The Baltimore Sun April 2, 2003
Keeping down casualties
By Dennis O'Brien
Beyond the issue of whether or when they achieve their goals in this war, U.S. commanders in Iraq will also be measured by a very human, and constantly changing, scorecard - the number of dead and wounded.
Defense Department statistics show that casualty rates were remarkably steady for much of the 20th century but dropped sharply in the nation's most recent conflicts.
In World War I about one in 15 U.S. troops was killed or wounded; in World War II it was one in 14. The rate climbed to one in 12 in Korea and fell back to one in 16 during Vietnam.
The rates have been going down ever since, with only one soldier in 760 killed or wounded in the first Persian Gulf war. There were no U.S. combat fatalities in Bosnia or Kosovo and to date only 66 in Afghanistan, including two killed Saturday. The Defense Department has not released statistics on the numbers of wounded in those conflicts.
"While any death is one too many, the fact is that the casualty rate for the recent wars are really low and the numbers in this war so far are tiny," says Thomas Mockaitis, a professor of military history at DePaul University.
Early in Iraq conflict
In a conflict not yet 2 weeks old, experts caution that it is far too early to draw any conclusions about how the numbers will add up. As of yesterday, there were 46 U.S. and 27 British soldiers killed. The Defense Department hasn't released updated figures for wounded, but an estimated 200 military personnel have been treated at U.S. and overseas hospitals, translating into an allied casualty rate of one out of every 1,100.
Casualty rates depend on a variety of factors, ranging from the length of the war to the terrain where it's fought. The military technology available, the nature of the mission and the amount of force used also are key factors.
The trench warfare of World War I resulted in staggering losses: 54,000 British killed in 10 hours at the Battle of the Somme. The fierce close combat on Iwo Jima during World War II left 25,851 casualties among the U.S. Marines. And some assignments are particularly risky: nine out of 10 World War II German submariners were killed.
Casualties, defined as any wound that incapacitates a soldier, have declined as more precise weapons have been produced that reduce the enemy's firepower, better body armor has been developed, fewer large-scale battles are fought and medical advances have reduced illness in military camps.
Experts say that the numbers of dead and wounded have dropped in the nation's most recent conflicts because they've been fought largely with air power and were more limited missions than the defeat of Nazi Germany - or an entrenched Iraqi regime.
"We really stood at a distance from the enemy when we fought those recent wars," says Thomas Keaney, a retired Air Force colonel who is executive director of the Foreign Policy Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
In modern warfare, smart bombs fired from long distances reduce the number of bombing missions and the number of ground assaults necessary for the infantry, which traditionally suffers the largest share of combat casualties. In the 1991 Persian Gulf war, 39 days of bombing preceded a brief ground assault. Ground troops in Kosovo and Afghanistan also were assisted by major aerial assaults.
So far, the U.S.-led forces have hit Iraq with an estimated 8,000 precision bombs, including two 4,700-pound, satellite-guided "bunker buster" bombs dropped by stealth bombers Friday on Baghdad.
"What you have is less and less of a human element on the front lines," says Mark Parillo, a professor of military history at Kansas State University. "Armies have fewer and fewer people literally carrying rifles, at what they're now calling the tip of the spear, because technology has interceded."
The superior firepower has meant an enemy reluctant to face U.S. troops head-on. That means more skirmishes and guerrilla tactics and fewer large-scale battles.
"They know if they fight a conventional battle, on a battlefield, they will lose," says John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org. "That's why the Viet Cong gave the U.S. such a hard time in Vietnam and why you have these guys using guerrilla tactics in Iraq."
Along with laser-guided bombs, global positioning systems to track targets and night-vision technology, soldiers are better protected by what they wear.
Dr. Clifford Cloonan, head of military and emergency medicine at a Bethesda medical school for the military, says that since World War II, Kevlar helmets, protective vests and ceramic plates, now standard issue for soldiers and marines, have done just as much to increase combat survival rates as having surgeons close to combat.
"We've gotten really good at protecting our soldiers," says Cloonan, of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.
If they are wounded, military personnel have a better chance of survival thanks to improvements in battlefield medicine. The mortality rate has dropped significantly over the years, largely due to getting surgeons closer to combat.
Cloonan says that using helicopters to ferry the wounded back to surgical centers - a technique developed in Korea - has saved countless lives. Studies show about 97 percent of the soldiers wounded in battle will survive if they live to see a surgeon.
In Iraq, the military hopes to save more lives with mobile surgical teams right up at the front, so those severely wounded can get urgent attention, then be flown behind the lines for further care.
Another key factor in improving a soldier's chances of avoiding injury is better training.
"In some ways, it is like a football game," says Frederick Kagan, a professor of military history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. "The training, experience and skill level of your forces are all crucial."
Kagan says today's military is better trained than its counterparts were in both world wars. In those conflicts, he says, some U.S. casualties can be attributed at least partly to having inexperienced troops who entered the wars late and fought German armies that had several years of battlefield experience.
"We had to put green troops up against the Germans who had been fighting for years," Kagan says. "You're not going to walk into a situation like that and clean their clocks."
Rout at Kasserine Pass
That's why Gen. Erwin Rommel's troops defeated inexperienced U.S. forces in one of their first encounters at the battle of Kasserine Pass, a strategic location for troops in North Africa that was controlled by the Allies, conquered by the Germans and then retaken by the Allies with heavy losses in 1943.
"It was a complete rout," says Parillo.
The U.S. Army's Sherman tanks also were more thinly armored than the German Panther and Tiger tanks, experts say. "The American tanks had advantages," Parillo says, "but they were no match for what the Germans had, and we paid a price for it."
The United States had learned something by the time it entered the Korean War in 1950. The U.S. Army's Pershing tanks were much better than the Korean tanks and, because of skilled and experienced U.S. fighter pilots, the United States was able to control the skies.
With U.S. commanders weighing an offensive into Baghdad, experts say that in modern wars, it is urban fighting that inflicts the heaviest casualties.
Some planners say such urban warfare could lead to casualty rates of 30 to 60 percent because it will mean fighting an enemy force in unfamiliar surroundings. Americans might be willing to accept high casualties, some experts say, if they believe the United States is winning the war.
"Americans are not averse to casualties," says Richard Kohn, a professor of military history at the University of North Carolina, "they're averse to useless casualties, or leadership that isn't willing to see things through."
Sun researcher Jean Packard contributed to this article.
© Copyright 2003 The Baltimore Sun Company
