The drone had already been shot down. That is the detail that makes this loss different from the others.

On Saturday, in northern Iraq, a US service member was killed during a controlled detonation of unexploded ordnance recovered from a downed Iranian one-way attack drone. A second was wounded. US Central Command released the details on Sunday.

It was the third American military death of the weekend, and the deaths did not happen in the same country or for the same reason.

Two different kinds of loss

It matters that these are kept separate, because they say different things about the war.

The Jordan deaths on Friday were caused by enemy action — an Iranian ballistic missile and drone attack against US and partner forces. That is the kind of loss the current campaign has produced repeatedly since February.

The death in Iraq on Saturday was not. Nobody was attacking. An Iranian drone had already been intercepted and brought down, and the hazard that remained was its warhead, sitting in the dirt, waiting to be dealt with by people whose job is to walk towards unexploded ordnance rather than away from it.

Explosive ordnance disposal is among the most dangerous work in any military, and it does not stop when the shooting does. Every drone that air defences successfully destroy leaves wreckage somewhere, and somebody has to make that wreckage safe.

What CENTCOM has said

The command has been sparing with detail, which is standard while families are being notified. Identities are withheld until 24 hours after next-of-kin notification, and the exact location within northern Iraq has not been given.

That statement concerns the third service member from the Friday attack in Jordan, who had been listed as missing. It is a separate matter from the Iraq fatality, and conflating the two — as some coverage has — produces a casualty count that is simply wrong.

The Department of Defense began releasing names on Monday. Because reporting on which individual died in which incident has not been consistent across outlets, we are not publishing names here.

The number nobody agrees on

Counting the dead in this war has become unexpectedly difficult. Defense News reported 18 US service members killed since 28 February. Al Jazeera, reporting a day later and enumerating individual casualties, put the figure at 17.

The likely explanation is the recovered remains still being verified in Jordan — whether they are counted yet, and by whom. Until that examination concludes, the honest answer is at least 17.

The most recent previous loss before this weekend came on 1 July, when Commander Gabriel Edwards, commanding officer of Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 5, was killed as his MH-60S Sea Hawk went down in the Arabian Sea. Three other sailors were rescued.

CENTCOM announced the end of a weekend wave of strikes on Monday — the ninth consecutive night — and the beginning of a tenth. The war is in its 142nd day.

Sources: U.S. Central Command, Defense News, Al Jazeera, Stars and Stripes.