Pentagon quietly updates how it categorizes Iran war casualties
The Pentagon has updated its public-facing casualty database after abruptly revising its Iran war casualty figures last week, when it reduced the number of U.S. troops listed as killed in Operation Epic Fury from 18 to 14 and removed dozens of wounded service members from that tally.
The Defense Department now appears to be tracking casualties in its Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) under a new category labeled Overseas Operations rather than Operation Epic Fury, the namesake previously used for the Iran campaign – in effect restarting its accounting of dead and wounded in the war.
It’s unclear how defense officials are defining “overseas operations” and whether that’s exclusively counting Iran war dead and wounded. The Pentagon did not return an ABC News request for comment.
DCAS is the Pentagon's primary public repository for tracking U.S. military casualties from current and past conflicts and serves as the federal government's authoritative public record of war dead. The Defense Department maintains the database using casualty data submitted by the military services.
Parsing out individual phases of a war from a broader campaign, as the Defense Department is now appearing to do, is unprecedented and can make it difficult to get a clear accounting of U.S. casualties.
The new Overseas Operations category also lists 207 U.S. troops wounded since July 7, marking at least 624 wounded since the U.S. and Israel launched the war in February.
The change in accounting may stem from the Trump administration's position that Operation Epic Fury ended in May and that the resumption of daily fighting resets the 60-day limit of waging war without congressional approval.
Last week, the House adopted an Iran war powers resolution in a rare rebuke of President Donald Trump with Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa. and Tom Barrett, R-Mich., supporting it.
The measure sought to require congressional authorization for continued U.S. military involvement, but Senate Republicans blocked it on Thursday.
"Let me explain this absurd ruse: The Pentagon is pretending there have been two Iran wars separated by a brief cease-fire,” Massie said in a statement Thursday, adding that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was breaking the law and “must be held accountable” for waging war without Capitol Hill’s approval.
When asked last week about the shift in the casualty numbers, Acting Pentagon Press Secretary Joel Valdez said the website was experiencing technical issues and made no mention of any recalculations of the dead and wounded, saying in a statement that, "site anomalies are currently being resolved in coordination with the military services."
ABC News' Luis Martinez contributed to this report.
