Posted on 03/02/2008 10:10:40 AM PST by John Jorsett
While every combat death is a tragedy, the war in Afghanistan has been notable for how few of them there have been. We'll use a standard measure of combat losses, the number of troops in a combat division (12-20,000 troops) who are killed each day the division is in combat. Since late 2001, there have been .12 American combat deaths per division day in Afghanistan. During the Vietnam war, the average division lost 3.2 troops a day, which was similar to the losses suffered in Korea (1950-53). In Iraq, the losses have been .44 deaths per division per day. By comparison, during World War II the daily losses per American averaged (over 400-500 combat days) about twenty soldiers per day. On the Russian front, German and Russian divisions lost several times that, and often over a hundred a day for weeks on end.
For short campaigns, which Iraq and Afghanistan are not, the losses were similar. That's why the concept of "days in combat" is used. During World War II, and before and since, divisions would often be out of the combat zone for days, or weeks, before going back into action. Thus the spectacular six week German conquest of France in 1940, saw their combat divisions taking 30 dead (on average) per day. But during another spectacular military victory, the 1967 Six Day War, Israeli dead were 22 per division per day, and that actually went down to 18 a day during the less spectacular 1973 war.
By contrast, the three week invasion of Iraq in 2003 saw U.S. troops suffering 1.6 dead per day per division. During the 2006 Israeli war in Lebanon, Israel lost 8 soldiers per division per day.
With the dramatic drop in casualties, came another big shift. In World War II, one in three casualties was killed. In Iraq and Afghanistan, only 12 percent of the casualties were fatal. This does not change the dramatic difference between combat losses then and now. In World War II, U.S. divisions suffered about 60 dead and wounded per combat day, while in Afghanistan there has been one (1) per combat day, and in Iraq, 3.5. So by any measure, U.S. troops have learned how to avoid getting hit. The reasons are better equipment, tactics, weapons, leadership and training than in the past. With an all-volunteer force, the troops are smarter and more physically fit than in the past. Many of the life-saving innovations U.S. troops have come up with in the past seven years have not gotten much publicity. Good news doesn't sell, but in this case, it has definitely saved lives.
Then there's force protection. The 300,000 World War II combat dead reinforced Americans traditional aversion to warfare. This, despite the fact that Europeans had suffered even more in the World Wars (Russia had lost 10 million troops in World War II combat, and another 20 million soldiers and civilians to non-combat losses, while this only caused an additional 100,000 U.S. deaths.) When Korea came along, the trend to take extraordinary measures to limit U.S. losses began in earnest. Some pundits point out that this force protection mania limits the effectiveness of American troops. Some soldiers and marines agree, but most are quite content to see their chances of surviving combat increased.
Keeping fatal casualties down to less than one or two per division per day is unique, but it should not be seen as a permanent fixture. Facing a more powerful and resourceful enemy will send the rate right back up. The media doesn't like to report it, but the troops will tell you that their Iraqi and Afghan foes are often incredibly stupid, and do dumb things that U.S. troops rarely do. By comparison, fighting North Korea would be a much more difficult. The terrain of Korea (lots of steep hills and narrow valleys) makes it hard to use mobile warfare. The North Koreans have spent half a century digging fortifications into the sides of those hills. But morale in the North Korean army is fragile, as is the command and control systems used to run the army. North Korea can be beaten, but not while having only one or two soldiers killed per division per day. It might be something closer to ten times that, depending on a lot of things you can't quite put your hands on. Like surprise, unexpected tactics and good information about what shape the North Koreans are in. But that won't be the loss rate during a long (several hundred days) war. Without external support from Russia or China, North Korea has to fight a short war.
The important thing to remember is that while lower casualties for the better prepared force is a historical fact, experiencing historically low losses every time is not.
We can blast the DPRK forces out of their holes with JDAM-style ordinance before our troops go in to mop up.
Moreover, the decapitation of the DPRK regime would inspire most of their soldiers to go home. Only a tiny fraction of DPRK troops are volunteers crazed by a belief in the power of Juche.
This is because Americans are individuals that have the vote.
And as an individual, I vote that some foreigner dies rather than me.
