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I served in the military for twenty three years. My sample size is thousands of times yours. The odds are very low.

by jki275 7y ago

dragonwriter 7y ago
> The odds are very low. The odds are very high for post-9/11 veterans (and higher the more of their period of service is post-9/11 within that group), who are more likely to have been deployed and seen combat than veterans of earlier eras (both because of optempo and organizational changes that have increased the teeth to tail ratio of uniformed services as support functions have been moved to contracted support.) There are ample actual studies of this, we don't need to rely on the “sample size” of competing anecdotal reports.
- jki275 7y ago
  No, they’re not. I retired last year. I deployed to Afghanistan multiple times. I’m literally someone who experienced the life you’re trying to tell me about. Your studies are mostly bullshit written to drive an agenda.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > Your studies are mostly bullshit written to drive an agenda. It could be that that's true of of a variety of scientific studies from diverse sources with no reason to have common agenda, or it could be that that's just true of your unsubstantiated pseudonymous anecdotal ranting in an internet discussion board.
    - jki275 7y ago
      Cite the studies and I'll be glad to explain to you why they don't say what you believe they do, or why their methodology is laughably incorrect. Again, btdt. I don't need a think tank to write a paper to tell me how the military works.
- ThrowawayR2 7y ago
  This discussion interested me enough to do some casual Googling. The US military's statistics from 2011 say that only 15% of service members are actually involved in combat roles; slightly over 1 in 7. See figure 2 and figure 4 here: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Improving-the-DoD's-Tooth-to-Tail-Ratio.-Revision-Gansler-Lucyshyn/faa8140d24e8d909d3bf519146d5cf6b96369b8b https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Improving-the-DoD's-To.... And, of course, not every service member who is in a combat role gets PTSD or injuries. If you have current tooth-to-tail estimates, they'd be interesting to see.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    It's hard to find any simple, clear, current figures, but this has a historical study for deployed units through Iraq 2005 (which clearly isn't exactly what we want), and it shows (in the counts that don't include contractors for Iraq 2005, so the ones that are actually addressing uniformed personnel and using the same standards as earlier figures) the highest tooth to tail ratio since WWII, as part of a late (relative to the whole period of study) reversal of what had for most of the post-WWII period been a trend of decreasing the tooth-to-tail ratio. https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/combat-studies-institute/csi-books/mcgrath_op23.pdf https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/combat-studies-ins...
  - btilly 7y ago
    You do not have to be in a combat role to see combat, get PTSD, or get injured. My nephews serve as examples. Their non-combat roles were heavy construction, setting up communication networks, and airplane mechanic. However all three actually saw combat. 2 wound up with PTSD. And one wound up seriously injured when the plane that was delivering him to a secret mission got shot down en route. In fact according to some estimates, the prevalence of PTSD among veterans of the Iraq war exceeds the fraction who were supposedly in combat roles.
    - jki275 7y ago
      Anybody can "some estimate" anything. My guess is that they're using figures from the massive amount of fraudulent PTSD claims submitted to the VA. PTSD is the easiest diagnosis to get through the VA, and thus it is rife with fraud. As a result, it is quite difficult to get anything approaching accurate or useful numbers for it.
- jki275 7y ago
  I'm still waiting to see the studies that the odds are "very high" that us veterans have PTSD. Not holding my breath here, but you've made the claim based on your anecdotes and a claim that "ample actual studies exist", so I'd like to see it.

I served in the military for twenty three years. My sample size is thousands of times yours. The odds are very low.

by jki275 7y ago

I served in the military for twenty three years. My sample size is thousands of times yours. The odds are very low.

> The odds are very low. The odds are very high for post-9/11 veterans (and higher the more of their period of service is post-9/11 within that group), who are more likely to have been deployed and seen combat than veterans of earlier eras (both because of optempo and organizational changes that have increased the teeth to tail ratio of uniformed services as support functions have been moved to contracted support.) There are ample actual studies of this, we don't need to rely on the “sample size” of competing anecdotal reports.

jki275 7y ago
No, they’re not. I retired last year. I deployed to Afghanistan multiple times. I’m literally someone who experienced the life you’re trying to tell me about. Your studies are mostly bullshit written to drive an agenda.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > Your studies are mostly bullshit written to drive an agenda. It could be that that's true of of a variety of scientific studies from diverse sources with no reason to have common agenda, or it could be that that's just true of your unsubstantiated pseudonymous anecdotal ranting in an internet discussion board.
  - jki275 7y ago
    Cite the studies and I'll be glad to explain to you why they don't say what you believe they do, or why their methodology is laughably incorrect. Again, btdt. I don't need a think tank to write a paper to tell me how the military works.
ThrowawayR2 7y ago
This discussion interested me enough to do some casual Googling. The US military's statistics from 2011 say that only 15% of service members are actually involved in combat roles; slightly over 1 in 7. See figure 2 and figure 4 here: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Improving-the-DoD's-Tooth-to-Tail-Ratio.-Revision-Gansler-Lucyshyn/faa8140d24e8d909d3bf519146d5cf6b96369b8b https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Improving-the-DoD's-To.... And, of course, not every service member who is in a combat role gets PTSD or injuries. If you have current tooth-to-tail estimates, they'd be interesting to see.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  It's hard to find any simple, clear, current figures, but this has a historical study for deployed units through Iraq 2005 (which clearly isn't exactly what we want), and it shows (in the counts that don't include contractors for Iraq 2005, so the ones that are actually addressing uniformed personnel and using the same standards as earlier figures) the highest tooth to tail ratio since WWII, as part of a late (relative to the whole period of study) reversal of what had for most of the post-WWII period been a trend of decreasing the tooth-to-tail ratio. https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/combat-studies-institute/csi-books/mcgrath_op23.pdf https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/combat-studies-ins...
- btilly 7y ago
  You do not have to be in a combat role to see combat, get PTSD, or get injured. My nephews serve as examples. Their non-combat roles were heavy construction, setting up communication networks, and airplane mechanic. However all three actually saw combat. 2 wound up with PTSD. And one wound up seriously injured when the plane that was delivering him to a secret mission got shot down en route. In fact according to some estimates, the prevalence of PTSD among veterans of the Iraq war exceeds the fraction who were supposedly in combat roles.
  - jki275 7y ago
    Anybody can "some estimate" anything. My guess is that they're using figures from the massive amount of fraudulent PTSD claims submitted to the VA. PTSD is the easiest diagnosis to get through the VA, and thus it is rife with fraud. As a result, it is quite difficult to get anything approaching accurate or useful numbers for it.
jki275 7y ago
I'm still waiting to see the studies that the odds are "very high" that us veterans have PTSD. Not holding my breath here, but you've made the claim based on your anecdotes and a claim that "ample actual studies exist", so I'd like to see it.