On July 10, 15 Marines and one Navy corpsman were killed when their KC-130 airplane, a refueling tanker, crashed into a soybean field about 85 miles north of Jackson, Mississippi. The impact was so devastating that debris was scattered in a radius of nearly five miles. The tanker's fuel payload and ammunition on board contributed to the scale of the blast. Body parts were recovered more than a mile from the impact site. Aviation officials said the aircraft suffered a "structural failure" at 20,000 feet and then plummeted to the ground.
The death toll from these recent accidents alone is greater than the 23 US soldiers killed in the wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan so far this year.
Besides these publicly acknowledged disasters, there is the steady toll of death inflicted on its own personnel by the day-to-day operations of the US military machine.
At Fort Hood, Texas, for example, 11 soldiers died of "noncombat-related" causes during a three-month period from November 2016 through January 2017. Two died of illness, two from vehicle accidents, and the other seven died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds or other forms of suicide. The victims ranged in age from 19 to 32. The suspected suicides were all aged 20 to 24. For the calendar year 2016 there were 18 suicides at the base, although five were unconfirmed pending investigation.
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