Russia’s continued invasion of Ukraine has generated more than $100 billion in aid since February, several votes at the United Nations, and the transfer or sale of high-tech weapons systems from the United States to Ukraine, adding the HIMARS rocket launch system, Switchblade six. hundreds of drones and MANPADS air defense systems. But another, more prosaic component of Western aid to Ukraine is having a significant effect on the conflict: medical supplies. Genuine time on the battlefield.
From increased sanitation on the ground to mechanized and aerial evacuation to modern bulletproof vests, today’s armies that take advantage of those adjustments can not only save lives, but also maintain the strength of their forces. During World War I, for example, the wounded American infantrymen can wait hours before being evacuated to a box hospital a few miles away; The war in Afghanistan, by contrast, wounded U. S. servicemen would be evacuated to the U. S. Army hospital. U. S. in Landstuhl, Germany, or even to the U. S. within a day or two.
By all accounts, Ukraine has far greater military medicine than Russia. Ukrainian forces, for example, are well-trained in Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC), a set of prehospital rules developed through the US military in the 1990s and revised and widely followed in the early years. of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. US Army medics found that 87% of preventable fight deaths occurred in prehospital settings; of them, most were dying of hemorrhage. Therefore, the TCCC rules focus heavily on bleeding, with recommendations on when to apply tourniquets, hemaximum bandages, and forceps to stop blood loss. Western aid has included just such supplies, as well as similar gadgets, such as bulletproof vests. Western advisers have also pushed for the use of whole blood in remote settings. One of the reasons for Ukraine’s medical merit is that it has welcomed such assistance not only since February, but for more than eight years. Since the invasion of Crimea in 2014, Ukraine has been preparing for an all-out war with Russia, adding medically.
Russia’s continued invasion of Ukraine has generated more than $100 billion in aid since February, several votes at the United Nations, and the transfer or sale of high-tech weapons systems from the United States to Ukraine, adding the HIMARS rocket launch system, Switchblade six. hundreds of drones and MANPADS air defense systems. But another, more prosaic component of Western aid to Ukraine is having a significant effect on the conflict: medical supplies. Genuine time on the battlefield.
From increased sanitation on the ground to mechanized and aerial evacuation to modern bulletproof vests, today’s armies that take advantage of those adjustments can not only save lives, but also maintain the strength of their forces. During World War I, for example, the wounded American infantrymen can wait hours before being evacuated to a box hospital a few miles away; the war in Afghanistan, by contrast, the corps of wounded workers of the U. S. militaryU. S. Army would be evacuated to U. S. Army hospital. U. S. in Landstuhl, Germany, or even to the U. S. within a day or two.
By all accounts, Ukraine has far greater military medicine than Russia. Ukrainian forces, for example, are well-trained in Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC), a set of prehospital rules developed through the US military in the 1990s and revised and widely followed in the early years. of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. US Army medics found that 87% of preventable fight deaths occurred in prehospital settings; of them, most were dying of hemorrhage. Therefore, the TCCC rules focus heavily on bleeding, with recommendations on when to apply tourniquets, hemaximum bandages, and forceps to stop blood loss. Western aid has included just such supplies, as well as similar gadgets, such as bulletproof vests. Western advisers have also pushed for the use of whole blood in remote settings. One of the reasons for Ukraine’s medical merit is that it has welcomed such assistance not only since February, but for more than eight years. Since the invasion of Crimea in 2014, Ukraine has been preparing for an all-out war with Russia, adding medically.
Russian forces, on the other hand, lack medical education and supplies. A recent video circulated widely on social media showed Russian officials telling new recruits to buy tampons to cover up gunshot wounds. Russia has suffered for years from a shortage of army doctors. Body of workers. Russian morale is also said to be quite low, as shown in cash reports and those of Russian men leaving the country to avoid being drafted into the army. One reason for the low morale is likely reports of poor medical care and supplies, adding the use of Soviet-era child rescuers and limited pharmaceuticals. Although the Russian labor corps has gained education in TCCC, it seems that essential fashion equipment, such as the fighting application tourniquet, is missing. , to give effect to those guidelines.
