Defense

The Department of Defense records 7,087 U.S. military deaths in the 6 named operations it reports on, 5,473 of them classed as hostile, and 53,978 service members wounded in action.

The national picture

7,087
Deaths: in 6 named operations; 5,473
Hostile: as the Department classes them; 53,978
Wounded in action: across the same operations

What stands out

Five findings. From the Department of Defense's casualty tables for each named operation, each finding assembled from values a query returned.

Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom account for 6,768 of the 7,087 deaths in the 6 named operations, 95.5%. Iraq and Afghanistan →
Iraq 4,418, Afghanistan 2,350.
In Operation Inherent Resolve 25 of 123 deaths were hostile, 20.3%; in Operation Iraqi Freedom it was 78.8%. Hostile deaths →
Every other death is counted by the Department as non-hostile or pending, which includes deaths whose cause has not been determined.
DMDC records 53,978 wounded in action across the named operations, 7.6 for every one of the 7,087 deaths. Wounded in action →
1,614 of the 7,087 deaths in the named operations were not hostile. Accidents were 941 of them, 58.3%, and 390 were recorded as self-inflicted. Non-hostile deaths →
The categories are the Department's own. A death still under investigation is counted as it is recorded, pending or undetermined, and not assigned a cause here.
Operation Epic Fury, the newest operation in DMDC's tables, has recorded 14 deaths and 418 wounded in action since February 2026. Operation Epic Fury →

Deaths by year

Deaths in the named operations peaked at 1,019 in 2007; 2025 recorded 4

U.S. military deaths in every operation the Defense Casualty Analysis System names, together, by the calendar year of death. Each death belongs to one operation, so a year counts nobody twice.

2026 is not drawn: DMDC's tables run part of the way through it (15 deaths so far), and a partial year is not a year.

One Operation Iraqi Freedom death has no date in DMDC's records, so it is in the operation totals and in no year.

Source: The Defense Casualty Analysis System

About this chart

The figures

Deaths in the named operations peaked at 1,019 in 2007; 2025 recorded 4. U.S. military deaths in every operation the Defense Casualty Analysis System names, together, by the calendar year of death. Each death belongs to one operation, so a year counts nobody twice.
Year	Deaths	Hostile	Non-hostile or pending	Wounded in action
2001	11	3	8	33
2002	49	18	31	75
2003	531	332	199	2,528
2004	899	737	162	8,222
2005	943	739	204	6,218
2006	919	769	150	6,821
2007	1,019	847	172	6,882
2008	470	353	117	2,864
2009	460	345	115	2,855
2010	562	456	106	5,661
2011	470	394	76	5,455
2012	318	239	79	2,983
2013	132	91	41	1,369
2014	60	39	21	457
2015	29	11	18	82
2016	28	16	12	100
2017	40	17	23	137
2018	35	13	22	132
2019	35	20	15	208
2020	23	8	15	169
2021	20	13	7	80
2022	1	0	1	6
2023	3	0	3	90
2024	10	3	7	130
2025	4	2	2	3

Embed this chart

Paste this where you want the chart. The picture carries its title, source and credit, under the site’s license.

<figure style="margin:0;max-width:960px">
  <img src="https://americanfactbook.org/embed/chart/defense-deaths-by-year.svg" alt="Deaths in the named operations peaked at 1,019 in 2007; 2025 recorded 4" style="width:100%;height:auto" loading="lazy">
  <figcaption style="font:13px/1.4 system-ui,sans-serif">Chart: <a href="https://americanfactbook.org/defense">Deaths in the named operations peaked at 1,019 in 2007; 2025 recorded 4</a>, American Factbook, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY 4.0</a></figcaption>
</figure>

Deaths by service

The Army lost 5,112 of the 7,086 dated deaths, 72.1%

Deaths in every named operation together, by service, from the same monthly table as the chart above.

