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Kandahar tourniquet developed to save livesMonday, August 18, 2008Project Number:08-0556Kandahar, Afghanistan – Afghan soldiers can now save lives thanks to a medical prototype developed by Coalition forces. The Kandahar tourniquet, created for the Afghan National Army (ANA), will improve the survival rate of soldiers suffering serious injuries and massive hemorrhage. Imagine a dismounted infantry company mentoring team moving through a village in the Zhari District of Afghanistan. The team is weighed down with weapons, ammunition, radios, night vision devices and personal protective equipment. Every soldier is trained to deliver tactical combat casualty care and is equipped with advanced wound dressings,...

FORWARD OPERATING BASE KALSU, Iraq – Christian Stephenson has bided his time as a finance noncommissioned officer. Stephenson, who has been in the Army for eight years, was promoted to sergeant four years ago and became promotable to staff sergeant three years ago. “I’ve had 720 (promotion) points for a long time, in five years (the points to staff sergeant) have never gone below 775,” said Stephenson, from Emerald Isle, N.C. “It was frustrating working so hard to get those points but never making the cutoff. It had been at least six months since I’d even checked the scores when...

SHARPSBURG - Antietam National Battlefield is one of the 10 most endangered battlefields in the United States, according to a list released Wednesday by the Civil War Preservation Trust (CWPT). The battlefield is "threatened with a 120-foot-tall cellular tower that would be visible from all of the battlefield's most famous vantage points," according to a CWPT press release. Monocacy National Battlefield near Frederick, Md., also is on the list, which also includes sites in several states from Virginia to Oklahoma. National Park Service officials were notified in December 2007 of a proposal to erect a stealth cell tower south of...

WASHINGTON, March 6, 2008 – The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff praised the Army medics and Navy corpsmen who risk their lives on the battlefield to save others at the 2nd annual Armed Services YMCA gala here last night. Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and retired Navy Rear Adm. S. Frank Gallo, national executive director, Armed Services YMCA, present the Angels of the Battlefield Award to Navy Seaman Elvis H. Gichini, a corpsman, during a gala dinner in honor of military medics and corpsman at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington,...

A touching new movie about the school and how its graduates help heal our brave wounded warriors and about some of their courageous patients... Very few folks have heard of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU-HS), but it's a place we all (including the moonbats) should know something about. USU-HS is the military school that trains MANY of the docs & nurses who treat our wounded heroes from the battlefield to Walter Reed and other military hospitals around the globe. Its main campus is located on the grounds of the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, MD....

It may sound like science fiction, but it’s only a matter of time before the world’s militaries learn to wield the planet itself as a weapon. Preventing global warming from becoming a planetary catastrophe may take something even more drastic than renewable energy, superefficient urban design, and global carbon taxes. Such innovations remain critical, and yet disruptions to the Earth’s climate could overwhelm these relatively slow, incremental changes in how we live. As reports of faster-than-expected climate changes mount, a growing number of experts worry that we might ultimately be forced to try something quite radical: geoengineering. Geoengineering involves humans...

Udi, a United States military working dog stationed at Forward Operating Base Kalsu, poses for the camera after he completes his daily training, Dec. 25. Photo by Pfc. Amanda McBride. FOB KALSU — With their strong sense of smell and their immeasurable loyalty, the highly trained military working dogs (MWD) in the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, are proving to be essential in the fight against terrorism. Military working dogs first entered the United States armed services in March 1942. Today, the dogs are still providing support to the troops on the battlefield.A single dog can search more...

RICHMOND, Va. - As an Army surgeon in the Middle East, Dr. Keith Rose watched a colleague bleed to death when a truck in his convoy was hit with a rocket-propelled grenade. Rose could not get his comrade a tourniquet, which could have helped control the bleeding on his wounded leg, and sat along the mangled wreckage and talked with him as he took his last breath. "It really kind of frustrated me," Rose said. Once he returned to the U.S., Rose approached BlackHawk, a provider of military and law enforcement gear, with an idea to create clothes with built-in...

Spec. Jorge Sandoval lay face down in the foot-high grass, staring through his sniper rifle scope at the Iraqi man holding a rusted sickle. The man had crouched down, only his head was visible. Sandoval's spotter, Staff. Sgt. Michael Hensley, relayed the order to kill. On April 27, in dangerous terrain south of Baghdad, Sandoval pulled the trigger to fire a bullet hundreds of yards into the man's skull, killing him instantly. Moments earlier, the man, according to testimony and court documents, had been fleeing an attack on U.S. soldiers and was holding the sickle to masquerade as a farmer....

The Chinese military has begun a two-day drill testing a system that provides commanders real-time battlefield data, signaling the continued modernization of the nation’s massive armed forces. The exercise is part of an ambitious effort to improve military information collection systems, one of the main shortfalls of the otherwise rapidly modernizing People’s Liberation Army, the Xinhua news agency reported Sept. 19.

