The variety of these cases in terms of the issues addressed, the age of the remains, and the type of reference material available for comparison demonstrated the broad use of LCN STR typing in the identification of degraded skeletal remains of missing persons. This demonstrated success of LCN typing on degraded skeletal remains suggests that a hopeful new avenue may exist in a realm that was previously the sole purview of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is regularly used at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory (AFDIL) to assist in the identification of skeletal remains of service members missing from previous military conflict. In many cases, however, the limited discriminating power of mtDNA alone may not adequately reconcile the incomplete or nonspecific anthropological, odontological, or contextual findings. The demonstrations described in this paper applied LCN STR methods to four cases that derived from three of the four major military conflicts in which the United States was involved during the 20th century. They represent the extremes in quality of sample material that are regularly encountered in AFDIL casework. They present specific requirements in the application of autosomal and Y-chromosomal data. The cases and their analyses with LCN STR are described in detail. 3 figures and 21 references