[jyl]

Here is a wikipedia summary of Soviet military losses during 10 years of war in Afghanistan. Basically, 15K dead, 54K casualties (excluding >400K illnesses) of which 10K permanently disabled. And lots of vehicles.

It's kind of interesting to compare this with US losses during 5 years (so far) of war in Iraq. 3.4K dead (excluding 700-1K military contractors), 25K casualties, don't know number disabled (although >100K soldiers returned from Iraq have been approved for disability benefits by the VA, don't know how severe those disabilities are). Fewer vehicles.

So, at this rate, after 10 years in Iraq, we might have 7K US dead, 50K US casualties (but 200K to 400K soldiers receiving disability benefits of some sort). And some number of vehicles.

We are doing better than the Soviets :-)

Between December 25th, 1979 and February 15th 1989 a total of 620,000 soldiers served with the forces in Afghanistan (though there were only 80,000-104,000 force at one time in Afghanistan). 525,000 in the Army, 90,000 with border troops and other KGB sub-units, 5,000 in independent formations of MVD Internal Troops and police. A further 21,000 personnel were with the Soviet troop contingent over the same period doing various white collar or manual jobs.

The total irrecoverable personnel losses of the Soviet Armed Forces, frontier and internal security troops came to 14,453. Soviet Army formations, units and HQ elements lost 13,833, KGB sub units lost 572, MVD formations lost 28 and other ministries and departments lost 20 men. During this period 417 servicemen were missing in action or taken prisoner; 119 of these were later freed, of whom 97 returned to the USSR and 22 went to other countries.

There were 469,685 sick and wounded, of whom 53,753 or 11.44%, were wounded, injured or sustained concussion and 415,932 (88.56%) fell sick. A high proportion of casualties were those who fell ill. This was because of local climatic and sanitary conditions, which were such that acute infections spread rapidly among the troops. There were 115,308 cases of infectious hepatitis, 31,080 of typhoid fever and 140,665 of other diseases. Of the 11,654 who were discharged from the army after being wounded, maimed or contracting serious diseases, 92%, or 10,751 men were left disabled.[31]


Remains of Soviet trucks in Kandahar, Afghanistan, 2002.Material losses were as follows:

21 aircraft
333 helicopters
147 tanks
1,314 IFV/APCs
433 artillery guns and mortars
1,138 radio sets and command vehicles
510 engineering vehicles
11,369 trucks and petrol tankers