---
title: "One-Third Of US Casualties In Afghanistan And Iraq Were Non-Combat Accidents"
date: "2018-06-07"
modified: "2018-06-07"
authors:
  - name: "Jared Keller"
    job_title: "Former Managing Editor"
    link: "https://taskandpurpose.com/authors/jaredkeller/"
url: "https://taskandpurpose.com/news/us-casualties-afghanistan-iraq-accidents/"
categories:
  - "News"
---

# One-Third Of US Casualties In Afghanistan And Iraq Were Non-Combat Accidents

![](<https://taskandpurpose.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/02/18988757-1.jpg>)

The U.S. military's mishap problem is older than you probably realized: Of the nearly 30,000 U.S. service members wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq during a 12-year period at the beginning of the forever wars, a full third were injured in non-combat incidents, [according](<https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstract/2681163>) to a new study — and that proportion is only expected to grow in the coming years.

- **Shit happens — a lot:** An [analysis](<https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstract/2681163>) of Department of Defense Trauma Registry data published in the medical journal JAMA Surgery found that 34.1% of total casualties and 11.5% percent of all deaths from January 2003 to December 2014 occurred in non-combat conditions.
- **Unintentional falls:** The largest proportion of so-called "non-battle injuries" (NBIs) occurred due to, well, falling. Some 1,283 service members died from unintentional falls, followed by car crashes and machinery or equipment accidents.
- **This isn't because of the sequester:** Lawmakers have pointed to the 2011 Budget Control Act as a root cause of the Class A mishap epidemic that has rankled the Air Force and Navy in recent months — and 66.3% and 48.3% of those services' respective casualties were due to NBIs. But the time span of the report covers nearly a decade in the pre-freeze spending environment, too.
- **It's only going to get worse:** Based on their analysis, the researchers posit that the proportion of NIBs among all U.S. casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan will grow to 41% by 2022 — and that's assuming "stable battlefield conditions," an assessment that lays the burden of the U.S. military's recent mishap crisis on the sequester.

On the flipside, lawmakers took a moment last month to [set up an independent commission](<https://thehill.com/policy/defense/386923-house-panel-approves-commission-to-study-military-aircraft-accidents>) to get to bottom of the DoD's worsening mishap crisis. Those results will likely arrive in 2022. ¯\_(ツ)\_/¯

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## Author
Jared Keller is the former managing editor of Task & Purpose. His writing has appeared in Aeon, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the New Republic, Pacific Standard, Smithsonian, and The Washington Post, among other publications.

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