Share of NCOs among deployed combat troops

[Fuchs]

I'll simply copy & paste a list of last weeks' U.S. KIA from Afghanistan as an example of what I've been observing for a long time:

US Army Sgt (...)
US Army SSG (...)
US Army Sgt (...)
US Army SPC (...)
US Army SPC (...)
US Army Sgt (...)
US Army Sgt (...)
US Marines Cpl (...)
US Army SPC (...)

That's five or six NCOs (not sure how to count corporal) and three or four enlisted. Earlier lists of this kind often included an officer or two.

I have made these observations with anecdotal value, not really counted all the reported KIA.

Nevertheless, I'm very confused by the very high share of NCOs among the dead Americans in Afghanistan.

The German military has had a horrible rank inflation for two decades, and these lists suggest that the U.S. had its rank inflation as well.

These KIA lists sound even more bottom-up than does the "Taliban leader" thing; reputedly, one third of captives were considered to be Taliban leaders.


I guess I'm not the only one uncomfortable with the thought of deployed forces having so many chieftains that being chieftain inevitably loses a lot of its meaning?