Are we dancing alone? Matching medical operational readiness training with potential future conflict

Abstract

The United States' national security strategy endorses 'humanitarian interests' as a justifiable reason to deploy U.S. forces. The Armed Forces Medical Corps must adapt its readiness training regimens to include this new type of deployment, yet not neglect its primary mission of supporting the fighting forces at home and abroad. Military medicine has the opportunity to train combat specialties in lesser developed countries, enhancing operational readiness and preparing these subspecialists for battlefield deployment to third-echelon care; but can military medicine support another training mission? This paper will describe and illustrate a conceptual model using actual data to assist medical chiefs elucidate the reality of implementing this new program.