Better army medicine is vital on the battlefield for at least 3 reasons. First, having better medicine means saving more lives; In other words, infantrymen with more medicine can attract more people into combat. They will most likely be healthier at the beginning of the war and, all other things being equal, more likely to get a remedy that allows them. Get back to work as soon as possible.
Second, having more medicine means a greater chance of maintaining the team’s spirit of unity; Instead of being sent home (or worse, killed), wounded foot soldiers can be treated and sent back to their unit. Social ties can be maintained. The new troops do not wish to train. And third, more medicine translates into higher troop morale. Knowing that you and your infantry buddies will get smart medical care in the event of illness or injury will make you more willing to fight and take risks. This means a country that does not wish to ruin the lives of its infantrymen, in stark contrast to the attitude shown in the large Russian mobilization of untrained infantrymen.
Many of those points were evident in the most recent U. S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The creation of a trauma registry in 2004 facilitated a revolution in the military’s medical data collection, which, in turn, allowed the search for underlying rules such as CBT. Concentrating on containing blood loss led to the invention and use of new types of tourniquets, hemmaximumatic bandages, and catheters to contain blood flow. And understanding the critical importance of offering care as soon as imaginable led the U. S. Secretary of Defense to offer care. U. S. Secretary of State Robert Gates to implement the “golden hour” rule in 2009, so that any corps of U. S. military workers would be able to implement the “golden hour” rule. The injured U. S. would be evacuated to a higher-level medical facility in the first very important hour of the injury. Classic 3:1 to 10:1 death ratio in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom.
Of course, those wars are not comparable in many ways. A key difference is that the U. S. The U. S. has conducted counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. At least to date, the confrontation between Russia and Ukraine has been a traditional war that is more reminiscent of wars beyond Europe, and with corresponding degrees of casualties. Artillery, rather than roadside bombs, were the main mechanism of injury. Another vital contrast is air evacuation, a key detail to save the lives of the wounded. Neither Ukraine nor Russia has any air power in this war. Thus, medical evacuation is compromised, even if Ukraine fights closer to its own territory and sometimes with staggering logistics. Given the importance of immediate care for survival, limited medical evacuation is helping to make sense of the strangely low estimates of the Russian 3:1 injury. relationship between dead.
At the same time, there are vital similarities, namely with regard to the policy for reporting the number of victims. The most productive estimates available of Russian casualties, for example, do not come from Russia. Instead, NATO and various Western intelligence agencies have reported those figures. Reports of Ukrainian casualties have been scarce in most productive ones. Part of the explanation for both countries’ reluctance to report casualties is that such reports can undermine morale, adding among the armed forces, but also at the national level. This practice evokes the well-known “Dover effect,” which refers to photographs of army coffins wrapped in American flags being unloaded at Dover Air Force Base in the United States. But it’s also true that casualty reports have become a component of data warfare. campaign. Ukraine, for example, reported 1,000 Russian deaths after the first day of the war, while Russian media claimed that Ukraine suffered 4,000 casualties in a single wee k in September.
The actual number of victims, especially on the Ukrainian side, is higher due to the Russian of Ukrainian hospitals, in violation of foreign law. In addition to movements in civilian medical infrastructure, such as that of a maternity hospital in March, Russian forces have also targeted Ukraine’s medical evacuation rail lines.
However, all the symptoms imply that Ukraine has the medical merit in this war. Of course, medicine is not enough. The Finns also had medical merit over the Soviet Union in the Winter War of 1939. Finland used remote medical assistance stations, evacuated the wounded on sleds, and sometimes had a larger number of workers and medical facilities. Although the war eventually ended with a Soviet victory, medicine was a force multiplier for the Finns, who had a much smaller population and were able to jeopardize the Soviet victory rather than be invaded. In a war where numbers matter, what the most productive medicine looks like has transparent merit.
Tanisha M. Fazal is a professor of political science at the University of Minnesota. His fellowship focuses on sovereignty, foreign law and armed confrontations. Fazal’s existing studies look at the effect of advanced medical care in conflict zones on long-term war prices. It is State Death: The Politics and Geography of Conquest, Occupation, and Annexion (Princeton University Press, 2007) and Wars of Law: Unintended Consequences in the Regulation of Armed Conflict (Cornell University Press, 2018).
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