Posted on 06/06/2019 4:53:41 AM PDT by robowombat
Recent Trends in Active-Duty Military Deaths
Summary of Deaths
Since 2006—five years after the start of major combat operations in Afghanistan and three years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq—a total of 16,652 active-duty personnel and mobilized reservists have died while serving in the U.S. Armed Forces. Seventy-three percent of these casualties occurred under circumstances unrelated to war, a category classified in this report as Non-Overseas Contingency Operations, or Non-OCO. Twenty-seven percent have died while serving in OCO operations—primarily within the territory of Iraq and Afghanistan—during periods of active combat operations. OCO operations related to Afghanistan primarily include Enduring Freedom and Freedom’s Sentinel. For Iraq, OCO operations include Iraqi Freedom, New Dawn, and Inherent Resolve. Figure 1 summarizes all service deaths since 2006.
Due to quality issues with pre-2006 data, earlier years have been excluded from this analysis. Figure 1. Active Duty Military Deaths Since 2006 Source: U.S. Department of Defense, Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC), Defense Casualty Analysis System report provided to CRS, March 28, 2019.
Non-OCO Deaths Approximately 12,116 servicemembers have died in circumstances unrelated to OCO operations since 2006. On average, for each full year from 2006-2018, there have been 917 deaths, with the total number varying by as much as 12% on an annual basis. Personnel perished in more than 70 countries (and at sea), with the majority (93%) of deaths occurring in the United States.
Other locations have included Germany, Japan, Korea, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Most servicemembers who died outside of OCO operations during this period died as the result of accident, self-inflicted wounds, or illness. Alcohol was a factor in 14% of all accidental deaths and 7% of non-OCO deaths. Approximately 16% of all non-OCO deaths, or 1,915, involved vehicles. For these latter records, the data do not indicate whether alcohol was also involved.
OCO Deaths Section 101 of Title 10, United States Code, defines a contingency operation as any Secretary of Defensedesignated military operation “in which members of the armed forces are or may become involved in military actions, operations, or hostilities against an enemy of the United States or against an opposing military force.”
Approximately 4,536 military personnel have died in such operations since 2006 in more than 25 countries (and locations at sea). Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) caused nearly half (45%) of all U.S. deaths in operational war zones. Their lethality closely tracked surges of troop deployments to OCO operations, primarily in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Figure 2. Deaths in Overseas Contingency Operations Source: DMDC Defense Casualty Analysis System report provided to CRS, March 28, 2019.
Note: Primarily Iraq comprises Iraqi Freedom, New Dawn, and Inherent Resolve; Primarily Afghanistan comprises Enduring Freedom and Freedom’s Sentinel. Includes casualties at all associated locations.
Overall Deaths in Iraq Since 2006, 2,178 U.S. troops have died in Iraq during OCO operations. Approximately half (48%) of all these military deaths are attributable to IEDs (and their variants). Of those that were not killed by IED related incidents, 37% died under nonhostile conditions, primarily from accidents (including loss of aircraft or ground vehicle) or as the result of self-inflicted injury.
Recent Trends in Active-Duty Military Deaths https://crsreports.congress.gov Figure 3. Overall Deaths in Iraq Source: DMDC Defense Casualty Analysis System report provided to CRS, March 28, 2019.
Overall Deaths in Afghanistan
Since 2006, approximately 1,975 U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan. Nearly half (46%) of all these military deaths are attributable to IEDs and their variants, which took their greatest toll between 2009 and 2012. Most U.S. personnel not killed by IEDs during this period died as the result of gunshot wounds, or after suffering other multiple physical trauma in action. A substantial number (162), died in connection with the loss of an aircraft or ground vehicle. Most such incidents were classified as accidental (69%), and occurred under nonhostile conditions.
Figure 4.Overall Deaths in Afghanistan
Source: DMDC Defense Casualty Analysis System report provided to CRS, March 28, 2019. Source of Casualty Data Data in this report was provided by the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC). When a U.S. casualty occurs, each service is required to complete a form (DD 1300 Report of Casualty) that includes circumstances related to death. This information is subsequently entered into the service’s Casualty and Mortuary Affairs database (Defense Casualty Information Processing System, or DCIPS) which, in turn, is made accessible to DMDC. Casualty data is refreshed daily, and past records are subject to change. For details on casualty matters, policies, and procedures, see Department of Defense Instruction 1300.18.
