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A mortar team reloads during a live fire exercise at Fort Campbell. (photo by Stephen Jerkins)

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says the U.S. will stay the course in its current exit strategy from Afghanistan, despite the recent massacre of women and children by an Army staff sergeant. That means the specialized teams of soldiers who’ve been training at Fort Campbell will deploy this spring as scheduled. Their goal is to put Afghans in the lead and get beyond a string of trust-breaking incidents.

When the Secretary of Defense was at Fort Campbell earlier this month, he was confronting an uncomfortable topic. Even before a U.S. soldier went on a civilian shooting rampage last weekend, members of the Afghan military had killed six American service members in recent weeks.

“We’ve had some isolated incidents where our troops have been shot at by some of them,” he said. “But they are isolated incidents.”

Secretary Panetta said those incidents – as well as the apparent murders committed by an American – do not change his commitment to “get the job done.”

Wrapping up the decade-long war amid the latest chaos has 1,500 battle-tested soldiers preparing to carry out the exit strategy.

As one of the final stages before deployment, Fort Campbell troops are brushing up on how to direct mortar teams, cannons and choppers. In turn, they’ll be teaching Afghans how to call for fire.

Filling in the “Gaps”

Perched in the back of a humvee, Sgt. Andrew Glebus plots coordinates for a bombardment.

“Hey, you said 603?” he asks. “Negative. Scratch that. Not within the safety fan.”

Glebus is making sure mortars won’t land too close to “friendlies” on the battlefield.

Atop a concrete compound deep in what’s known as Fort Campbell’s “back 40,” Col. Dan Walrath tracks an Apache helicopter as it flies by and fires its 30 mm chain gun and deploys two rockets.

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Walrath says coordinating this kind of firepower is one of the remaining “gaps” in the transition.

“If there is something that the Afghan forces can do for themselves, we want them to do it,” he says.

But as U.S. troops pull back and push the Afghans into the lead, they will quickly become outnumbered on the battlefield. Small teams will embed with much larger Afghan units. Walrath says it’s a necessary part of the drawdown.

“I wouldn’t say they’re any more exposed than a U.S. company that goes out and conducts a mission,” he says. “The difference being it’ll be 12 U.S. soldiers and maybe 80 Afghans.”

Walrath says he believes Afghan on American violence – or perhaps vice versa – can be avoided through respect and trust.

One of Walrath’s platoon sergeants – Michael Kriewaldt – says he trusts the Afghans. “You have to,” he says. Still, Kriewaldt calls his American compatriots his “lifeline.”

“That’s really where the trust factor comes in,” he says. “I’m training with the soldiers here, with other U.S. soldiers.”

A Quiet Concern

The less-than absolute trust in their Afghan counterparts has some in the military community voicing new questions.

Retired Army officer Douglas Ollivant lays out a position in Foreign Policy magazine. The one-time senior advisor to the 101st Airborne Division commander sees a problem with leaving as few as a dozen American soldiers with an Afghan battalion. He writes that the strategy is moving forward despite “the clear vulnerability of the people asked to undertake it.”

Arturo Munoz, who is a former CIA analyst now with the RAND Corporation, says he still believes small teams are the way to go.

“You have a chance of doing greater damage to the enemy and achieving your objective and with more participation by local forces,” he says. “But there is that element of risk. That’s undeniable.”

And, Munoz says, that risk has only been elevated by the recent cultural missteps, violence between partners and killing of innocent civilians.