bcgallacher:
With ops from 2003 to 2011, that figure is very believable.
We used to get accident reports and summaries each month when I was in the Navy. Even in peace time, you'd get a few accidents a year where firearms were discharged wrongly, and some of those ended up being fatal.
With tens of thousands of troops and loaded weapons everywhere, the chance for a cock up increases significantly in wartime.
It's a tribute to the training that there aren't more such mistakes.