CAMP ATTERBURY, Ind., Sept. 6, 2007 – When soldiers are wounded in combat, the most immediate medical care available generally is given by other soldiers on the battlefield, most of whom are not combat medics. Army Sgt. Clint Higgins, a Combat Lifesaver instructor with 205th Infantry Brigade, helps students taking the Combat Lifesaver Course practice lifesaving skills Aug. 23 at Camp Atterbury, Ind. During the final exercise, students are required to practice many of their newly learned skills including inserting IVs, applying tourniquets and pressure dressings, treating mental trauma, and moving wounded soldiers to a safe area. U.S. Army...

The way Jerry Hurwitz sees it, it doesn't take an Einstein to understand the significance of the hal lowed ground on which a pivotal Revolutionary War Battle of Princeton was fought 230 years ago. Part of the battle on Jan. 3, 1777, was waged on 22 acres of gently sloping farmland now owned by the Institute for Advanced Study. The institute -- an independent, private research institution that counted physicist Albert Ein stein among its faculty -- is adja cent to the 85-acre Princeton Battlefield State Park. But that section of the battlefield was never incorporated into the state park,...

Soldiers Bring Mobile Communications to Battlefield New vehicle gives commanders more choices, faster. By Spc. Ben Hutto3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team Public Affairs FORWARD OPERATING BASE HAMMER, Iraq, Aug. 21, 2007 — Staff Sgt. Matthew Hancock looked over the schematics the 82nd Airborne had put together for a mobile tactical operations center and knew that he could build something similar for his battalion. "This is the first time a mechanized Army unit has engineered, built and deployed a vehicle like this. We are proud of what we’ve done. We feel like we have raised the bar for the Army."Staff...

Both having served their country from Viet Nam to Iraq, Marine warriors Col. (ret.) Jack Holly and Lt. Col. (ret.) Ollie North briefly enjoyed a few moments together during North’s recent visit to the USACE-GRD LogisticsMovement Control Center. BAGHDAD -- “That’s what we are. That’s what we do. We are the concierge of the battlefield,” affirms Jack Holly, the still erect postured, retired Marine colonel. “When travelers require something while staying in hotel to whom do they go? The concierge of course! Thus, that is what we are to this effort here in Iraq. If something is needed we provide...

Life-saving operations on soldiers in combat zones could become possible thanks to a portable robotic surgeon that allows doctors to perform surgery on the battlefield without endangering themselves.Surgical robots that can be operated remotely are already used in some civilian hospitals. These include a system called "da Vinci" made by US company Intuitive Surgical, and another system called ZEUS, made by US firm Computer Motion. However, these existing systems are large and cumbersome, taking up much of an operating room. Now Blake Hannaford and colleagues at the University of Washington, in Seattle, US, have come up with a system small...

I was not a Civil War history buff; my nine-year-old son John was the motivation for our tour of southern battlefields this summer. This essay is about how that trip to twenty Civil War battlefields in ten southern states changed my view of the Civil War and, in more subtle ways, my life We drove 6,000 miles, from New England down to Maryland and Virginia south to Atlanta, Vicksburg, Shiloh and back to the north again. Throughout the trip, I listened to almost twenty-four hours of Civil War history from Prof. Gary Gallagher of UVA (through the Teaching Company CDs)....

Israeli firm working on blood pack to save lives In about two years? time, Israeli soldiers may carry with them to the battlefield packets with their own powdered blood, as though it were powdered soup. A Nes Tziona-based company is working on a revolutionary product that could change the future battle field, IDF Medical ..officers say. The idea is to take a soldier's blood, freeze it in laboratory conditions, take out the ice crystals leaving only the blood components. It will look like freeze-dried coffee in a little bag, said Lieutenant colonel Amir Blumenfeld, head of the IDF medical corps?...

7/11/2006 - BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq -- Airmen are adapting to the battle space and an evolving enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan, said the commander of U.S. Central Command Air Forces. Lt. Gen. Gary North told Airmen here during a visit July 5, they are always ready to support ground commanders despite an increased operations tempo. "This war has moved from contingency operations to sustained operations," General North said. "Sustainment, by nature, costs more in people away from home and in dollars to fight the war. Our goal is to be extremely effective and extremely efficient." According to General North,...

The US military is relying ever more on space satellites to help wage combat in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, though analysts say that Washington's space supremacy could be threatened by rivals in the future. The Pentagon is using sophisticated satellites that orbit Earth in a bid to track down its enemies and keep a round-the-clock watch on unfriendly foes. The technological advantage can prove lethal, as witnessed by the recent air raid that killed the long-wanted Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. "Space capabilities have revolutionized the way we fight today by providing our forces with battlefield situational...

The US military plans a portable device that uses focused sound waves to treat troops bleeding internally from wounds sustained on the battlefield. Ultrasound can seal ruptured blood vessels deep within the body without the need for risky surgery. The lightweight device has to be designed so that soldiers can operate it with minimal training. Blood loss from wounds to the extremities is regarded as a major, preventable cause of battlefield death. It's a grand challenge but we're keen to have a go at it Lawrence Crum, University of Washington The ability to treat soldiers with internal bleeding on the...