How are American losses in modern ground conflicts so low?

Factual Questions
1

Obviously American equipment is 10 steps ahead over what Iraq or especially the Talibans had, but despite that, the losses somehow seem unnaturally low compared to other similar scenarios even when higher equipment and training levels are taken into account, especially in close quarter combat.

Example 1 - Afghanistan

  • There was 130K American and allied soldiers in Afghanistan at the start, 350k allied Afghan and +60k Taliban (in 2014) and other groups, per Wikipedia.

During the entire war, the allied Afghanistanis (which were trained by Americans) had 70k deaths, the Talibans had 50 thousand and Americans + allies…just three and a half thousand in all 20 years.

If the Americans and allies had proportionally the same loses as Afghan allies, it would be around 25k deaths, yet they had around 7 times smaller losses in comparison to the Afghan army which they trained and equipped. How is that even possible? Was their role just training ANA and only going into battle if they must or what?

Example 2 - Second battle of Falluja

The battle that most Americans consider an urban close quarters meat grinder has less than 100 American losses in a month and half of fighting.

There were several battles for Grozny, the infamous new year one had two thousand Russian losses, but even two other big ones in 1994 and 1996 both had around 500 losses, with one lasting for 14 days and the other lasting for just one day, yet for that one day there was 5 times more losses than Americans had in Falluja for a month and a half.

Example 3 - Iraq

In the entire 8.5 year Iraq war starting from the invasion, Americans and allied countries that had three hunded thousand soldiers, had less than 5 thousand losses.

That is about the same as how many losses Armenians had in the latest Karabakh war in just a month.

Is the American army that superior, is it picking easy targets or is it lettings the locals like ANA do the brunt of fighting while they support them?

2

Training, superior weapon technology and mission planning. The local forces are taking the brunt of the enemies contact and assult.

The American forces are very careful not to get into a situation where they are out numbered or out gunned. They also have massive air superiority and can most of the time easily call in for support rather than duke it out.

3

Close air support hideth a multitude of sins. That and a sometimes necessary allowance for collateral damage. The U.S. would much rather take out a block of buildings with Hellfires than put grunts into the meat-grinder of clearing the buildings the hard way. (Not a judgment call on my part. Just a statement of fact.)

4

I would also say that the American military has better access to superior medical treatment, so that what might be a lethal injury in other forces has a much higher level of recovery American forces.

Additionally, US troops may be more likely to be “professionally trained/disciplined”, and not subject to as many tactical mistakes has home grown troops.

5

This was what I was going to say, but I will also add in, better access to being able to access that treatment. Having the best docs in the world at your base doesn’t do you much good if you are stranded behind enemy lines. With our air superiority, there were few times when an injured soldier couldn’t be medevaced promptly.

6

This is a huge factor. Heliborne medevac has been nothing short of revolutionary. A major factor in the rapid collapse of the Afghan military is that the ANA and ANP had very little organic medevac and emergency trauma treatment capability, and up until the end were still dependent on the U.S. and other foreign militaries for medical support. After the U.S. withdrawal, Afghan soldiers and police knew their chances of surviving traumatic injuries dropped precipitously, literally almost overnight.

The U.S. military also has a very explicit “lessons learned” philosophy and a formal process for it, which is a major advantage in every area, but there’s one specific area that stood out to me personally.

When I went through Initial Entry Training in 1999-2001, I got a fair amount of training in battlefield first aid. We learned to control blood loss by applying dressing and moderate pressure, and if that didn’t stop the bleeding, heavy pressure, and if that didn’t stop the bleeding, then and only then, apply a tourniquet. There was a big emphasis that applying a tourniquet should be a last resort, because the risk of killing a limb was so high.

