Posted : Wednesday Dec 22, 2010
Nearly 25,000 troops will board planes for a yearlong deployment to Afghanistan starting soon after New Year's, the Defense Department has announced.
About 18,000 soldiers in five infantry brigade combat teams as well as two combat aviation brigades and a headquarters element will deploy to Afghanistan as part of the regular troop rotations.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates signed the deployment orders a day after President Obama said he will start bringing troops home from Afghanistan in July. In the same breath, he said the U.S. will not finish transitioning military forces out of Afghanistan until 2014. The U.S. has 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, 67,000 of them soldiers.
Soldiers will start deploying in early 2011 with departures continuing through the fall of next year. There, these soldiers will continue to root out Taliban influence from Afghanistan and train up Afghan military forces to take over defense of the country.
The units are:
• I Corps Headquarters, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash.
• 159th Combat Aviation Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell, Ky.
• 82nd Airborne Combat Aviation Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, N.C.
• 3rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, Fort Knox, Ky.
• 3rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, Schofield Barracks, Hawaii
• 1st Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, Fort Wainwright, Alaska
• 3rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, Fort Drum, N.Y.
• 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Carson, Colo.
