The Pentagon is indicating that they are about to announce a new deployment of US ground troops into Afghanistan, though they offered no specifics on the exact timing of the announcement, not the specific size of the deployment.

Comments from officials, however, appear to suggest that the 3,900-man “cap” placed on deployments by President Trump when he delegated responsibility for the surge to Defense Secretary James Mattis, is going to be wholly used, and then some.

Officials were quick to insist that the 3,900 cap is “a stopgap” for the US escalation, and “not a permanent cap” on the number of troops that will be deployed overall as part of the new surge. This certainly gives the impression that they’re expecting to go beyond that.

The US currently has around 8,400 troops in Afghanistan. Military leadership appears to uniformly advocate escalations, attempting to slow the rate of territory loss sustained by the Afghan government, and to try to reverse the overall trend of the 16-year conflict.