Official: Obama wants to cut troop level in Afghanistan in half by next year The officers, including Gen. John R. Allen, who relinquished command of the war Sunday, had favored a reduction of no more than 25,000 troops this year, leaving about 40,000 in Afghanistan in 2014 to continue training local security forces and provide security for the country's next presidential election, which is scheduled for April 2014. "This is steeper than we had hoped for," said a senior U.S. official aligned with the military leadership. But many of the president's top civilian national security advisers believe that removing about half of the troops this year will leave enough forces to train the Afghan army and assist it in providing security for the election. These advisers cite two other important issues in determining the pace of the withdrawal, which needs to be largely complete by the end of 2014, when the NATO military mission is set to end: The financial burden of the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan - it costs about $1 million to keep a member of the military there for a year - and the logistical challenge of removing troops and equipment from a landlocked nation halfway around the world. Even military officers acknowledge it would be very difficult to withdraw large numbers of forces, which also involves closing bases and shipping material through several Central Asian nations, in just one year. A senior defense official said outgoing Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta supports Obama's drawdown plan for the coming year. "The approach you'll hear from the president tonight reflects the best military advice from commanders in the Pentagon and in the field," the official said. Commanders will have discretion on pace and their focus will be on keeping as many forces on the ground until after the fighting season. The Obama administration intends to keep some troops in the country in 2015 and beyond; how many is still being debated at the White House and must also be approved by the Afghan government. The Pentagon is pushing a plan that would keep about 8,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2015 but significantly shrink the contingent over the following two years, according to senior U.S. government officials and military officers. The phased-reduction approach, which would define the shape of the United States" endgame in Afghanistan, represents an effort to strike a compromise between top military commanders, who had wanted to base about 10,000 U.S. troops in the country after 2014, and several of Obama's senior civilian advisers, who have advocated a far smaller long-term U.S. presence.