Approximately 200 U.S. service members have been injured during the roughly first two weeks of war against Iran, 30 of whom have yet to be cleared to return to duty, a CENTCOM spokesperson confirmed to the Washington Examiner on Friday.
The vast majority of the injured service members came during the first weekend of operations, CENTCOM spokesman Capt. Tim Hawkins said, but the tally continues to climb because traumatic brain injuries do not always immediately cause noticeable symptoms.
Earlier Friday, during a Pentagon press briefing, War Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine declined to provide a tally for the number of U.S. casualties, though both said the vast majority of injured service members sustained minor injuries and have returned to duty. One hundred seventy of the 200 service members injured in the conflict have returned to duty, Hawkins said.
“A bunch have returned to duty,” Caine said when asked by the Washington Examiner during Friday morning’s briefing at the Pentagon, adding, “The large, large majority have gone in for some medical treatment and returned to duty.”
He noted that American service members have been wounded or killed in Kuwait, Jordan, and “down across the southern flank a little bit, a variety of places,” and said most of the injuries were as a result of Iran’s one-way attack drones.
Six U.S. service members were killed and several others injured when a one-way attack drone hit a military operations center in Kuwait in the opening days of the war. A seventh American service member was killed in Saudi Arabia.
Hegseth added that “almost 90% — thank God — are returned to duty, minor injuries.”
Neither official addressed the remaining service members who suffered more severe injuries.
The department’s last estimate, from Tuesday, was that roughly 140 service members had been injured and that 108 had already returned to duty, indicating their injuries were not severe, though that equates to roughly 77% of troops injured. In that estimate, which was from Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell, it also said eight service members had been “severely injured and are receiving the highest level of medical care.”
On Thursday, since the last Pentagon casualty update, four additional U.S. service members died in a KC-135 aircraft incident that is under investigation, and there are rescue operations underway for two others who were on board at the time.
“War is hell,” Hegseth said Friday. “War is chaos, and as we saw yesterday with the tragic crash of our KC-135 tanker, bad things can happen.”
Pending the rescue operations, the U.S. military fatality count is now in double figures.
UKRAINE LOOKS TO PROVE ITS VALUE TO AMERICA WITH DRONE ASSISTANCE
“Rescue efforts continue,” Central Command said in a statement. “The circumstances of the incident are under investigation. However, the loss of the aircraft was not due to hostile fire or friendly fire.”
The identities of the service members who died in the accident have not been released yet, pending next-of-kin notifications.
