Why do people die in the military?

 

                                          Oops. Photo credit: US General Accounting Office

For Memorial Day, I looked at the annual causes of death among active-duty personnel in the US Army from 1980 through 2022. More recent data were not available.

According to my calculations, the death rate has fallen by more than half since the 2007 withdrawal of troops from the war with Iraq that stemmed from President George W. Bush’s invasion in March 2003. The Iraq War continued through 2011, and about 2,500 US troops are still stationed there. Since 2008, the military death rate has fallen from 14.3 deaths per 10,000 on active duty to 6.5 (Figure 1).

                                          Figure 1: Total US military deaths per 10,000 on active duty

For decades, the leading cause of military deaths was accidents. But since 1980, the death rate due to accidents has fallen by nearly three-fourths, from 7.6 to 2.0 per 10,000 active-duty troops. Meanwhile, the death rate due to suicides has more than doubled, from 1.1 to 2.6. As of 2022, suicides were the leading cause of Army deaths (Figure 2). 

Illness is not a major cause of military death. The spike in deaths due to illness around 2020-2021 is probably due to Covid-19. Even in those years, the number of deaths due to illness was smaller than the number due to either suicides or accidents.  This smallness was probably due to the Army’s mandatory vaccination in 2021.  RFK Jr., take note. But the Army no longer requires vaccination.  

                                  Figure 2: Military deaths by cause per 10,000 on active duty

Terrorism was a significant cause of military deaths only in October 1983, when two trucks loaded with explosives blew up American and French barracks in Beirut, killing 220 Marines, 18 sailors, and three soldiers. Three months later, President Ronald Reagan withdrew troops from Beirut. One might have expected this withdrawal to encourage more terrorist attacks killing soldiers, but in fact it had no significant effect. The number of active-duty deaths due to terrorism is random over time (Figure 3). After 1983, the largest terrorist attack claimed 46 active-duty deaths on September 11, 2001. Since then, there has been only one military death attributed to terrorism, in 2008 (Figure 3).

                                         Figure 3: Number of active-duty deaths due to terrorism

Neither were terrorist deaths obviously due to hostile action. The correlation between deaths due to action and deaths due to terrorism is -.12, which is essentially random. Interpreted literally, the number of deaths due to terrorism fell when the number due to action rose, for those on active duty. But the correlation is so small that it might well have occurred by chance. 

Like deaths due to terrorism, the number of deaths in action has also fallen to virtually zero, from 847 in 2007. Until then, the deaths in action due to the invasion of Iraq were the leading cause of active-duty deaths (Figure 4). 

                               Figure 4: Active-duty deaths due to hostile action

I thought that fatal accidents might have been more likely in action. But no. The correlation between deaths due to action and those due to accidents, again for those on active duty, was -.17, again essentially random. The Army says its leading cause of deaths is vehicle accidents during training, especially in the summer, when new platoon leaders arrive and may not know how to avoid mishaps. Also, urban recruits are used to taking the bus or subway rather than driving.  And many Army and Marine recruits drive poorly because they lack sleep, according to the General Accounting Office, the watchdog of Congress. 

The Army says the vehicle death rate has fallen because of emphasis on safety, which means exactly nothing.  Airplane accidents seem to occur in August, when daylight hours are longer for flight training. Anticipating this timing may have improved training.  But in general, the statistical work on military accidents is too poor to permit many firm conclusions, in my opinion. The dataset is not rich, and the statistical techniques are primitive (so of like the ones in this post!).   

I conclude: The military has reduced its death rate steadily, outside of times of war, especially by avoiding fatal accidents. But mental illness has become much more important as a cause of death, when compared to other causes, perhaps partly because most soldiers are too young to die of old age. Nevertheless, the military may be in a position to provide more mental health care than do the public high schools, although mental illness is a growing diagnosis for their students.  In its 2021 survey of high school students, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that more than two in five “felt persistently sad or hopeless.” Nearly three in ten reported “poor mental health.” More than one in five “seriously considered” suicide, and one in 10 attempted it.  Distress, often manifest in thoughts of, or attempts at, suicide, was more common among students who were LGBQ+, female, and black.  – Leon Taylor, Seymour, Indiana tayloralmaty@gmail.com

 

Notes

For valuable comments, I thank but do not implicate Sergeant Annabel Benson of the US Army. All data are from the Pentagon’s Defense Casualty Analysis System.

References

Benyon, Steve. The Top Killer of Soldiers, Army Vehicle Deaths Are Tied to Poor Training, Though Numbers Down | Military.com November 12, 2021.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data Summary & Trends Report: 2011-2021 (cdc.gov) . 2021. 

United States Department of Defense. Defense Manpower Data Center.  Defense Casualty Analysis System (osd.mil) 

United States General Accounting Office. Military Vehicles: Army and Marine Corps Should Take Additional Actions to Mitigate and Prevent Training Accidents | U.S. GAO July 7, 2021.