Wounded-To-Killed Ratios

Some wounded-to-killed ratios drawn from my upcoming book War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat. I have an entire chapter on the subject in my book (Chapter Fifteen: Casualties). This first chart is from Trevor Dupuy’s Attrition:

table01

A table I created to compare U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps ratios:

table02

A tabled I created looking at the U.S. units the I Corps area of Vietnam. This is after the Tet offensive, and these units are operating side-by-side and listed from north to south. The 1st Bde, 5th ID was up at the DMZ while the 23rd (Americal) Division was in the southern part of I Corps:

table03

And finally the ratios from Iraq and Afghanistan. Note these are higher ratios compared to what is reported in the previous post for the Iraqi Army and the Peshmerga.

table04

This is why the Iraq Army and Peshmerga wounded-to-kill ratio in the previous post caught my attention.

NOTES

[1] Table from Attrition: Forecasting Battles Casualties and Equipment Losses in Modern War, page 49. The dates for the wars were added by this author.

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Christopher A. Lawrence
Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.
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Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.
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His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) , The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019), The Battle for Kyiv (Frontline Books, Yorkshire, UK, 2023), Aces at Kursk (Air World, Yorkshire, UK, 2024), Hunting Falcon: The Story of WWI German Ace Hans-Joachim Buddecke (Air World, Yorkshire, UK, 2024) and The Siege of Mariupol (Frontline Books, Yorkshire, UK, 2024).
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Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

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46 Comments

  1. The Reports of some UN commissions on Eelam War IV in Sri Lanka are marred by slipshod methodology and gross ignorance –as I see it on the basis of the articles referred to below. BUT I would like your verdict on this issue because my arithmetic is putrid. The UN Reoorts are those known as the UN PANEL OF EXPERTS headed by Darusman and the PETRIE REPORT.
    * UNPoE 2011 Report of the Secretary General’s Panel of Experts report on Accountability in Sri Lanka, March 2011….http://www.un.org/News/dh/infocus/Sri_Lanka/ POE_Report_Full.pdf.
    * Mango 2014 “Sri Lanka’s War In Its Last Phase: Where WIA Figures Defeat The Gross KIA Estimates,” 14 February 2014, https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/sri-lankas-war-in-its-last-phase-where-wia-figures-defeat-the-gross-kia-estimates/
    * Marga 2011 An Analysis and Evaluation of The Report of the Advisory Panel to the UNSG nn the Final Stages of the War in Sri Lanka, https://www.dropbox.com/s/0eybj1ynej6spaa/The%20Darusman%20Report-%20Final%20doc-2.doc
    * Michael Roberts 2015c “The Realities of Eelam War IV,” 27 October 2015, https://thuppahi.wordpress.com/2015/10/27/the-realities-of-eelam-war-iv/

    Many Thanks …MICHAEL ROBERTS …..Anthropology, University of Adelaide, … michael.roberts01@adelaide.edu.au

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