Thursday, July 31, 2003

U.S.: 3 more troops killed [CNN: World]  Did a little back of the envelope calculation on this with my an ex-military buddy of mine.  The recent average of US combat related deaths in Iraq is ~2 a day right now, or ~700 a year.  With ~140,000 troops in theater and ~13 to 1 tooth to tail ratio in theater (estimates vary on this ratio, Hackworth has one for the entire US military circa 1998 -- "we have 1.4 million military personnel on the books, but we have only 29,000 trigger pullers -- the indispensable rifleman who put holes in enemy soldiers."), there are 10,000 actual trigger pullers in the front line in Iraq.  With 700 killed a year, that is a %7 chance of getting killed in Iraq over the course of a year.  Sure, some support people are going to get killed, but the vast majority of recent casualties are among riflemen.  Deaths in Vietnam were 21 a day from all causes (including accidents) over the course of 8 years with on average twice the number of men in theater. [John Robb's Weblog] This won't do much for recruitment, either. The military was already having considerable trouble retaining personel and getting new recruits during the Clinton administration. The situation now is even worse for soldiers--not only are they being sent away from their families to foreign countries they don't care about for a year or more, the locals are shooting at them! 1:26:30 PM    comment ()

© Copyright 2006 Ken Hagler. Last update: 2/15/2006; 1:56:00 PM.