The number of reported sexual assaults in the US armed forces jumped by 50 per cent last year, with almost three-quarters of the cases prompting military prosecutions.
Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said the figures, contained in a 2013 annual report on sexual assault released on Thursday, show that victims have more faith in the system thanks to protections he's implemented.
"Sexual assault is a clear threat to the lives and the well-being of the women and men who serve our country in uniform," Hagel told reporters at the White House. "It destroys the bonds of trust and confidence that lie at the heart of our armed forces."
The Pentagon has been grappling with the problem of military sexual assault for decades, going back at least to the 1991 Tailhook scandal when Navy and Marine Corps aviation officers were alleged to have sexually assaulted 83 women and seven men at a Las Vegas convention.
Hagel has made what he has called "this despicable crime" a top priority since becoming Pentagon chief in February 2013.
The report showed 5061 claims of military sexual assault last year, up from 3374 in 2012. A decade ago, by contrast, there were fewer than 1700 such claims.
But Nate Galbreath, senior executive adviser in the Pentagon's Office of Sexual Assault Prevention and Response, said the spike in cases does not actually reflect more instances of assault, just increased reporting of such alleged crimes.
Protect Our Defenders, an advocacy group based in California, cast doubt on the Pentagon's assertion that the number of assaults last year did not actually increase.
"Until the release of DOD's biannual survey later this year, we will not know the reason for this increase (in reported assaults) - which could be due to more troops being attacked or a result of the intense public attention to this issue," said Nancy Parrish, the group's president.
She said the Pentagon "has released no evidence to prove its claim that victims have more trust in the existing military justice system or the treatment they have received".
In a surprising statement, Hagel cited "estimates that men comprise more than half the victims of sexual assault in the military".
That claim is at odds with a 2012 Pentagon anonymous survey in which six per cent of women in uniform said they'd experienced some form of "unwanted sexual contact", compared with 1.2 per cent of men in uniform.
In cases that are prosecuted, the vast majority of victims are women.
Hagel said a far smaller share of male victims than female victims report such attacks. He issued a directive this week aimed at persuading more men in uniform who feel they've been a target of sexual assault to inform their commanders of the alleged crimes.
"We have to fight the cultural stigmas that discourage reporting (of attacks) and be clear that sexual assault does not occur because a victim is weak, but rather because an offender disregards our values and the law," Hagel said.
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