Source: The Defense Casualty Analysis System

About this chart

The figures

The Army lost 5,112 of the 7,086 dated deaths, 72.1%. Deaths in every named operation together, by service, from the same monthly table as the chart above.
Service	Deaths	Hostile	Non-hostile or pending	Wounded in action
Army	5,112	3,977	1,135	37,969
Marine Corps	1,502	1,247	255	13,680
Navy	263	155	108	1,210
Air Force	209	93	116	1,119

Embed this chart

Paste this where you want the chart. The picture carries its title, source and credit, under the site’s license.

<figure style="margin:0;max-width:960px">
  <img src="https://americanfactbook.org/embed/chart/defense-deaths-by-service.svg" alt="The Army lost 5,112 of the 7,086 dated deaths, 72.1%" style="width:100%;height:auto" loading="lazy">
  <figcaption style="font:13px/1.4 system-ui,sans-serif">Chart: <a href="https://americanfactbook.org/defense">The Army lost 5,112 of the 7,086 dated deaths, 72.1%</a>, American Factbook, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY 4.0</a></figcaption>
</figure>

The operations, by deaths

3 more columns on a wider screen

U.S. military deaths and wounded in action, by named operation, most deaths first
Operation	Casualties recorded	Deaths	Hostile	Non-hostile or pending	Wounded
Operation Iraqi Freedom	February 2003 to February 2012	4,418	3,481	937	31,994
Operation Enduring Freedom	October 2001 to May 2023	2,350	1,845	505	20,149
Operation Inherent Resolve	June 2014 to January 2026	123	25	98	499
Operation Freedom's Sentinel	February 2015 to January 2024	108	77	31	620
Operation New Dawn	September 2010 to April 2012	74	38	36	298
Operation Epic Fury	February 2026 to July 2026	14	7	7	418

What the military costs, and who it pays

The spending hub publishes these, from USAspending. Obligations and outlays are different measures, and none of these pages adds one to the other.

National Defense, the budget headingOutlays and obligations under the heading, by the agencies that report them.
The Department of DefenseWhat the department obligated in awards, by year, state and recipient.
The largest defense contractorsThe department’s contract recipients, ranked by obligations.
What the military buysThe department’s contracts by product and service code.
States by defense shareHow much of each state’s federal money is the Department of Defense’s.

Analysis

Each brief is prose written around values a query returned. Every figure in one is re-checked against its query before it can merge, so a number in the text cannot drift from the data behind it.

Two official figures for what the military costs
Ask what the United States spends on its military and the federal government gives two official answers, from the same API, for the same year. In fiscal year 2025 the budget heading called National Defense carried $1.30 trillion of outlays. The Department of Defense reported $501.6 billion of obligations on awards.
American Factbook Research · September 24, 2026

What this data cannot show

An operation is the Department of Defense’s named campaign, not a declaration of war. A death outside a named operation is not in these figures.
Hostile and non-hostile or pending are the Department’s categories: its tables head the second “Non-Hostile/Pending Deaths”, so a death not yet determined is counted there. The figures say who died and how the Department classified it, not why.
Wounded in action are reported by month and service only; the publisher does not break them down by category.
The Defense Manpower Data Center revises its tables as records are completed, and each figure carries the publisher’s own extraction date.
The spending figures linked from this hub are the spending hub’s: obligations and outlays as USAspending reports them, which are not the same measure and are never added together.
The months beside each operation are the first and last in which the publisher records a casualty, not the dates the operation began or ended. These are its tables as of September 23, 2026.

The full method: How the defense casualty figures are made.

Everything in this hub

Every page in this topic, by kind: 14 in all.

Questions

One question per page, answered in the first sentence with the figure.

Operations

U.S. military deaths and wounded in one named operation, by year, service and the Department’s casualty category.

Names of the fallen

Each operation’s names, in the order the Department’s list gives them, each leading to the record.

Sources

Defense Casualty Analysis System — casualty summaries by operation — U.S. Department of Defense, Defense Manpower Data Center · U.S. Government work · retrieved September 24, 2026

Compiled automatically from Defense Casualty Analysis System — casualty summaries by operation by a checked SQL query · Editor: Kian O'Connor · How this site is built

Data retrieved September 24, 2026