Nearly five months have passed, and more than 440 U.S. service members have been injured in the Middle East since the last time War Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, briefed the media on the state of the Iran war.
The last time they took the podium in the Pentagon Briefing Room was on May 5. It had been about a month since President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire with Iran, and it occurred as U.S. forces were carrying out a blockade of Iranian ports while trying to assist commercial vessels in transiting the Strait of Hormuz without coming under Iranian attack, which U.S. troops are still doing now.
The Pentagon’s public casualty tracker, known as the Defense Casualty Analysis System, reports that as of Wednesday, more than 860 U.S. troops have been injured in the war. Ninety-five U.S. service members in the Middle East have been injured in Iranian attacks this month alone. Zero service members were injured in August, while 348 troops were wounded in July.
The database does not specify the severity of a person’s injuries or where they sustained their wounds. Pentagon leaders have not provided details, either, of recent attacks on U.S. forces that account for the nearly 100 injuries this month alone.
Eight Marines were injured in a reported Sept. 14 attack on a maritime vessel, all of whom returned to duty shortly thereafter, NBC reported. The military has not confirmed that this attack took place or that Marines were wounded in it.
U.S. Central Command said on Sept. 8 that Iranian forces “targeted a U.S. Navy warship with ballistic missiles twice over the past two days,” and “no American personnel were harmed.” It also said the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps tried to attack a U.S. aircraft carrier and guided-missile destroyer on Sept 5, but all “IRGC attempts against U.S. Navy warships have failed.”
CENTCOM did not respond to a request for comment regarding recent attacks on U.S. forces. The Pentagon directed the Washington Examiner to CENTCOM when reached for comment.
In total, the DCAS reports 861 U.S. personnel sustained injuries since the military started the war on Feb. 28. More than half of those injuries occurred after Trump announced the April ceasefire.
Hegseth has taken a handful of questions at public events with the media that’s selected to travel with him. When asked by the Washington Examiner in Wisconsin in late August about a previous increase in casualty numbers, the secretary said, “I can tell you that databases play catch-up sometimes. We’ve been transparent about it the entire time.”
Nineteen U.S. service members have been killed during the war, according to the DCAS, following the death of Capt. Bianca Wilkerson, 37, of Norfolk, Virginia, an Army officer who experienced a medical emergency Sept. 18 while flying to the Middle East. Two other service members died of noncombat injuries in the Middle East since the war began, and their deaths are not listed in the DCAS category for the Iran war. Sgt. Devin Seibel died in Erbil, Iraq, on May 31 in a training exercise while Maj. Sorffly Davis died after sustaining a medical emergency in Kuwait and died on March 6.
The military has long faced questions during wartime about the push-and-pull between transparency and operational security.
“I think the American people deserve to understand what the cost of war is, and public reporting on our casualties should be done as fast as possible,” retired Gen. Joseph Votel told the Washington Examiner.
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Votel, who served as the commander of CENTCOM about a decade ago, noted that social media has made the subject of verification and transparency “more difficult.”
“I think it is more difficult to operate in this information-heavy environment,” he said. “Oftentimes, the media or the internet reports on activities before we have an opportunity to confirm the facts. This is not new, and it is something we contended with in Iraq and Afghanistan. We want to be fast, but we also want to be as accurate as possible with the public.”
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
