Is Trump administration downplaying war losses? Casualty reports face scrutiny

Around 750 US troops have been wounded or killed in the wider regional conflict since October 2023. At least 15 troops were wounded in an attack on a Saudi air base on March 27, 2026, alone, according to two government officials who spoke with The Intercept. US casualty figures in the Iran war are being underreported. US CENTCOM has been engaged in a “casualty coverup” in Operation Epic Fury, as accused by an anonymous military source in an investigative report by The Intercept. It described the official figure as outdated or incomplete.

“This is, quite obviously, a subject that Secretary of War Hegseth and the White House want to keep under major wraps,” said a defence official. The report suggests that the Trump administration's numbers lack detail and clarity, compared to those of the previous Biden administration. They would provide the chronology of attacks at the US bases and the casualties in each attack. Now the firing of the US Army Chief of Staff Gen Randy George, along with 12+ top army generals, adds more food for thought.

According to reports, there was no response from CENTCOM to the repeated effort to gather an updated casualty figure and death count. The Intercept analysis suggests that at least 15 have died in the region so far since the start of the war. Capt. Tim Hawkins noted on Monday, March 30, that “Since the start of Operation Epic Fury, approximately 303 U.S. service members have been wounded.”

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The comment was old and excluded the 15 wounded in the Friday attack on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. It did not include more than 200 soldiers who were treated for injury on the USS Gerald Ford, as it ran away from the war theatre. There were reports of a $300 million E-3 Sentry surveillance aircraft at a Saudi base being destroyed.

Iranian strikes have rendered US bases in Kuwait, Qatar (Al Udeid), and Saudi Arabia (Prince Sultan) "virtually uninhabitable," forcing personnel to disperse into civilian locations. Other reports suggest that strikes at Port Shuaiba in Kuwait destroyed an army tactical operations centre, resulting in the deaths of six US service members.

US President Donald Trump, who always holds the US financial market in high regard as a benchmark of the success and failure of his military operations, knows that hundreds of US casualties would decrease the confidence of the market in the US military might. “When you have conflicts like this, you always have death,” he said. “I met the parents, and they were unbelievable people. They were unbelievable people, but they all had one thing in common. They said to me one thing, every single one: Finish the job, sir. Please finish the job.”