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Iran war: Casualty count exceeds 600 as Pentagon changes accounting

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But this time, the Pentagon is in a hurry. The Iran war has exposed the problem of relying on costly long-range missiles such as the Tomahawk. To remedy that, DoD is putting out a call for long-range, autonomously guided Ground-Based Affordable Mass, or GBAM, weapons that cost less than $250,000 apiece.

The Pentagon also wants the GBAM munitions to be ready for demonstration within three months, and full-scale production within 18 months.

The goal of the GBAM initiative is to supplement expensive smart munitions with “affordable, scalable long-range effects, and “enable commanders to service a broader target set, preserve exquisite munitions for their intended purpose, and sustain operational tempo throughout a prolonged conflict.”

To facilitate that, the Defense Innovation Unit has created the GBAM Challenge. Contestants will pitch ideas in the form of a pitch deck or white paper, with a deadline of Aug. 5.

Winning teams will be invited to a Phase II flight demonstration at a government test site in early November, where they will give a 30-minute presentation — and get a $250,000 cash prize.

The top Phase II contenders may receive up to $5 million “to immediately deliver operational test quantities to units.” They may also be eligible for other funds, including Prototype Other Transaction agreements, follow-on production contracts and Small Business Innovation Research awards.

“In total, the government has budgeted up to $250 million to support prize execution and follow-on transition activities associated with this effort,” DIU pointed out.

However, grabbing that pot of gold will require much work. For starters, the timeline is tight. The Pentagon wants “mature, affordable, long-range precision strike systems that can be demonstrated within 60 to 90 days, certified, and scaled into production within 12 to 18 months.”

DIU doesn’t specify whether GBAM will be a missile or a drone, though it does say GBAM will be “aligned with the Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Unmanned Systems (DRPM-UxS) mandate to field low-cost autonomous capabilities at scale.”

Either way, the U.S. military wants a “favorable cost-per-effect at operationally relevant ranges while minimizing the logistical, training, and sustainment burden on employing units.” This means a ground-launched weapon with a range of at least 600 nautical miles, and a minimum payload of 35 pounds while ideally allowing for 100 pounds.

It should have automatic target recognition and autonomous terminal guidance, and be “ideally mission-proven” to function in jamming and GPS-denied environments. This includes “Alternative Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) or redundant navigation capabilities suitable for GPS/GNSS-denied operations in maritime and other ‘feature-poor’ environments.”

DIU is also looking for a weapon that doesn’t require any proprietary launch equipment, with “remote and low-signature launch methods strongly preferred.”

Companies should have an “existing production capacity or credible path to producing 100+ systems monthly.” And with a price tag of “cost-per-effect below $500,000 based on system reliability and mission success rate, with a sub-$250,000 all-up flyaway cost at scale.”

In addition to GBAM, the U.S. military is pursuing other strike weapons that don’t cost as much as traditional missiles, and can be mass produced as needed. They include the Family of Affordable Mass Missiles, or FAMM-BAR, program to launch cruise missiles from cargo planes, as well as the Low-Cost Containerized Missiles hypersonic weapons program.

But this time, the Pentagon is in a hurry. The Iran war has exposed the problem of relying on costly long-range missiles such as the Tomahawk. To remedy that, DoD is putting out a call for long-range, autonomously guided Ground-Based Affordable Mass, or GBAM, weapons that cost less than $250,000 apiece.

The Pentagon also wants the GBAM munitions to be ready for demonstration within three months, and full-scale production within 18 months.

The goal of the GBAM initiative is to supplement expensive smart munitions with “affordable, scalable long-range effects, and “enable commanders to service a broader target set, preserve exquisite munitions for their intended purpose, and sustain operational tempo throughout a prolonged conflict.”

To facilitate that, the Defense Innovation Unit has created the GBAM Challenge. Contestants will pitch ideas in the form of a pitch deck or white paper, with a deadline of Aug. 5.

Winning teams will be invited to a Phase II flight demonstration at a government test site in early November, where they will give a 30-minute presentation — and get a $250,000 cash prize.

The top Phase II contenders may receive up to $5 million “to immediately deliver operational test quantities to units.” They may also be eligible for other funds, including Prototype Other Transaction agreements, follow-on production contracts and Small Business Innovation Research awards.

