It's been a long time coming, but there appears to be movement on Barack Obama's 2008 promise to "create a specialized military advisers corps, which will enable us to better build up local allies' capacities to take on mutual threats."

As we noted in our previous update, this idea grows out of the shifting role of U.S. forces in Afghanistan -- moving away from combat and toward training and advising local police and military forces. The push in this direction stems in part from a June 2007 report for the Center for a New American Security by John Nagl, then an adviser to Gen. David Petraeus, who urged the creation of a dedicated set of troops to train, teach and advise foreign militaries.

"The most important military component” of wars like the one in Afghanistan "will not be the fighting we do ourselves, but how well we enable and empower our allies to fight with us,” Nagl wrote. "The Army should create a permanent standing Advisor Corps of 20,000 Combat Advisors—men and women organized, equipped, educated, and trained to develop host nation security forces abroad.”

For years, this idea inspired flak within the military. According to a 2007 article in the Los Angeles Times, both then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, then Gates' top military aide, were opposed to the concept, arguing the military didn't have enough resources to spin off a dedicated advisory corps. Special operations forces, Chiarelli wrote in an Army academic journal, should remain in charge of training foreign soldiers.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno floated the idea of having the Army National Guard create specialized training and advisory units, but in June 2012 a group of two-star National Guard officials from seven states wrote Odierno to oppose the idea, arguing that it would create a lack of parallel force structure between the Guard and the Army.

But there now appears to be movement, according to a Nov. 25, 2012, Army Times report.

"Up to eight newly designed units — dubbed security force assistance brigades — will replace an equal number of Army brigade combat teams across the east and south of Afghanistan by next spring, bringing a new focus to the training and advising mission while pushing Afghans to take the lead in security operations,” the newspaper reported. Not only will these brigades focus more on training and mentoring Afghan National Security Forces than on leading combat and counterinsurgency missions, but they will also have about half the strength of the brigades they're replacing, Army Times reported. Each of the new brigades will have 1,400 to 2,000 soldiers, compared to the 3,500 to 4,000 soldiers in a traditional brigade.

"Arguably, the most important thing we have to do now is not the fighting, but instead enabling the Afghans to secure themselves, and we think that this is the best way forward,” Army Col. Randy Lane, the chief of campaign plans at International Security Assistance Force headquarters in Afghanistan, told the newspaper.

After years of being stalled, Nagl told PolitiFact that he's cautiously optimistic that the promise may eventually be met. "The Army is trying hard, and is moving in the right direction,” he said.

What's being planned for Afghanistan falls short of a permanent "corps,” both organizationally and numerically. But it is a move that leans heavily on the vision of Nagl's years-old proposal. We rate it a Compromise.