By the Numbers - March 4, 2013

By the Numbers - March 4, 2013

28 percent

This represents the increase in "the cumulative amount of time that a soldier has spent deployed," from December 2008 to December 2011, according to a new report by the RAND Corporation, Measuring Army Deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. The report is rich with statistics. Some key findings:

  • The Army has provided the bulk of U.S. troops to Iraq and Afghanistan: over 1.5 million troop-years as of December 2011, and 54 percent of all active component troop-year deployments within the area of operations.
  • Since 2008, the cumulative amount of time that a soldier has spent deployed has increased (on average) by 28 percent. In contrast, the percentage "not yet deployed" and the Army's unutilized capacity to deploy have both decreased.
  • As of December 2011, roughly 73 percent of active component soldiers had deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, an increase of 6 percentage points since December 2008. Most of these soldiers were working on their second, third, or fourth year of cumulative deployed duty.
  • Most of the remaining 27 percent are not yet deployed, since they are recent recruits, are forward-stationed in other overseas locations, or have contributed to Operation Enduring Freedom and/or Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation New Dawn without deploying.
  • The Army retains very little unutilized capacity to deploy additional active component soldiers without increasing the burden on those who have already deployed.

According to the latest version of the Congressional Research Service report -- U.S. Military Casualty Statistics: Operation New Dawn, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Operation Enduring Freedom (February 5, 2013), the cumulative total of all newly diagnosed PTSD cases, from 2000 through 2012, is 103,792 for service members who have deployed and 27,549 for those who have not deployed.