“In total, the government has budgeted up to $250 million to support prize execution and follow-on transition activities associated with this effort,” DIU pointed out.

However, grabbing that pot of gold will require much work. For starters, the timeline is tight. The Pentagon wants “mature, affordable, long-range precision strike systems that can be demonstrated within 60 to 90 days, certified, and scaled into production within 12 to 18 months.”

DIU doesn’t specify whether GBAM will be a missile or a drone, though it does say GBAM will be “aligned with the Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Unmanned Systems (DRPM-UxS) mandate to field low-cost autonomous capabilities at scale.”

Either way, the U.S. military wants a “favorable cost-per-effect at operationally relevant ranges while minimizing the logistical, training, and sustainment burden on employing units.” This means a ground-launched weapon with a range of at least 600 nautical miles, and a minimum payload of 35 pounds while ideally allowing for 100 pounds.

It should have automatic target recognition and autonomous terminal guidance, and be “ideally mission-proven” to function in jamming and GPS-denied environments. This includes “Alternative Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) or redundant navigation capabilities suitable for GPS/GNSS-denied operations in maritime and other ‘feature-poor’ environments.”

DIU is also looking for a weapon that doesn’t require any proprietary launch equipment, with “remote and low-signature launch methods strongly preferred.”

Companies should have an “existing production capacity or credible path to producing 100+ systems monthly.” And with a price tag of “cost-per-effect below $500,000 based on system reliability and mission success rate, with a sub-$250,000 all-up flyaway cost at scale.”

In addition to GBAM, the U.S. military is pursuing other strike weapons that don’t cost as much as traditional missiles, and can be mass produced as needed. They include the Family of Affordable Mass Missiles, or FAMM-BAR, program to launch cruise missiles from cargo planes, as well as the Low-Cost Containerized Missiles hypersonic weapons program.

In its updated accounting method, the Defense Casualty Analysis System’s category labeled “Overseas Operations (OO) Casualty Summary” lists U.S. casualties suffered in the conflict since July 7 — effectively removing the totals from those associated with Operation Epic Fury.

The new page comes in the wake of criticism that the Pentagon had dropped the number of U.S. troops killed and wounded in the war with Iran.

On July 17 three U.S. service members were killed when an Iranian missile hit their sleeping barracks at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan. The fourth death occurred two days later in a separate incident in Erbil, Iraq, during a controlled detonation of an attack drone.

The Pentagon initially updated its system to 18 killed before lowering that number to 14 once again.

On July 23, Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman, refuted a New York Times article on the lowering of the KIA number, writing on X that “Our Pentagon Press Office gave the New York Times a courtesy off-the-record phone call explaining in detail that the site errors on the Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) were due to a temporary data disruption. Our team explained we are working on it being resolved in coordination with the Military Services.”

Under the “overseas operations” system, the Pentagon reports that 207 U.S. service members have been wounded in action. It lists 417 wounded during Operation Epic Fury. Combined, the two categories account for 624 wounded service members. The total number listed as killed is 18.

The post-July 7 tally comes one day prior to the collapse of the tenuous June ceasefire agreement between the U.S. and Iran, resulting in U.S. Central Command delivering 13 continuous nightly strikes against the Middle East nation.

The collapse of the ceasefire, the Trump administration argued, restarted the 60-day clock that allows the president to use military force without congressional approval.

The new accounting system is in line with President Donald Trump’s assertion that the latest escalation between the U.S. and Iran is part of a new conflict with the Islamic Republic, not a continuation of the one that began in February.

On July 10, the president formally notified Congress that hostilities with Iran had resumed, a position that administration officials contend allows them to bypass the War Powers Resolution and restart the clock again on the war.

In April, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth controversially claimed that the ceasefire with Iran meant that Trump did not yet have to seek congressional consent to extend the war.

Hegseth argued that the pause in hostilities froze the ticking clock that would otherwise require the president either to get agreement from lawmakers or to end military operations after 60 days.

“We are in a ceasefire right now, which [in] our understanding means the 60-day clock pauses, or stops,” Hegseth told Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

“I do not believe the statute would support that,” Kaine said, adding that he has “serious constitutional concerns and we don’t want to layer those with additional statutory concerns.”

