Hey, thanks everyone for the information provided.
So, outside of DHA and the push to make milmed more operationally focused, what is milmed doing in an operational/tactical sense to prepare integrate with the rest of the military in terms of near-peer conflict?
I guess I should come forward and say that I'm interested in looking at some of these issues for research inspiration.
1) If I knew, I certainly wouldn't talk about it on this insecure forum...or even via e-mail. I'd try not to think about it.
2) I am 100% sure we are
not going to do the following:
--Try to fight the last war due to sheer poor planning (SPP) at the highest levels by people more interested in golf
--End up fighting the war
before last because the medical budget for fighting the last war is approved but unfunded
--Have smart ideas from junior officers shot down by the Pentagon because "we've never done it that way before"
--Slash military medical research to the bone because promotion boards don't understand anything but command billets
--Continue an antiquated promotion system for physicians that prioritizes money, metrics, and buzzwords over everything
--Dumb down every single thing about medicine to flying analogies so that idiots who once flew planes can understand
--Have expensive but vital medical upgrades cannibalized by the line to buy shiny things that pilots can sit in
--Build expensive flying shinies that can be hacked by high school kids
--Allow pilots to fly new toys with inadequate oxygen but not within 25 miles of lightning
--Ignore the risk of [redacted], [redacted], [redacted], and [redacted] from countries years ahead of us in those areas
--Assume the enemy even knows about internationally-accepted Laws of Armed Conflict, let alone cares
--Rely on huge, slow, ancient floating hypersonic missile targets (FHMTs) that should have been mothballed in the 1990s
--Buy
more huge, slow, sexy FHMTs because Captains need
something to replace their TRICARE-unapproved ED meds
--Assign medics to hospital ships with 30 year old copper kettle vaporizers without training, leading to several deaths
--Involuntarily recall 86 year old clinical psychologists to active duty and send them far away, where they quickly have MIs
--Tell surgeons to use fewer sutures because the line needs that medical budget line item to buy more bullets because
--Deploy the last intensivist at your military hospital and then order untrained family docs and interns to cover the ICUs
--Activate ancient NATO hangars to receive casualties while birds poop relentlessly onto surgical fields from the rafters
--Certify drugs and saline stockpiled for WWIII to be used in real life casualties despite being expired for 30 years because
--Use planes designed in 1964 and 1981 to fly medics and patients into and out of war zones
--Send CCATT air evac (A/E) teams to care for patients with expired drugs and leadership as broken as their defibrillators
--Have Army hospital refuse to loan oxygen cylinders to A/E crew for transport to aircraft; none on board plane because
--Place advanced pain catheters into patients and then put them into a system where no one is trained to manage them
--Sneak advanced pain pumps onto aircraft before they are flight certified and tell troops to hide them from the flight nurses
--Allow patients to arrive in CONUS with empty pumps that are beeping but are locked and that no one knew were there
--Have critically-ill patients Remain Over Night (RON) at facilities not capable of caring for them because
--Divide the A/E mission into "dirty teams" and "clean teams" to optimize lack of cooperation and morale
--Claim that A/E "clean teams" can't be trained to do the work of "dirty teams" because pots of money are different
--Send home half of the deployed "dirty teams" after one month, thus doubling the workload of the remaining victims
--Set up two sets of quarantine Restriction of Movement (ROM) rules: those for medics (strict) and those for aircrew (loose)
--Order large groups to gaggle together in superspreader fashion like 2019 despite host nation rules that restrict group size
--Issue e-mail that states that the above is OK because A/E teams are "one family" per USAF rules despite host nation rules
--Hire 57 year old ER docs from private practice then deploy them to manage things like litters, Ambuses and SMEEDs
--Fail to remind 57 year old docs that kinetic energy
still equals one half of mass times the square of velocity on a bus
--Attempt to draft old, fat, tired physicians to replace the young, smart, competent military docs who got disgusted and left
--Replace physicians with cheap, less-trained "providers" who salute better than most doctors and who don't talk back
--Put nurses, pharmacists, and PAs in command of physicians and then wonder why troops are dying unexpectedly
--Use the phrase "but we've always done it that way" just before the very bright, bad light makes things moot
3) Problems like the following from the last war have been 100% fixed due to the brilliance of our military leaders:
"There was significant confusion about our date for redeployment home. The team was initially given a redeployment date of 30 June 2003. This was understandably changed to “indefinite” when it was realized that operations tempo in May was higher than expected. Then we were informed that we were redeploying on 3 July and that replacements were not required. On 1 July we were sent to [Some Place] to make our arrangement for travel home. We were scheduled on a rotator for 4 July. Then, on the morning of 2 July, we were informed that we could not leave until a replacement team arrived and that our release from the AOR was rescinded. Finally, our replacements arrived in the AOR on or around 6 July. However, their weapons were confiscated upon arrival in the AOR because they had been sent on commercial aircraft with weapons but without the appropriate paperwork to enter [Another Place] with them. This further delayed our ability to depart. In the mean time, we used the extended overlap period to orient the new team members to their duties. Finally, on 10 July, we departed the AOR for home. While the miscommunication about our release on 3 July caused hard feelings and increased stress for our families, the squadron did make every effort to get us home once our replacements were mission capable. SRA X. and I departed [Some Place] on 10 July and arrived [home] on 11 July. Captain X. returned [home] on 13 July."
4) I am sure everything will be just fine. Our visionary leaders have everything under control.
P.S. The answer to every "because why?" question you ask downrange or in garrison is always SPP (R) (TM).
(Edited so as not to insult our chimpanzee relatives)
