patrolling. It raises the question of what metrics should be used to measure progress in guerrilla wars.

Supporters of an escalation in Afghanistan argue that only a troop intensive counterinsurgency there can prevent a spillover of the fighting into neighboring Pakistan, a much more strategically vital country. CSIS’s Rick Nelson warns that an expanded offensive in Afghanistan risks pushing more militants into Pakistan, worsening stability there and ultimately hindering efforts to eliminate Al Qaeda.

UPDATED: Shooter Cried “Allahu Akbar — God Is great — Before Firing. Questions Arising About Possible Militant Views.

Tragedy has struck Fort Hood, the kind that will weigh on the minds of Americans for months, and be remembered for years. At least 12 people were killed and 31 wounded in a pair of shootings Thursday at the Fort Hood Army base in Texas, the Army says. Some late reports indicate the shooter was an Army psychiatrist who was about to be deployed.

Frustration over the Obama administration’s delay in sending more troops to Afghanistan is mounting among the hawkish set inside Washington. At an AEI conference yesterday, some of the same folks who had a hand in promoting the Iraq surge back in 2006 called for an even bigger troop surge in Afghanistan, warning that any delays risks certain defeat.

“I believe that the US at the moment does not have the political will, nor the public understanding and commitment to do what is necessary in Afghanistan.” Those are the words of Muqtedar Khan, director of the University of Delaware’s Islamic studies program, testifying Monday morning before the House Armed Services subcommittee on oversight and investigations.

Two Australian military thinkers take a crack at the tough nut that is Hezbollah like hybrid enemies and come up with a manuever concept that seeks to restore striking power to the offensive. They envision swarms of small teams to probe and infiltrate a defender coupled to precision strike and superfast kill chains.

OSD is sponsoring tests of a new system designed to defeat RPG warheads, called TRAPS, it deploys airbags around a vehicle that neutralize incoming warheads. TRAPS manufacturer Textron says the system has proven succssful in recent live fire tests.

During the days of the Cold War, intelligence analysts tracked Soviet missile deployments and launches, as well as mass maneuvers, using the technological wonders of change detection, the arcane art of looking at satellite and U-2 photos to see what had moved where and how fast they were moving. Now Northrop Grumman is developing a fast, broad-area radar that may give analysts better tools to work with.

As President Obama stood on the verge of deciding how many troops to send to Afghanistan and what broad strategy to pursue, three top Democrats declared themselves opposed to sending large numbers of combat troops. Sen. Carl Levin took the middle road and proposed following the “British model” in Afghanistan, which includes intensified training, mentoring and partnering with Afghan security forces, with a modest commitment of additional troops, more helicopters, drones and mine resistant vehicles.