US troops have made almost 26,000 reports of sexual assault over the last four years, with the highest number of complaints being filed from the Air Force.
The figures come from a report by the Defense Department’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office which was released on Friday.
It found that between 2013 and 2016, 8,896 complaints of sexual assault were made in the Air Force and almost as many, 8,294, were made in the Army, the largest branch of the Armed Forces.
Considerably fewer were filed in the Navy and Marine Corps who recorded 4,788 and 3,400 respectively.
More than 25,000 reports of sexual assault were made in the Armed Forces between 2013 and 2016 (file image), new data has revealed
There are 633, 484 staff including active duty members, full-time employees and reserve personnel, in the Air Force.
The sexual assault complaints account for 1.4 percent of the force.
By contrast, the US Army – which has more than 1.3million personnel – accounts for 0.6 percent of its force.
The Air Force runs its own task force set up to handle sexual assault complaints, the AF Sexual Assault Prevention and Response division.
The figures released on Friday come after a separate report earlier this year which highlighted how there had been a steady increase of sexual assault reports over the past several years.
2016 was a record-high for the military, with 6,172 being made in that year alone.
Officials saw the increase as a sign of servicemembers’ increased trust in the institution and not as an indication of an increase of actual assaults.
But campaign groups say the problem with sexual assault reporting and preventing in the military is far from solved.
There is separate research which suggests the figures could be far higher than those released.
Protect Our Defenders, an independent organization set up to tackle injustices across the Armed Forces, cites other materials which say as many as 14,000 sexual assaults took place in 2016 but that only 20 percent were reported.
The majority (8,600) were carried out against women but men were the victims in more than 6,000 incidents, they said.
Sexual assault in the military has been the focus of some lawmakers in recent years.
In September, the Senate approved the FY18 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which included numerous provisions to protect and help victims of sexual assault.