More than one month after President Obama ordered U.S. troops to begin an advise-and-assist mission supporting the Iraqi military's fight against Islamic militants, that effort remains limited in its scope and effectiveness.

The reasons for that are varied, and include concerns about force protection for U.S. personnel, logistical challenges, a desire to avoid creating Iraqi Security Force "dependency" and high-level political problems in Baghdad, current and former military officials say.

Obama on Sept. 10 authorized U.S. troop levels in Iraq to rise above 1,600. The number actually deployed has slowly ticked upward and hovered around 1,400 as of Oct. 16, the Defense Department said.

The specific advise-and-assist mission involves 12-man teams of Special Forces soldiers assigned to 12 Iraqi army headquarters units at the brigade level and higher.

Those 12 units are less than half of the 26 Iraqi brigades that Pentagon officials in September said were initially identified as "reliable partners" among the Iraqi army's roughly 50 total brigades.

Most of the U.S. advisers are miles away from any combat, sharing intelligence with Iraqi commanders, helping plan missions and develop strategies. Seven of those teams are embedded with Iraqi units in the Baghdad area, and five teams are assigned to the Kurdish area surrounding the city of Irbil, DoD officials said.

There are no U.S. advisers with any Iraqi units in Anbar province, where Islamic State militants were advancing in early October and had seized control of several Sunni towns and cities.

Force protection concerns

One limiting factor for the U.S. advise-and-assists mission is force protection. The Islamic State has overrun many Iraqi army units during the past several months, and U.S. military commanders want to avoid any risk of U.S advisers getting trapped with a collapsing Iraqi unit and requiring a dangerous rescue mission.

"Part of this is a security issue," said one defense official. "Our teams are taking force protection considerations into their calculus. We are being very deliberate about the location of those advisers."

Officials also point out that the advising mission requires a lot of planning. "This is not something like you just flip a light switch and suddenly these teams are in place. Everyone has to do a lot of ground work and figure out where you're going to do the most good," said Air Force Col. Patrick Ryder, a U.S. Central Command spokesman.

"I wouldn't characterize it as limited as much as the beginning stages of a sustained effort that we've said all along is going to take some time," Ryder said.

There are also strategic concerns about aggressively deploying U.S. advise-and-assist teams. Senior Pentagon officials want to ensure that the Iraqis "own" the mission.

"We don't want a dependency," the defense official said. "It's about striking a balance. How much is enough? How much assistance do we provide as we help enable them and support them as they seek to regain the initiative?"

The growth of the mission also may be slowed by political factors in Baghdad and Washington.

Obama has repeatedly said U.S. assistance is linked to the Shiite-led government's commitment to giving Sunni Muslims a share of power. Yet the new prime minister has offered little reassurance to disaffected Sunnis who may sympathize with the Islamic State.

"Without a new outreach to the Sunnis, any conceivable mission will probably fail," said retired Army Col. Peter Mansoor, a military history professor at Ohio State University who served in Iraq in 2007-08 as executive officer to retired Army Gen. David Petraeus, senior commander in Iraq at the time.

"We haven't seen that yet, so it may be that they are waiting for [Iraqi Prime Minister] Haider Al-Abadi and his government to get its act together and reach out to the disaffected portion of the Iraqi society," said Mansoor, who now teaches military history at Ohio State University.

Tactical deficiencies

Tactically, the Iraqi army is struggling to hold its ground. Iraqi soldiers defending the country's largest oil refinery in Bayji were nearly overrun Oct. 11, prompting the U.S. military to airdrop bundles of food and ammunition.

The militants also have begun to threaten Baghdad International Airport, a vital transportation node for the small cadre of U.S. troops deployed to Iraq. The facility also would be essential for any evacuation of civilians at the U.S. Embassy.

The militants' advance led U.S. commanders in Baghdad to send out for the first time UH-64 Apache helicopters based at the airport in support of Iraqi ground troops.

The Apaches fly low, posing far greater risk to U.S. troops compared to the high-flying fixed-wing aircraft used for close-air support missions since August.

But Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said in an interview with ABC News that the urgency of protecting the airport was worth the risk.

"You're not going to wait until they're climbing over the wall. They were within, you know, 20 or 25 kilometers [of the airport]," Dempsey said.

The militants had "overrun the Iraqi unit," he added. "It was a straight shot to the airport. So, we're not going to allow that to happen. We need that airport."

In Anbar province, Iraqi soldiers abandoned the city of Hit as the militants continued to gain ground throughout the Euphrates River valley. "It's a mixed picture there in Anbar" for the Iraqi forces, Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby acknowledged Oct. 15.

Military officials emphasize that the advise-and-assist mission is fundamentally limited by design to Iraqi higher-unit headquarters, in contrast to similar past efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan in which "advisers" were spread across many low-level combat units.

Some experts say that will have to change if Iraqi forces are to effectively counter the Islamic State.

"A lot of that advising needs to happen at lower levels," Mansoor said. "Unless the president is willing to commit far more advisers ... down into Iraqi and Kurdish battalions, I think this mission will be not only limited in its scope but also in its impact."

Andrew Tilghman is the executive editor for Military Times. He is a former Military Times Pentagon reporter and served as a Middle East correspondent for the Stars and Stripes. Before covering the military, he worked as a reporter for the Houston Chronicle in Texas, the Albany Times Union in New York and The Associated Press in Milwaukee.

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