TEN WAYS TO FIX THE U.S. MILITARY’S CLOSE COMBAT LETHALITY

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Last month, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis directed the establishment of a Close Combat Lethality Task Force. The task force’s mission is to improve the “combat preparedness, lethality, survivability, and resiliency of our Nation’s ground close-combat formations.” This encompasses U.S. Army, Marine Corps, and Special Operations Command infantry small units such as those described in this gut-wrenching story from Niger and this article from Afghanistan. These units comprise less than 4 percent of the Defense Department’s total personnel strength. Combined, the people that serve in these units can fit in the seats of any single NFL stadium. Yet, as Secretary Mattis described in the memorandum that established this task force, they “have historically accounted for almost 90 percent of our casualties.”