Congress has not technically declared war since World War II, and yet more than 100,000 service members have died in conflicts spanning the globe since 1945.

Source: YouTube

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Pentagon invests MILLIONS to close skilled trades gap

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The new figures bring the current total of U.S. troops wounded in the war to 624, according to the Defense Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS. As of Friday, DCAS listed the number of troops injured in the conflict at 420.

The new system, mirroring labels announced by the Pentagon in recent weeks, removes most casualties in July from the tallies of Operation Epic Fury, and puts them instead in a new category, “Overseas Operations.”

Officials also split how they account for the 18 troops killed in the conflict, moving four from Epic Fury into Overseas Operations, including three soldiers killed July 17 in an Iranian attack in Jordan and another killed during a controlled detonation of a downed Iranian drone in Iraq. Those four had been removed from the Pentagon tally late last week, prompting outrage from families of soldiers killed in July.

The new count begins for casualties on July 7, a date the Pentagon has claimed represented the end of Epic Fury. The Trump administration has argued this month that the operation ended on that date with the announcement of a short-lived ceasefire, reseting a legally-mandated 60-day clock to use military force without Congressional approval.

However, the pre- and post-July 7 fighting has been largely similar, with U.S. bombing missions trading blows with waves of Iranian missiles and drones. Trump himself has posted on social media that the “Iran Military Conflict” has seen 18 American service members killed, which includes the four killed after July 7.

Changing casualty numbers

The new figures represent close to 200 more wounded troops — mostly Army soldiers — than previously disclosed. According to DCAS, 182 of the 207 troops wounded since July 7 are soldiers, while 21 are from the Navy. Four airmen have also been wounded.

The move came following a week of unexplained revisions in the Pentagon data. Thursday, the Pentagon scrubbed the July deaths of four Army soldiers from its official count of U.S. troops killed in the Iran war, and removed 65 injured military members from the tally of those wounded-in-action.

Not in question is that 18 specific American military members have died in the conflict, each of whom have been identified by the Pentagon by name and memorialized as combat casualties in the war. The military does not generally identify troops wounded in combat, nor classify injuries.

Pentagon officials offered little explanation for the changes prior to the two-period update Saturday.

A spokesperson for the Pentagon’s Personnel and Readiness office, which maintains DCAS, did not provide an explanation for the changes last week. U.S. Central Command officials said they do not “manage” or “own” the DCAS website.

Defense officials first indicated on Thursday that they were reclassifying the four soldiers killed and dozens of wounded in July due to Trump’s declared ceasefire. But a spokesperson for the Pentagon told multiple news outlets in a statement on Thursday that the shifting tallies stemmed from “temporary data disruptions” on the DCAS website that would soon be corrected. 

Other U.S. troops killed in the conflict include six soldiers killed in Port Shuaiba, Kuwait attack; one soldier killed in an attack in Saudi Arabia; six airmen who died in a KC-135 crash in Iraq and a Navy helicopter pilot on the USS George H.W. Bush who died in a crash in the Arabian Sea.

Pentagon has questionable history of reporting wounded U.S. troops

The DCAS website discrepancy comes amid other reporting calling the Pentagon’s casualty rates into question. The Intercept first reported in April that casualty counts were being undervalued. Later that month, the outlet also noticed that 15 injured service members had been cut from the wounded in action totals. 

This past week, before the latest figures, the Associated Press reported that the true number of Americans wounded in the Iran war is now over 500 and CBS reported that nearly 100 service members were injured from multiple Iranian airstrikes this month alone. Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said that 96% of service members had returned to duty. Parnell described the majority of injuries as “minor concussions.”

In a New York Times report Monday, a defense official blamed operational security as the reason for inconsistent or delayed casualty information. 

David Lapan, a former Pentagon spokesperson from 2000 to 2003 and 2009 to 2011, said casualty counts help give the public a picture of the war.

“If service members are wounded in action, if they’re hurt, again, that is a measure for the public to know how this particular war is going,” he said. “In the absence of specific information from the department about these military operations, unfortunately, casualty reporting is one of the few ways that the public can judge how this war is going.”

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