Cost per Soldier vs Wounded per Killed Ratio

i would also like to see the numbers for kills of each soldier in each of those time periods.

addition to that you need to take inflation into account... i think the contract price colt sells rifles to the US gov is 1300 each? (its a BS contract they muscled their way into)

the argument of how much soldiers get paid is for another thread, but they were told they are no longer allowed to wear non issue body armor. on top of that they are redesigning GI body armor.

i think they need to take politics out of govt contracts, they say lowest bidder, but its whoever is on their knees for the govt, they charge an outrageous amount for a shoddy product.

all that being said i dont think a price tag should be put on American lives. if theres a product that will reduce injuries/deaths of ours or increase injuries/deaths of theirs im all for it.

EDIT:im purity sure when a soldier gets wounded or killed and gear is damaged or lost they pay for it. if GI joe gets shot in the chest and they cut his body armor off and leave it on the road he flips the bill. all this gear isent so much given to them but checked out and there is a tab kept.

someone want to chime in on this?

Edited by merc - 14 February 2009 at 8:14am

being that i was not specifically talking about infantry men and the point i was trying to make is that not only the defensive capabilities increase with the money so does the offensive capabilities.

the more effective a soldier is (infantry, armor or support.) the less soldiers we need to put in harms way.

being a government worker and in a military family i can tell you firsthand that 90% of US military and government workers are overpaid for the AMOUNT of work they do. (thats why we can hire contractors for less and get more done)

edit: another big factor in the injury to death ratio is advances in the medical industry, that along with better communication, and faster evacuation times increase the survival rate in wounded soldiers.

Edited by merc - 14 February 2009 at 9:36am

I'll post on this when I get to work around noon. I've got more than a few cents to add.

It's allowed to be used in the US, it just really hasn't taken off. There are a few places that I know of, one in Mo, that use it, but in general it hasn't seen widespread use sadly. It is pretty much deemed as too costly.

I don't see many urban places using it because the transport times to a ED are very low. The place where I see it will be used the most are rural areas with extended transport times. It's much cheaper for a medic to start and IV and do use saline then it is to spend $40 on a small QuikClot sponge.

Fantastic item, but until private companies, and public entities, realize that the cost is worth it when needed, it might be a while.



PS-- What do you guys to for a hemo-pneumo? Are any of your medics trained on chest tubes?

Edited by Linus - 14 February 2009 at 11:12am

Linus,

Bri, quick clotting agents haven't caught on so quickly for hospitals and EMT units over here, but you find them in ever ZEE Medical (R) first-aid kit in restaurants stateside. That stuff is a lifesaver for serious cuts in my industry.

I wanted to tack some thoughts onto the whole medic/vs soldier cost bit that was posted before.

Medical advances are only part of a triumvirate of advances in warfare that have kept the the dead-to-casualty rate low over the past half-century.

It started in WWII with the establishment of aid stations and field hospitals just a short distance from the front which aided in expediting the process of lifesaving. While the death rate was still higher, it wasn't as high as the chart above would suggest. Many woundings were never reported unless they were serious enough to have a man taken off the line for an extended period (over 2 days). Furthermore, if you made it to an aid station within 30 minutes of a serious wound, your chances of survival increased by 75%. If you made it to field hospital with a serious wound, you chances went up another 75% from there. It was the first war in which anything more than a grazing shot didn't spell death or amputation for soldiers in the US and allied armies. (well, maybe not Russia)

However, the medical advances are only one part of the increased survivability of warfare. Our tactics have adapted and evolved to the point where we no longer rely on the massed infantry charge to obtain objectives. We continue to use more remote means to neutralize an enemy threat and use the infantryman as the mop-up and holding element. As Bri stated, infantry are used to hold real-estate. The British learned this the hard way in WWII when they attempted to hook around the right flank of Caen in the early days of Overlord. Their armored units were made up of ex-cavalrymen who saw the infantry as un-necessary. They quickly found out that tanks cannot hold a line by themselves. Now, more than ever, with our adapted UAVs and their incursions into enemy strongholds, the need to put men into harms way is greatly reduced.

That brings me to the third part of what is keeping our soldiers alive at a far greater rate; the equipment. Not only have our defensive equipment capabilities (composite body armor, kevlar, etc) increased, but our offensive capabilities have as well. In WWII, the casualty breakdown for an operation usually went something like this:

Infantry: 35%
Armor: 30%
Artillery: 25%
Non combat personnel: 10%

Now, the Artillery and Armor rates of casualty are significantly lower than the Infantry rates due to the fact that the enemy has no counter-battery capabilities to speak of, our tanks are tougher to knock out than an older German Tiger MK-IV, and the traditional combat operations that these two positions used to take part in are long-gone.

Rear unit casualties and infantry casualties have also gone down in number, but their percentage of a whole have gone up because they are the most exposed and the use of suicide bombs and now, IEDs put the rear echelons at more risk than they saw in traditional warfare.

None the less. It is simply stunning that we have lost fewer troops in the two fronts of Iraq and Afghanistan over 6 years than in any other conflict for the same amount of time.

halliburton did it

Linus wrote: Tallen; Those kits are so darn expensive. You can get a fully stocked BLS bag for half the price of what some of those things cost. OSHA induced?

You have to ask? Of course it's OSHA and FIOSH. The service isn't bad though, just the original start-up costs. They contract for a year at a time and re-fill the kit every 2-weeks to 1-month depending on how much stuff you go through.

not that many accidents, but we go through a metric ton of bandaids just for replacement dressings. Also, they make pills. Their pain-aid is a gift from God above. It's basically excedrine but I don't have to pay for it.

So, we don't go through as much supplies as it would make it expensive to re-stock. It's just nice that I don't have to keep an eye on it and run to the local safety-supply store myself.

I will say that we go through quick clotting powder with bartenders a whole lot given the fact that they break so many freaking glasses. Those Guinness pints.... not as sturdy as they look folks.

I'd have to check with the owner as he's the one that writes the checks, but it's much cheaper than running out to the store and purchasing at retail. The bandaids and bandages tend to be of a better quality as well. For instance, we use a blue adhesive bandage that has metal threads laced into it. The reason for the metal threads is that if you're working at a food processing plant, everything runs under a metal-detector before passing on to the next stage of processing. If one of those bandages makes it into the food prep, it'll halt the entire line.

I use them because the blue makes them very visible so I can see if someone's got a cut, and if so, are they wearing gloves.

It's also a better quality adhesive than you get with J&J or other companies. Sticks really well. So well, in fact, that you don't want to hydrogen-peroxide the area being bandaged if you want to get it off easily. Otherwise, it's stuck on there for a while.