On the second day of his surprise visit to Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates met with troops fighting out of two remote bases in Kandahar province, an area he has marked for the next major offensive in southern Afghanistan. Located just east of the the ongoing 15,000 man fight in Marjah, Kandahar is home to Afghanistan's second largest city and will be seen as another major test for President Obama's new war strategy.

After meeting with troops on Tuesday, Secretary Gates spoke to Fox News' Mike Emanuel about the success in Marjah so far. "I think that the strategy is the game-changer," Gates told Fox. The focus changed from "how many Taliban can we kill to how many Afghans can we protect."

A military official traveling with the secretary said today's trip was "about as close to Marjah as Secretary Gates can safely get." Gates told Fox there's a lot to gain from meeting with troops on the front lines. "I hear what the real world is about... I get tipped to the problems."

Gates said that with 24,000 of the 30,000 surge troops still to come, the outlook is promising. "I would say given where we are both in the calendar and in terms of how many troops are here as part of the surge that it's a very good start."

Eager to demonstrate progress already made in the south, Gates took a 20-minute tour of the Now Zad market district Tuesday without wearing body armor. Gates shook hands and spoke briefly with shop owners, telling them to expect "more Marines and more Afghan troops." Now Zad was cleared by Marines last December as part of the initial troop surge to the country. "A few months ago this place was a ghost town, a no-go zone," Gates told roughly 100 Marines at Combat Outpost Caffereta. "Now, as I saw for myself, stores are opening, people are returning."

Military officials say Now Zad will serve as a model for this summer's fight and eventual reconstruction in Kandahar, considered to be the birthplace of the Taliban. And Marines at Caffereta will be "the tip of the spear" in that battle, Gates said. But he cautioned this region will pose new challenges. "Kandahar is a much more sophisticated, bigger city, big suburbs, so it's a much more complex kind of operation", Gates told reporters Tuesday. "Criminal activity and criminal militias are as big a challenge as the Taliban themselves."

On Monday Gates met with President Karzai and top NATO commander General Stanley McChrystal to discuss the plan for Kandahar. General McChrystal told reporters this offensive will be slower, and wont come with the same rush of forces it did with Marjah. "There won't be a D-Day that is climactic... it will be a rising tide of security as it comes."

The slow approach demonstrates McChrystal's commitment to the winning "hearts and minds" rather than inflicting military devastation. If a decision was made to ignore that strategy, Marjah could have been won in 24 hours McChrystal told reporters Monday. "We would have liberated Marjah, but in the minds of the people that would have been illegitimate because the liberation would have involved destruction of their homes, their livelihoods, and loss of friends and families. That to them is not acceptable."

Caution also comes with at price -- often the lives of American troops. Without the luxury of aerial assault, Marines, soldiers and NATO forces are extremely vulnerable to the deadly roadside bombs and improvised explosive devices that litter the region. For every two bombs coalition forces disable, one goes off.

During his visit with troops Tuesday, Gates awarded two silver stars (the military's third highest award) and a purple heart. In his interview with Mike Emanuel, Gates said when he eventually retires, "interacting with troops is the only thing I'm going to miss about this job."