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San Diego military families brace for deployments

Posted at 11:36 PM, Aug 21, 2017
and last updated 2017-08-22 02:36:43-04

SAN DIEGO (KGTV) -- On Monday President Donald Trump revealed his plans to shape the future of the American war effort and regional strategy on the war in Afghanistan.

RELATED: Trump begins Afghanistan speech by addressing wounds at home 

Monday night, a military expert spoke with 10News, urging San Diegans to pay attention to what the president "didn't say."

"The reality (the President) didn't talk about what we're actually going to do," said Shawn VanDiver, a military expert in San Diego.

VanDiver says the President's plan will have an effect on San Diego, but it's hard to know exactly the effect without knowing more details of the plan. Details that VanDiver says the President left out of his speech.

"Without a pathway to victory and without identifying what an end to this war means then we're not going to succeed and we're going to lose more lives unnecessarily," VanDiver said.

The 12-year Navy veteran currently heads the San Diego chapter of the Truman National Security Project - an organization that advocates for, "tough…smart…national security solutions."

He says - San Diego military families should brace for deployments.

"We're probably going to have an increase in deployments, we're probably going to be sending Marines on the ground in Afghanistan," VanDiver said. "We're probably going to have Navy SEALs on the ground in Afghanistan. We're probably going to have Navy corpsman on the ground in Afghanistan."

Vandiver says he also expects Navy ships to be ready to take marines into position.

Although President Trump never specified, many reports released Monday say the Commander in Chief may send as many as 4,000 troops to help finish the longest war in United States History.

Vandiver says, whatever the plan, he hopes it's fundamentally different than the one we've used in the past.

"I think that when we look at Afghanistan we see that George Bush failed," he said. "We see that Barack Obama failed, and we hope that Donald Trump doesn't fail."