Fast forward a few years, and a lot of real world combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that training changed completely. From probably about 2004 (maybe earlier) until I got out in in 2007, the training heavily emphasized getting the bleeding to stop as soon as possible, and the escalating measures were completely tossed. Rather than treating tourniquets as a risky last resort, we were trained when in doubt, tourniquet. In the real world, the risk to life from shock and blood loss were much higher than the risk to limbs from loss of blood flow, and in most real world circumstances, medevacs would probably be able to respond before that was a major risk, anyway.

Another area area of technical superiority is armor. During the initial invasion of Iraq, the U.S. miltiary went in with a lot of unarmored or, as it turned out, unarmored vehicles. Again, after a couple of years of real world combat and lessons learned, everything was armored, often with multiple layers. Entirely new vehicles and armor systems were designed to deal with RPGs and IEDs. The amount and type of body armor individuals wore was constantly being upgraded.

When I deployed to Iraq in 2003, my Reserve unit had unarmored Humvees, and we wore helmets and soft body armor. When I deployed to Kuwait in 2005 to a rear echelon staff unit, I was issued body armor with plate inserts, and during that deployment, I was issued an improved helmet to replace the old one. That rear echelon staff had armored Humvees, and there was a crash program to up-armor every Humvee in the theater.

In contrast, during that same period, the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police and Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police were often going into combat with older helmets, no body armor, and commercial vehicles. U.S. forces had up-armored Humvees and specially-designed MRAP armored vehicles, with add-on anti-RPG slat armor, while a lot of their counterparts in the IA, IP, ANA, and ANP were riding into combat in Toyota pickups.

7

Major advantages in armaments, training, medical facilities, and combat experience, and for higher enemy casualties also the use of WMDs coupled with the effects of war, including disease and famine.

In relation to the first and second, the U.S. has spending levels that exceed that of the next 11 military powers combined. In terms of combat experience, it has decades, with some arguing that these wars are brought about by false flags and other events in order to not only justify military spending but to give military personnel experience:

In terms of losses in general and points about hunger and disease, I recall one article and one book refer to WW2 as a “people’s war” because many unarmed civilians died violently, and also indirectly, i.e., through hunger and disease, with many children and the elderly.

I think Hobsbawm argued that over 180 million died during the previous century due to war:

and probably many throughout the Cold War, where weaker countries were used for proxy wars.

For one study, the cost of post-9/11 wars has been around $8 trillion and up to a million lives lost, including almost 400,000 civilians:

For Iraq, the number of deaths due to violence is said to be between 150,000 to over 600,000:

8

@gdave , thanks for that long informative post. I recall reading somewhere that another reason was that it was discovered that tourniquets don’t actually tend to ruin limbs so much (or pose such a risk of toxins-being-released-back-into-the-body) after all and so that made the military a lot less hesitant to slap on tourniquets on bleeding troops, is that true?

9

I had the same army training as well as emergency wound training with police. Yes it was emphasized that a tourniquet is not as damaging as was thought in the past. I first joined in 1989 and my combat lifesaver course basically said if you put on a tourniquet you were going to lose the limb. Fast forward to a couple of years ago when we were issued our trauma kits at work and the combat medics teaching the class had us put tourniquets on ourselves and fully tighten them. I still have my arm.

10

There is another reason (which is probably not going to go down well here) is that in the Iraq and Afghanistan war, the US more or less conceded large parts of the countries territory to its opponents. Not always, but for the most part the US stuck in bases and would go out and patrol. Actually getting to a situation of controlling areas was rarely done and when it was, like during the surges, those were times that casualties increased.
The only equivalent recent example of a superpower versus an insurgency is the Russians in Chechnya and they did attempt to to control the entire territory (ultimately successfully) with correspondingly higher casualties.
Basically, politically it was more acceptable for the US to take 100 casualties a year, and not have control for years then a 1000 casualties in a 2 months and have the place brought under control.

11
  1. great Medical care for the troops in the field
  2. Never send an Infantryman where you can send an artillery shell, bomb, or missile.
12
  1. Have a political situation where not being in control of territory isn’t as important as avoiding casualties.