[John123]

Very interesting. Were these men and women killed in combat or do these numbers also include routine every day accidents?

[M. Dodge Thomas]

Very interesting. Were these men and women killed in combat or do these numbers also include routine every day accidents?

The size of the military and the relative frequency of the various types of casualties vary over time, the meaningful numbers are casualties in each category per person or man-year. The only chart I could find quickly does not cover post 2005 casualties, but it's easy to extraplate out to the present as we know the casualty numbers.

One thing that really jumps out when you look at the numbers that way is the success of the US Military in holding down accidental deaths in the last 5 years, something that requires a very serious ongoing commitment to improving operational methods and then training and leading troops to take advantage of them under wartime conditions.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Training accidents most certainly.

But also traffic accidents, heart attacks, cancer, etc.

Get a few million people in one group, many more deaths occur than we realize. (A younger, more healthy crowd skews the statistics, but this is indeed, very sobering.)