Attention Statisticians - Iraq - When's Critical Mass?

[number six]

Maybe someone with better bandwith than me can work this out.

Number of US Combat Units in Iraq.

Number of Infantry per unit.

Number of dead and injured since operations began.

Average rate of loss per day of US soldiers.

Number of available replacements.

It strikes me that at some point this becomes unsustainable.

So, the question is...When's Critical Mass?

[dsc]

1. Arguably we are already there

People are refusing to enlist, guardsmen aren't reuping, and we have extended tours to over a year. But we are no where near a literal breaking point since we aren't drafting yet.

[number six]

2. Right. I should probably reword things - a draft would be pretty critical

Political Suicide for Bush et al

[Screaming Lord Byron]

3. The actual number of US infantry in Iraq is pretty low.

There's no actual danger for the forseeable future, but if the average goes up to 8-10 per day, that's pretty much an endgame. Not even Bush can survive that.

[thebigidea]

5. huh?!

"There's no actual danger for the forseeable future"

uh, no danger? To whom?

[Screaming Lord Byron]

6. Sorry. No actual danger of running out of manpower.

On second glance that post looks pretty heartless. I was looking at statistics. My apologies.

[Spazito]

4. I thought I read that critical mass would occur in March of 2004...

but, given the way this admin "plans" things, I bet that calculation was based on losing less soldiers than is actually happening.

[RedEarth]

7. An army general on one of the morning news shows

indicated that the military is pretty well maxed-out now. This is due to deployment in not only Iraq, but also other parts of the world...ie, Korea, Afgan, etc. Consequently, he said the ability of the US to send more of our troops to Iraq is not feasible. According to this retired general, troops from other countries would be the only way to substanially increase manpower. So it appears we are nearing a "critical mass" at least for our troops.

Once again, the lack of planning and arroggance on the part of this admin has come to light.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

8. As I understand it, the units in Iraq are.

1st Armd Div, 4th Mech Div, 101st Abn Div, 82nd Abn Div, 2nd ACR (Regt?) 3rd ACR (Regt?) 173rd Abn Bde, 1st and 3rd Bdes (1st Mech Div) plus about 5 brigades of Military Police.
Bloody hell, that's most of the US army!

[alfredo]

9. this mess raises the chances for a nuclear exchange.

If North Korea attacks the south, we would not have the numbers to stop them. the only way we could stop them is through nuclear weapons.

[July]

10. Someone has already looked into this

I've been trying to find the piece I read recently -- could be dailykos or talkingpointsmemo -- that had figures for the first 2 or 3 years of the Vietnam war (which is what we should be comparing Iraq numbers with, obviously; 1968 is clearly a way to make current numbers look small, in that compassionate conservative way). At any rate, our losses in less than a year are similar to early Vietnam, maybe increasing at a slightly higher rate. Darn! Wish I could figure out where it was. I've been checking out archives at both sites mentioned above. Did anyone else see this?

[Screaming Lord Byron]

11. If we calculate as a percentage - we're looking at 81,000 combat troops

of which , what 40% would be front-line (help me out, veterans!) so they're going to be the vast majority of casualties. The US has 377 dead since the invasion and 2149 injured (thanks lunaville) which from a front-line number of 35,000 (?) is pretty substantial. This is rough guesswork, I'd appreciate some expert help.