Simulation of Casual Sustainment During Naval Combat Operations

Abstract

Medical resource planning for military operations requires estimates of the average daily patient flows as well as maximum and minimum daily patient loads. To this end, a medical casualty projection system for shipboard forces (SHIPCAS) has been developed. The SHIPCAS simulation system provides estimates of the numbers of ships that may be attacked in a given scenario, and then yields numbers of expected casualties. The basis of the projections are eighty naval engagements which took place during the Second World War. The statistical distributions of ship hit rates, wounded-in- action, killed-in-action, and disease and non- battle injuries incidence were analyzed by battle intensity, weapon system, and ship type. Simulated data reflect the salient character istics of empirical data in terms of number and distributions of ship attacks, ship type hit distributions, and weapon-specific casualty sustainment. The casualty estimates from the simulation results may be used as input for medical resource planning projections.