Table 1. U.S. Active-Duty Military Deaths (in all Countries), 2006-2018 Casualty Category Non-OCO OCO Sum of Category Category (as % of Total)
Accident 4,827 478 5,305 31.9%
Self-inflicted 3,579 284 3,863 23.2%
Illness / Injury 2,791 119 2,910 17.5%
Killed in Action 6 2,704 2,710 16.3%
Died of Wounds 1 885 886 5.3%
Homicide 479 41 520 3.1%
Undetermined 267 17 284 1.7%
Pending 148 2 150 Less than 1%
Terrorist 18 2 20 Less than 1%
While Captured 0 4 4 Less than 1%
total 12,116 4,536 16,652 100%
Source: DMDC Defense Casualty Analysis System report provided to CRS, March 28, 2019.
Notes: The self-Inflicted subcategory includes an apparent-suicide designation, however, for comprehensive statistics on this subject, please consult the Defense Suicide Prevention Office (DSPO). Of the six personnel that were killed in action during Non-OCO operations, four were killed in Niger, one in Iraq, and one in Somalia. Includes 35 alcohol or substance abuse related casualties during OCO operations.
Christopher T. Mann, Analyst in Defense Policy and Trade
Hannah Fischer, Informatio
That’s 16,653 too many, regardless of how they died. All brave souls that stepped forward while snow flakes and other assorted lefties and swampsters sit back and cower or laugh.
RIP
While high these non combat death figures are much lower than 50 years ago.
The military was never for the faint of heart. There have always been high training deaths... and suicides.... I spent eight years on General Officer personal Staff, and served 10-years in a combat division and a few years in the Corps headquarters. In Korea working for the CINC and the IG, in several assignments I was privy to these statistics - they are not much different from the 70s to 2000s... with the exception that we put a lot of Brady Mannings and women into the ranks. Emotional Intelligence took a hit along the way.
Really bothers me terribly to see these numbers, especially the self-inflicted. In all my military duty time 21+ years, I can remember only one incident of a soldier killing himself!!! ONE!!! Now the percentage is this high of self-inflicted. I know that the current level of combat tours is higher than back in my time during Vietnam, but this is too high. Something has to be done. I met a young national guard guy the other day out at Fort McClellan, AL, the army national guard base. This guy was maybe 30-35 at most and had been to the middle east FOUR times!!! That is way, way too much. Shows that we don’t have enough military. My retirement pay system is you got 50% of your base pay at 20 years and I think for every year or other year, you got 2% or something like that for every year over 20. NOW, these people have a stinking 401k plan!! They have to put in and the gov puts in so much. That is BS!!!!! I was able to draw mine at the time I retired. Don’t you have to be like 59 1/2 years old now to start taking out of a 401k plan?? That ain’t right. I can tell you this, 20 years working at Walmart, Sears, or JC Penny’s ain’t nothing like 20 years in the military. I am about to have my right knee replaced for the second time in SEVEN months because of problems with the first one!!! I have had 11 surgeries in the past 10 years, 13 total in my life. ALL BECAUSE OF MY MILITARY TIME. Have many folks down at Walmart has had this many because they work there??? These folks are giving their lives, bodies, minds to this Republic. They need to be better taken care of, SIMPLE AS THAT PENTAGON AND US CONGRESS!!! Bunch of over paid A-holes in those two buildings.
Amen
When I was in Jump School at Ft Benning in 1980 I talked on the phone to my dad contrasting his experience in 1948. He said their “black hats” were guys who were veterans of places like Anzio, Bastogne, etc. and they didn’t give a ****. The game they play on the 32 foot tower where they tell you to hook up the D ring on the outboard side while they hook up the side you can’t see so you don’t know for sure if you are hooked up when they push you out of the door at 32 feet? (Anyone else remember that?). Well, he said they had a black hat screwed up and pushed a guy out the door when the NCO’s D ring wasn’t actually hooked up and the guy failed to “(I guess you’ll) hook it up on the way down”. The guy burned in from 32 feet into a broken neck, dead right there. He said they didn’t even slow down, they were screaming at everyone to get back to it, “What? You pussies have never seen a dead body?” They not only didn’t shut the base down, they didn’t even miss a beat on tossing people out of the tower. Those guys had seen so much death it didn’t even warrant a cigarette break.
When deployed in Africa last year, my SIL had two heroin overdoses in his unit.
And at that time all they had “seen” was a couple of skinny Africans and a dog hit by a car.
This is a different war. They are as dedicated and brave as they were. But we engage in shit-for-brains wars.
Bring them home.
I really miss the old army.
Now the jump towers are only used once in a while.
When I started my first day on Active Duty as a Medical Corps Captain I had been on IRR for ten years so the Army had changed in ways I was totally unaware of. The First Sargeant asked me to march the Medical Company down the road after that first morning PT. So I started them marching and started a Jody I remembered from Jump School about laying bricks and baking bread. The 1st Sgt had started walking away and was about 100 yards off when I started. You should have seen him sprinting back to get me to stop. It was pretty hilarious.
LOL
It was very funny. Afterwards some of the troops asked me if I knew any other Jodys from “the old days”.
