Interesting, in a morbid sort of way
From a Michelle Malkin post dismissing the myth that blacks are being killed disproportionately in Iraq:
A breakdown of KIA's by the NYT. It covers officer vs. enlisted, race, sex, age, education level and pretty much supports the idea that it's a war being fought by the working and middle classes (i.e., most of us.)
It also indicates that the Army and Marine Corps are pretty much getting it in the neck vs. the Navy and Air Force, but that's not surprising given the US's current global air and naval supremacy.
I'd be interested to see a breakdown by rank (that is, enlisted, junior NCOs, senior NCOs, company and field grade officers) and by MOS (combat vs. combat support vs. service support), because it would give a better picture of who's being targeted, but that's probably not of general interest to the NYT's readers.
A breakdown of KIA's by the NYT. It covers officer vs. enlisted, race, sex, age, education level and pretty much supports the idea that it's a war being fought by the working and middle classes (i.e., most of us.)
It also indicates that the Army and Marine Corps are pretty much getting it in the neck vs. the Navy and Air Force, but that's not surprising given the US's current global air and naval supremacy.
I'd be interested to see a breakdown by rank (that is, enlisted, junior NCOs, senior NCOs, company and field grade officers) and by MOS (combat vs. combat support vs. service support), because it would give a better picture of who's being targeted, but that's probably not of general interest to the NYT's readers.
posted by Special Forces Alpha Geek at 6:10 PM
3 Comments:
If you go to this website: (http://icasualties.org/oif/Details.aspx) you will see, at the bottom of the page, a filter system that will allow you to sort KIAs by various parameters - rank being one. A similar site for Afghanistan is located at: (http://lunaville.org/OEF/Afghanistan.aspx)
Keep these figures handy...these are very similar to the Vietnam stats, even though there are many false, stats based, claims about the casualities in Vietnam...the myth about blacks and the poor carrying the weight in Vietnam. Believe me, we'll need to come back to these in the future as fact erodes into lore, and lore slides into tale, and tale becomes, again, fact.
I looked at this a little while ago, based on statistics as of February 16.
By component, as of said date, the Army National Guard had taken 20% of KIAs and the Army Reserve 6%, with the other 74% being active Army.
For most of these soldiers, we don't know MOS, so I used unit as a proxy, with the caveat that unit does not equal MOS, so an infantry company supply sergeant or PLL clerk may end up counted with the infantry.
For the Army National Guard, 34% of hostile KIAs were in infantry units, 21% in engineer units, 11% in transportation units, 10% in FA units, 9% in MP units and 5% in armor units. Like the Guard (and active forces, for that matter), many of the support personnel were killed in ambushes and IED attacks. Many of the artillery, armor and MP forces are conducting infantry-type operations - dismounted patrols and the like (these are the types for whom the Army is now considering a Close Combat Badge).
For the Army Reserve, 31% of KIAs were in transportation units, 21% in engineer units, 15% in civil affairs units and 13% in MP units. These are the units most likely to be working alongside active units in combat operations or to be hit be ambushes or IEDs on logistics operations. The other 20% were spread out among other types of units.
For the active Army, 31% were in infantry units, 14% in cavalry units (which include armored cavalry, light cavalry, and armored, infantry and aviation units designated cavalry for traditional reasons), 13% in artillery units, 12% in engineer units and 10% in armor units. The other 20% were spread out among other types of units.
Dave
11th SFG(A), 1992-94
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