{"id":5336,"date":"2017-09-20T11:39:11","date_gmt":"2017-09-20T11:39:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/box5917.temp.domains\/~iriacom\/\/news\/?p=5336"},"modified":"2017-09-21T11:30:48","modified_gmt":"2017-09-21T11:30:48","slug":"us-to-send-3000-troops-and-more-fighter-jets-to-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/us-to-send-3000-troops-and-more-fighter-jets-to-afghanistan\/","title":{"rendered":"US to send 3,000 troops and more fighter jets to Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>US to send\u00a03,000 troops and 18 F-16 fighter jets to\u00a0Afghanistan<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis announced on September 18 that the US will send more than\u00a0<span style=\"color: #a80000;\"><a style=\"color: #a80000;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/mattis-says-over-3000-additional-u-s-troops-will-deploy-to-afghanistan\/\" target=\"_blank\">3,000 troops<\/a><\/span>\u00a0to Afghanistan to win the longest in US history.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The new deployment will raise the number of U.S. forces in the South Asian country to over 14,000, as the 16th anniversary of the war approaches.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The new service members will help Afghan forces in their effort to defeat the nearly\u00a0<span style=\"color: #a80000;\"><a style=\"color: #a80000;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.defense.gov\/Portals\/1\/Documents\/pubs\/June_2017_1225_Report_to_Congress.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">20 terrorist groups<\/a><\/span>\u00a0in the country \u2014 especially the Taliban, ISIS, and al-Qaeda \u2014 by\u00a0advising them and providing artillery and air support.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">US President Donald Trump last month indicated he would keep US boots on the ground indefinitely. While the Taliban vowed to turn Afghanistan into a &#8220;graveyard&#8221; for foreign forces.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The United States Air Force has also increased the number of F-16 multi-task Fighting Falcons to 18 from 12, according to <span style=\"color: #a80000;\"><a style=\"color: #a80000;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.military.com\/daily-news\/2017\/09\/19\/air-force-adds-f16s-returns-tankers-afghanistan-generals-says.html\" target=\"_blank\">Military.com.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In addition air refueling tankers are in Afghanistan for the first time in about five years, they said.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Air Force now has 18 multi-role F-16 fighters in country, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian, commander of US Air Forces Central Command, told reporters at the conference.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8220;We just plussed up our number of fighters. We had 12 F-16s; we now have 18,&#8221; said Harrigian, who oversees missions at the Combined Air Operations Center at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8220;Our close-air support role continues and, as you look at the strategy coming forward, we&#8217;re actually right now working with [Commander of US forces in Afghanistan] Gen. John Nicholson&#8217;s staff on how to best synchronize his advice-and-assist strategy going forward to optimize the placement of the air assets&#8221; Harrigan said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US to send\u00a03,000 troops and 18 F-16 fighter jets to\u00a0Afghanistan US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis announced [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5339,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,125],"tags":[9,227,256,218,137,5,7],"class_list":["post-5336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-united-states","tag-afghanistan","tag-air-force","tag-aircraft","tag-army","tag-asia","tag-military","tag-u-s"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/us-troops.jpg?fit=690%2C370&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jJWb-1o4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5336"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5344,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5336\/revisions\/5344"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}