The “Tip of the Spear” Revisited: Evidence from Recent Deployments of U.S. National Guard Troops to Iraq and Afghanistan

Abstract

The unconventional wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alter the link between military occupational specialties and proximity to the “tip of the spear,” in other words, military actions on the leading edge of combat. We examine the psychological and behavioral consequences of deployment and combat stressors for a sample of U.S. Army National Guard (ARNG) soldiers. The analyses confirm that combat service and support personnel are more likely than those in the combat arms to experience tip-of-the-spear stressors. However, regardless of specialty, exposure to death carries through the analyses as a significant predictor of negative outcomes. An appreciation of these nuances may help mental health professionals provide assistance more effectively for their ARNG clients.

Keywords:

• Tip of the spear
• exposure to combat/death
• collateral damage
• resilience
• PTSD
• posttraumatic growth

Acknowledgments

This article is not subject to US copyright law.

This article reflects the opinions of the authors and does not necessarily represent those of the U.S. Air Force Academy, the U.S. Air Force, or the U.S. Department of Defense.

Notes

1. The “wire” refers to layers of concertina wire that usually surround a military encampment to increase security. Being “inside the wire” connotes that one is living and working in relative safety.

2. A formal PTSD diagnosis requires that the individual exhibits significant, disruptive symptoms from each of the criteria, A-1 through D.

3. Dividing an unstandardized coefficient by its standard error provides a simple test of statistical significance. Doing so yields a basic t-test where a value ≥1.96 is significant at the .05 level and a value ≥2.58 is significant at the .01 level.

4. Since military occupational specialty is a categorical variable, its categories—combat arms, combat support, and combat service—may be included in a regression analysis as dummy variables coded 1 and 0. Using all three categories at once would incorporate three variables perfectly correlated with each other. Hence, only k − 1 of the categories may be used in any one regression analysis.

5. Negative coping is not included in the analyses at the same time as PTSD symptoms because the two are correlated with each other at .48 and both are measures of postdeployment symptomology.

6. This finding is consistent with a recent reanalysis of data from the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study by Dohrenwend, Yager, Wall, and Adams (2013).