We were losing more airmen to industrial accidents than we had from enemy action.
Throughout the military folks are working around big stuff (heavy equipment, etc.), often at night in bad weather.
Not a big deal most of the time from those of us who grew up around big farming and logging equipment.
For those who didn't, it is a deadly combination.
Not knowing where to stand, when and where to jump instinctively, gets you squashed.
Then there are the car and motorcycle accidents where one would have died anyway had one been a civilian.
I read a study a few years ago about deaths of students attending colleges and universities.
About FOUR THOUSAND a year!
But of course leftist journalists don't want to report that.
A young person is safer in the military, and lately, even safer in a war zone then in college.
And once you get past 20 yrs’ it’s not worth it, you can’t make Rank. HUBBY Ret. SCPO, 58-80. Blue Water Nam Vet, Operation FREQUENT WIND, bringing the AMB out on the USS Midway. Missile Crisis were his big adventures, mostly was electronic tech for Flight Deck ops. Last ship was the USS ENCHON. Got out used GI BILL to get his Teaching degree and spent the next 20 as a Math/Electronics’s/computer PROF for a JR College, ended up as the Dept CHAIR.
MEDICARE/TRICARE LIFE DICTATES HEALTH CARE.
Yup agree on the promotion thing. I was originally in the Infantry, but wounds in Vietnam resulted in me getting reclassified into a new MOS. Because I had two years of typing in high school (coaches made all sports players take typing, it was good for the hands and fingers movement, and some could pass that course :-) Ha), the reclass board decided I could become a Legal Specialist. So, I worked in JAG for the last 18 years of my career. The very bad thing was that there were not that many legal people in the Army. It took forever to make E-7 because there were only 250 E-7 positions in the entire army and they did not want overages in our MOS. Then after making E-7, there were only 45 E-8 positions, and like 11 E-9 slots. So, it was a pyramid shaped promotion scale. Lots more lower slots and fewer and fewer slots as you went up. I was an E-7 for several years and also a single dad with two daughters. My girls got tired of moving and moving and moving and finally I made the decision for my girls to retire so that we could buy a home and they could settle down. They had moved their entire lives and finally I decided they were more important than me trying to make rank and continue playing army. So, I retired. What they kept telling our E-6s and E-7s is we could make rank quicker if we changed to combat arms MOS’s and get out of JAG. Very few did. I couldn’t because of my injury, so I was kind of stuck.
Hubby graduated Niagara Falls Tech School fully qualified to wire houses, and fix TV’s, so went straight to Electronics School, from there except for his Nam and Cuban Missile crisis events he taught A/B school, he worked the Flight Deck and did all the Electronics on the Aircraft Carrier’s he was on. That small Piper Cub that hangs in the Pensacola Navy Museum landed on the USS Midway with a Friendly pilot and family. He wouldn’t land in the water, only on deck, so they pushed all those old Huey’s overboard to make room. Wind nearly blew the thing off, if many hands hadn’t held it down.
And that Sext Pervert Weiner makes more for 1 yr than hubby makes for 20 yrs pension. You add in my SS and his Pension and SS and it eliminates VA except teeth which were knocked out, jaw broke while in Service and flight Deck Hearing loss.
Yup, that is the EURO model. No care for the old, and put the money in the illegals and young, who vote for the socialists. I still look up, for the coming of my LORD. One day, and it I hope is soon, He will come for His church and this nightmare called evil human kind will be over. This world gets more and more and more wicked, cruel, hate filled, murder, rape, abortion, you name it, every day. AND, it is only going to get worse, not better.
America as founded is over. We are hanging on by our finger nails. 90% of the young have been brainwashed in schools and they will only follow like good little sheep, to fall off the planet.
They kept what I paid into SS, as I draw off my husband’s SS. When I went on Disability they took an Extra $40 and when I turned 66 they Didn’t Return it. We both got $12.00 last year SS COLA Medicare got the rest. Which was ate up by the Increased Tricare Life Co-pays. Same goes for this year’s SS COLA raise, Tricare is getting any of the raise we got. More of out meds are turning to Out of Pocket.
This lower UN-USABLE denture has turned into an Expensive Nightmare that is at the cost of a Full set of dentures. I had to have lower quality hearing aids because of the cost. Meniere’s surgery ruined my Hearing, Sadistic SOB ENT. Spouses are Not that important to the DoD. I now need a Motorized Wheelchair, can’t use a regular 1 or a walker/cane/Pole, my R. Dominate hand was damaged fixing a torn Ligament. Both hands have Severe Osteoarthritis. To a Quilter that is a end of their ability to quilt. I’m eating with a FREAKING table spoon like a toddler because the hand hurts, and won’t close right.
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