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2.77 Million Service Members Have Served On 5.4 Million Deployments Since 9/11 [Infographic]

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An analysis conducted by the RAND Corporation has shed light on the scale of U.S. military deployments since 9/11. Even though deployments abroad represent a key aspect of U.S. military service, they can prove highly disruptive to family life with some spouses reporting that their children experienced behavioral and peer-related problems during those long periods of absence. Since 2001, 2.77 million service members have served on 5.4 million deployments across the world with soldiers from the Army accounting for the bulk of them. Deployed personnel were under 30 years old on average, over half were married and about half had children.

In total, all services contributed 3.1 million troop-years of experience and 58 percent of those years can be attributed to the Army. According to RAND, 1.33 million individuals deployed with the Army between 2001 and 2015 (including the Reserve and National Guard), along with 563,000 from the Navy, 518,000 from the Air Force and 367,000 Marines. Considering the length of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a substantial number of those serving across all services have gone on several deployments. Around 225,000 soldiers who served with the Army deployed at least three times or more.

Some Americans, particularly those in the special forces community, have deployed even more frequently. Delta Force Master Sgt. Joshua L. Wheeler was the first U.S. soldier to die in combat against ISIS and the first American to lose his life in Iraq for four years. When he died on a raid that freed 70 Iraqi prisoners from captivity in 2015, it emerged afterwards that he was a veteran of 14 combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

*Click below to enlarge (charted by Statista)

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