This story has been updated.

The Pentagon announced Friday that it would send up to 1,500 more U.S. troops to help advise and train Iraqi and Kurdish forces fighting Islamic State terrorists.

Just days after taking a bruising in the midterm election, President Barack Obama is doubling down on his limited mission against ISIL in Iraq, where 1,400 U.S. troops are currently serving in an advise and assist role. These new troops will also “initiate a comprehensive training effort for Iraqi forces,” Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said. –too much advise and assist

“Some of them will start flowing in as soon as this month,” he said. “It’s going to take -- for the building partner capacity, the training -- it’s going to take us probably a couple of months, two to three months, to get the sites prepared and the regimen started. And then the training itself, we anticipate the training regime itself to take between six and seven months.

The troops will be in a non-combat role, though they will be close to the fight. But what’s significant is that they will deploy to locations outside of Baghdad and Irbil – including to areas in Sunni-dominated Anbar Province where ISIL fighters have taken over key cities like Fallujah and Ramadi.

The plan is to “establish several sites across Iraq that will accommodate the training of 12 Iraqi brigades, specifically nine Iraqi army and three Peshmerga brigades. These sites will be located in northern, western, and southern Iraq,” Kirby said.