Yeah, one of the problems with combat is that it's unpredictable. Over much of the last 20 years, we (American troops) rarely had the initiative. Instead we sat

Yeah, one of the problems with combat is that it's unpredictable. Over much of the last 20 years, we (American troops) rarely had the initiative. Instead we sat, drove, or walked around essentially waiting to get attacked. Deliberate raids were done almost exclusively by a small cadre of Special Operations folks. So the choice was to wear hearing protection all the time, which seems unreasonable[1], or not be wearing it at all when a rocket or mortar randomly impacted or a car bomb exploded nearby or a fight broke out. Of course, I'd also bet that most people didn't have their hearing damaged "in combat" because most people didn't see combat, or certainly didn't see much of it. I would bet that most damage was done on live-fire ranges in training, where we have whole days of rounds popping off, or working around aircraft, where there's no excuse for not wearing hearing protection. [1] Although we eventually mandated eye protection whenever people were outdoors in Afghanistan. Getting everyone to comply with that policy, as a leader, was hard.