Casualty Rates of US Military Personnel During the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

Abstract

In Operation Iraqi Freedom, which ended in August 2010, nearly 3500 hostile deaths occurred among US military personnel and 32,000 more were wounded in action (WIA). More than 1800 hostile deaths occurred during Operation Enduring Freedom (in and around Afghanistan) through 2014 and about 20,000 were WIA. A larger proportion of wounded personnel survived in Iraq and Afghanistan than during the Vietnam War, but the increased survival rates were not as high as some studies have asserted. The survival rates were 90.2% in Iraq and 91.6% in Afghanistan, compared with 86.5% in Vietnam. The casualty rates varied between the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and before, during, and after the respective surges. Amputation rates are difficult to measure consistently, but I estimate that 2.6% of all WIA and 9.0% of medically evacuated WIA from the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters combined resulted in the major loss of a limb. Elevated non-hostile death rates (including deaths due to accidents, illnesses, homicides, or suicides) resulted in about 220 more deaths in Iraq and about 200 more deaths in Afghanistan than would have been expected in peacetime among populations of the size deployed to those two conflicts.     

新疆生产建设兵团哈汉民族关系解读

新疆生产建设兵团在促进边疆社会发展和维护稳定方面发挥了十分重要的作用。兵团和谐的民族关系是兵团进一步发挥屯垦戍边历史作用的保证,通过对农八师哈萨克族与汉族杂居区的民族关系现状和传统风俗习惯的变迁对民族关系的影响的解读,进而进行经济学角度的分析,有利于我们把握兵团民族关系发展的规律。     

基于蒙特卡罗方法的多散射修正模型

针对现有的基于蒙特卡罗方法的非视线传输模型的不足和局限性,提出了基于蒙特卡罗方法的多散射修正模型,给出了模型的数学描述。利用坐标系变换方法,得出了光子迁移的坐标递推公式。设计了接收判断机制,给出了到达时间的计算公式。通过跟踪大量光子的随机迁移,验证了光子传输的多散射现象。绘制了接收天线功率密度曲线,模拟了脉冲展宽效应。比较结果表明,在满足单散射近似的条件下,该模型与Luett-gen单散射模型吻合较好;在不满足单散射近似条件时,该模型得出的接收功率密度大于Luettgen单散射模型的接收功率密度,分析了结果的正确性,并指出了现有模型信道零延迟的错误。理论分析表明,模型能准确反映信道的时延特性。     

How pressure for change challenge military organizational characteristics

This article elaborates on how structural, normative and functional pressures for change may challenge military organizational characteristics. We problematize theoretically and exemplify empirically what consequences these pressures can have on military organizational characteristics, arguing that they constitute major challenges for managing in particular normative pressures for change. The empirical examples suggest that bureaucratic, hierarchical, narcissistic and greedy traits of the organization are challenged by normative pressures such as value changes and normalization. Another source of challenge is professionalization processes. Structural challenges, on the other hand, are managed by the organization and do not seem to inhibit the workings of organizational characteristics. The plausibility probe conducted questions the sustainability of military organizational characteristics in their traditional disguise, in particular due to legitimacy concerns. It is suggested that future research should be directed towards analyzing how military organizations manage pressure for change and whether their characteristics are questioned.     

Military Spending,Conflict and External Debt in Sub-Saharan Africa

The damaging economic effects of the debt crises on Africa in the late 1980s encouraged considerable research on the determinants of external debt in developing economies. Although sub-Saharan Africa's (SSA) debt was cut by two-thirds by 2008, through two debt relief programmes, debt in the region has since been rising at an increasingly rapid pace. This study provides an empirical analysis of the determinants of external debt in SSA over the period 1960–2016, using dynamic panel methods. It also considers two potentially important factors that have received relatively little attention. One is military spending, rarely considered, despite a number of well-publicised scandals over the procurement of unnecessary and expensive high-tech weapons systems. A second, is the possibility that the countries studied have been involved in conflict. The empirical results point to a positive impact of military spending on external debt, but with some evidence of heterogeneity across the countries. Furthermore, findings indicate that the positive effect of military expenditure on debt becomes more marked in countries that have been affected by conflict. These results imply that policies to improve security and reduce military spending could be beneficial in reducing external debt and, potentially, improving economic performance in the region.     

仿射不变轮廓矩及其稳定性分析

针对区域矩需要计算全图像素的统计分布、计算量大的问题,构造了基于目标形状的仿射不变轮廓矩。首先采用PDE方法推导得到了6个仿射不变矩的数学模型,然后将积分区间变为目标区域的边界,计算得到基于目标形状的仿射不变轮廓矩,最后通过三类舰船不同姿态下的图像进行了实验验证并对其稳定性进行了分析。研究结果表明:仿射不变轮廓矩具有较好的稳健性及区分度,可将其作为不变特征用于舰船目标识别。     

National security,military spending and the business cycle

This paper develops a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium model where national security is an argument in the agent’s utility function and the government chooses optimally the level of military spending to maximize social welfare. National defense depends on military expenditure and on the strategic environment reflecting a potential hostile external threat. We use aggregate data on consumption, investment, and military spending for the US economy to estimate the parameters of the model. Estimation results suggest that consumption and national defense are complements and that military spending variability is mainly explained by external threat shocks although it also depends on the macroeconomic conditions. We compute impulse response functions of the main macroeconomic variables to several shocks: a total factor productivity shock, a defense technology shock, and a strategic environment shock. Surprisingly, we find that the optimal response to an increase in the external threat (a worsening in the strategic environment) will rise output by reducing consumption and increasing investment.     

Military expenditure and income distribution in South Korea

This paper attempts to investigate the long-run and the causal relationship between military expenditure and income distribution in South Korea for the period 1965–2011. Applying the bounds test approach to cointegration, we found a long-run relationship between military expenditure and the Gini coefficient with military expenditure having a positive and a statistically significant impact on income inequality. A 1% rise in military expenditure increased the Gini coefficient by 0.38%. Application of the lag-augmented causality test also reveals a unidirectional causality running from military expenditure to income inequality. The evidence seems to suggest that devoting more resources to the military sector may further worsen income inequality in South Korea.     

Military support and transnational terrorism

Analysing the relationship between the provision of military support and the probability of becoming the target of a terrorist attack, this paper contributes to the literature on the causes of transnational terrorism. We find that deployment of military troops of country X in country Y increases the probability of a terrorist attack on citizens of country X by a terrorist group located in country Y. Exporting weapons to country Y seems to increase the probability of being attacked by the terrorists of this country Y as well. Deploying materials, however, does not seem to significantly influence the probability of attack. Including lagged values for our military support variables ensures that the causality direction is from military support to terrorist attacks. Moreover, these results indicate that while the effect of military deployment on the probability of attack lasts for more than 1 year, the effect is rather short-lived.     

The war after next is here – what does the elephant look like?

A comprehensive paradigm of future wars can be defined, and is called in this article “Extended conflicts.” These can be characterized by strategic attrition, to which all national resources and all possible international legitimacy are mobilized, in order to achieve a resolution by transformation of the opponent. The use of military force in this kind of conflict is limited. The understanding that we are facing an era of extended conflicts will improve the way it is utilized.