The real reason is the capital intensiveness of modern warfare. The US has always substituted money thrown at the enemy for blood shed by our own men. That has just become vastly more effective with the advent of smart weaponry and advanced sensors. The US achieved colonial era kill ratios in the Pacific in WW II, in Korea, and in Vietnam. The contemporary ops are just lower intensity because the enemy is vastly weaker and more sparse on the ground, and engagement therefore infrequent - the exchange ratios are similar to those levels.
We have more and better stuff. Send over a mortar round and we send back a 2000 pound bomb.
Even during WWII the Germans were amazed at what the Americans would do in support of their infantry. The Soviets sent ten times as many men to overwhelm the meat grinder. When faced with the German meat grinder in the Brochage country, we sent 2000 heavy bombers to turn the meat grinder into dust.
This guys whole concept is Krap IMO. Heck you can’t even compaire Iraq to Afganistan by using “combat days”! Different wars different tactics. Same with compairing past wars to each other or to the present. Different and more advanced weapon systems and much more efficent training.
If anyone can point me to some good, authoritative assesments of the DPRK fighting capability, I would be most grateful.
For my own part, I am convince the Nork army is a rusted, immobile hulk of a force. They haven’t had the fuel or spare parts for large-scale exercises in over fifteen years. I can’t imagine how thoroughly their communications technology has degenerated. Then there’s this little matter of the quality of their manpower. The vast bulk of their twenty-year-old privates are physically and mentally stunted childhood malnutrition survivors.
If their leadership were decapitated they’d sit tight or walk home. If we had to attack them we would presumably leapfrog over or said around their maginot line and cut them off to starve. Or we could simply batter their fortifications with micro-nukes. From what I know about satellite technology, we may not know the location of all their many assault tunnels but underground fortifications are impossible to hide in this age of infrared scanning. We doubtless have images of their construction efforts going back thirty years. Just JDAM the entrances and (heat-emitting) ventilation shafts, and paste their artillery positions. Problem solved.
In other words, the metric should relate to time periods in which the test population is in direct combat to compare relative intensity.
For example, a division combat day figure that considers combat on Betio for the period of that combat ony would be high. If that same period included the training and workup period as well as the recovery period, it would be lower.
The latter measure would be more applicable to the current "low intensity" warfare because days of direct combat are interspersed with garrison duty, training, and civic affairs duty.
Intensity in combat relates to how often in a given time period troops have to deal with the enemy and how many of the enemy they are fighting.
And that’s a crucial strength too seldom remarked upon.
The WWII Germans were also amazed at the autonomy granted to American lieutenants and seargents. That’s a strength impossible to measure in material terms.
That’s also another good reason to hire ex-military. Your average former NCO or junior officer has handled responsibility an executive would appreciate.
As a matter of fact, historically, a great many of our Captains of Industry were former captains.
This is a good analysis and points out that despite the hue and cry in the press, and the impressions of the public resulting from this harangue; our casualties have been historically low, even given the low intensity nature of combat operations.
Another factor, in addition to the ineptitude of the enemy is their almost total lack of military capability. They cannot launch ground assaults against U.S. forces as both the Viet Cong main force and North Vietnamese regulars were able to do from time to time. They cannot even execute human ambushes despite the inclination of the populace to support them. The only arrow in their quiver has been the improvised explosive device, the modern day booby trap. Of course the VC and NVA used these weapons as well, but they were intended to harass and had only a slight effect. So too, the IED. Soldiers hate them because its hard to fight back after an attack, but its only real effect is political.
Of course, the political effect may prove to be enough, if the Democrats win the election, we will surrender and then we will have demonstrated to the world that we are unwilling to sustain any casualties and all of our military power will be emasculated.
Well, Red I think what the author is doing is giving “food for thought” while speculating on possible causes. It’s kinda like those health studies that are totally based in statistics. Oprah does a whole program recommending this vitamin, or getting more sleep, simply because of a statistical correlation. No proof of cause & effect, just a correlation — which we all know could be total BS — no link whatsoever.
They apparently have 1,000 tanks, 2,000 APCs and allegedly 1600 planes and 700 naval vessels.
I would guess that their air strength is radically exaggerated and that a good portion of their aircraft are nearing 40 years of age, while only a handful of their vessels have any military capability.
