The Dupuy Institute

Excellence in Historical Research and Analysis

The Dupuy Institute

Excellence in Historical Research and Analysis

U.S. Military Deaths from 2006

Christopher A. Lawrence
July 5, 2018

Interesting chart from the Congressional Research Service (CRS). Source: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/IF10899.pdf

OCO Deaths = Overseas Contingency Operations — meaning mostly Iraq and Afghanistan.

Non-OCO Deaths = means mostly accident, self-inflicted wounds, and illness. There are the almost 1,000 deaths a year that are going to occur in the U.S. military even when at peace. They listed accidents as 4,599 cases, self-inflicted deaths as 3,258 cases and illness/injury as 2,650 cases. Note that OCO operations also include accidents (471), self-inflicted wounded (282) and illness and injury (119). There are also 458 homicides in non-OCO and 41 homicides among the OCO deaths (along with 2,698 killed in action and 874 died of wounds).

It would have been more interesting if they started those charts in 2000 or 2001.

A few other interesting charts from that link:

The chart below is Iraq war deaths from 2006. Total Iraq war deaths since 2003 were over 4,500.

And these are Afghanistan war deaths from 2006. Total Afghanistan war deaths since 2001 add up to over 2,300.

These are, of course, only U.S. DOD deaths. There are also U.S. contractors, NATO allies, other U.S. allies, Iraq and Afghanstani forces, militia, civilians, insurgents, etc. It starts adding up.

Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.

Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.

His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) and The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019)

Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

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