The demographics of attrtion in Iraq

[wuushew]

We know that the U.S. military is hard up to fill its ranks with combat personnel.

In any given system input must always equal output or invariably decline. The only input in a volunteer military of course is new recruits(generally young males)18-24 years old.

The U.S. military then is faced with the task of maximizing the combat potential of its armed forces subject to combat attrition, limits of new recruit applicants, physical and mental standards. Stop loss is one factor to prevent output from the system but that too develops a negative contribution after a certain severity. If the reality of joining the military meant being a lifer then new blood would drop to nothing and the remaining force would be a bunch of PTSD’d greying vets with a lower overall ability.

Retirement, injury and death are the primary ways out of the U.S. military.

Combat deaths have been 2-3 a day(closer to three a day since the start of the Surge). Serious non-fatal injuries are also very high and many are permanently disabling given the nature of IED injuries. Perhaps someone can find those injury figures in the course of this discussion.


The population of the United States is growing, meaning that if the number combat troops were fixed at a minimum level, natural population growth would eventually ease recruiting pressures simply due to an increase in hardcore 10% Bushites or people who feel that it is noble and justified to use armed force outside the borders of the United States.

The population is not growing at an equal rate of course, we are growing grey and growing fatter at rates higher than that the young athletic mainly hetero-sexual male population that forms the bulk of American infantry forces. The number of people willing to enlist depends on many factors including support of the cause and domestic economic opportunities relative to that of those provided by the military.

Much interesting information can be gleamed from the 2005 Army demographic report. The 2005 force levels for the army were 406,923 enlisted personal (46% of which are the youngest two age brackets) and making the big assumption that gender distribution is equal among all ages I am multiplying this figure by 85% to determine the number of enlisted males. So out of 11 million boys/men 1% were accepted as enlisted soldiers in the U.S. army. The increase in general population 20-24 male age group was only 53,000 from 2004 to 2005. If one assumes the same percentage of young men volunteer for the Army in these more recent years then it should be obvious that you are not dealing with a very large increase in military candidates on a yearly basis.




I started this topic because the Republicans are constantly whining that to set a time table emboldens anti-American forces in the Middle East. However isn’t a hypothetical deadline already in play based on limits of money, men or material? These losses can be plotted on a time-scale axis and projected to zero. If you factor the ongoing losses in Afghanistan it doesn’t get any better.

That of course assumes that causalities are a linear function, which most likely they are not. With 500,000-1,000,000 men you might be able to achieve a McCain style “victory” if you believe that Iraq is moPhilippinespines circa 1900 style quagmire than a Vietnam type debacle.

One might examine the casualty rates of the British in southern Iraq as a possible model of attrition in relation to declining troop levels. If the current surge is shown to be non-sustainable then it the question begs to be asked at what number of deployed troops can stationed in Iraq without further damaging the health and combat ability of the United States military? Look for this number if a DLC candidate wins in in 2008 and occupies those permanent military bases. They were not built for the hell of it.

Links:

http://www.armyg1.army.mil/hr/demographics.asp

http://www.census.gov/popest/national/asrh/

http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11511&page=1