Also, their navy is divided into two fleets on either side of the peninsula and the forces have never in DPRK conducted a joint exercise because of their inability to circumnavigate the South in any force.
Their communications are easily jammable.
They claim to have one million military effectives - 700,000 of which are supposedly deployed behind fortifications within miles of the DMZ.
Their entire military plan is based on a land invasion from the South.
More recent estimates I have read (based on Soviet archives opened in the '90s) are 27 million KIA or died in captivity, plus an additional 15 million civilian casualties.
That works out to an average Soviet loss of 14,000 killed per day from June 1, 1941 to May 9, 1945. Between summer and fall 1941 the Wehrmacht completed 5 - 6 operational envelopments of the scale used to defeat France in 1940. Think about that for a second: 5 -6 successful operations the size the invasion of France in 6 months. The Wehrmacht's superiority was amazing and the shellacking the Russians took stupendous. The OKW simply did not believe Stalin could replace those losses. They were mistaken
I am reminded of the enjoyable film The Battle Of The Bulge in which Robert Shaw plays Jochen Peiper, the SS Colonel.
In one scene when Peiper's superior is complaining about how slow Peiper is in his advance, Peiper shows him a care package that was taken from a recently-captured American GI - it contains a still-fresh chocolate cake from the prisoner's mother in America.
"Why are the Americans winning this war? I cannot ship petrol 50 kilometers to feed my Panzers, but the Americans can ship a chocolate cake halfway around the world for an infantryman's birthday!"
It also reinforces why those who compare the military capability of Putin's Russia to Stalin's Soviet Union are completely wrongheaded.
Stalin's defense against the Nazis hollowed Russia out.
He had almost 30 million young and youngish men to throw away.
Putin does not.
Yet Russia lost about 25,000 men pacifying tiny Chechnya, with a population less than one-fortieth of Iraq and Afghanistan.
While I think the author’s on to something, in that advanced weapons systems, medical care, and tactics, have decreased the risk of casualties and fatalities, I think he’s really off base comparing our current wars with WW2 or Korea. A better set of comparisons would be with Russia’s Afghan War and other guerrilla wars. Of the conflicts he listed I think only the 2006 Israeli operation in Lebanon is really comparable.
The German Werhmacht prided itself upon the emphasis on NCO initiative. This emphasis was probably greater than in any of the western allies at that time.
What won it for the Americans (and the western allies in general) was superior logistics and much greater artillery, air and armoured support.....
The First Chechen War is comparable. Russia had about three effective divisions in the field on any given day, for a total of 7.7 killed per division per day compared to 0.44 for the US in Iraq.
You may be correct, HOWEVER, by any comparison, using any war of any length, by any standard, the IRAQ war has by far the lowest KIA rate.
This bit of memory comes from a History Channel production, but I do believe it does shed some light.
The program was a documentary on the German’s offensive in the Battle of the Bulge.
The part I remember was a former Waffen SS captain and his recollections of that event.
This was a man, according to his bio as stated by the program, that was enlisted in the offensive into Poland, got shuttled across with his unit to participate in the Blitzkrieg in France and then spent the rest of the war, prior to the break out attempt, on the Russian front.
He said, he knew the war was lost the moment his unit over ran the first US Army infantry position. He said he’d never seen so many motorized vehicles and stacks of logistics in any one place in his entire military career. And, that was just a front line company’s position. As they got deeper and over ran higher echelon positions, it only got worse. His recollection of the battalion CP area was of a truck lot and supply warehouse.
He also stated, iirc, that he hated fighting the US military much more than any other military he’d been up against. With euro forces (Brit, French, Polish) there would be very rigid defensive setups so that once the Germans could get them to fire, they’d have a real good idea of where to target mortars to take out crew served support weapons.
With Americans, it wasn’t so. Each unit set up according to its own system and the Germans were always getting caught by machine gun fire from unexpected locations.
He also stated that American forces would often pull out of and abandon good positions or suddenly decide to stand and fight to the death for no apparent reason that the Germans could figure out.
His opinion was that fighting against Americans was the most frustrating and demoralizing situation he and his company had every engaged in.
Oh, and he and his men were terrified by the advent of good weather. Because, when the sun shown through the clouds, American ground attack aircraft came to kill them.
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