About 2 million of the more than 2.75 million people who served deployments in the war zones have left the military and entered into the VA system.50 Spending for the veterans of recent US wars includes care for the more than 52,000 US soldiers who were officially wounded in action in Afghanistan and Iraq, and many who were evacuated from the war zones for disease or non-‐‑hostile injuries require on-‐‑going medical care either by the Department of Veterans Affairs (or the Department of Defense if they remain in service).
The Department of Veterans Affairs has been under-‐‑capacity to deal with the influx of new veterans who are eligible for services and it has had to grow its staffing levels very quickly
— nearly doubling in size since 2001, to 350,000 workers — to manage these veterans' care and to reduce a large backlog in processing claims for disability. The backlog has declined, but the number of VA staff is projected to grow over the next several years.
It is difficult to estimate the future costs of veteran's care and disability benefits based on past wars: GWOT veterans have been making more claims for injury and illness than earlier veterans because they have higher rates of service connected disability than the veterans of previous US wars.51 Specifically, more than 1,600 soldiers who fought in the post-‐‑9/11 wars Iraq or Afghanistan have had battle-‐‑injury major limb amputations as of late 2015. And of course, not all injuries are immediately diagnosed. The veterans of these wars suffer from skeletal injury, PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injury at rates higher than the veterans of other wars. More than 327,000 GWOT veterans have been diagnosed with Traumatic Brain Injury. Of those veterans of the GWOT whose disability claims had been processed in 2014, the most recent yea