Killed in action

""Looks like a Covenant patrol. Badass Elite units, all KIA.""

- Sergeant Johnson to Captain Keyes on Alpha Halo

Killed In Action, better known as KIA, is a classification used by the United Nations Space Command that denotes the death of a soldier during/after a combat mission or situation.

Due to the need to increase morale in the United Nations Space Command, Spartan-II super-soldiers are never listed as 'Killed In Action', but rather as Missing In Action or Wounded in Action to give the appearance that they are invincible and can never die. The Spartans-II's would put a fallen member's status as MIA or WIA on their Teams Rosters. Shortly before dying,Kurt-051 listed several Spartan-III's as MIA.

There are two other classifications for soldiers, MIA (Missing In Action) and WIA (Wounded In Action). These three classes for non-active soldiers were used as early as World War I, created by the allied nations in an effort make it easier to tell what happened to wounded, missing, or dead soldiers.

Trivia

 * Some people actually pronounced it 'K-EE-A', not knowing what it actually meant.

Related Links

 * "" on Wikipedia
 * Missing In Action (MIA)
 * Wounded in Action (WIA)