Panel: Lessons from Ukraine’s front lines show gaps in U.S. military medical readiness

SALT LAKE CITY — Senior military and civilian trauma surgeons at a Hinckley Institute forum urged U.S. military and medical leaders to treat battlefield medicine in Ukraine as a policy and training priority, arguing that drones, mass-casualty numbers and targeted medical facilities have created prolonged-care challenges not seen in recent U.S. wars.

Lieutenant General Ronald Ray Blank, who moderated the panel, introduced the discussion by asking how two decades of U.S. combat medical advances compare with the demands of the Ukraine conflict. "How do drones, vintage weapons, novel weapons require a shift in our approach to medical care?" he asked.

Dr. Jeremy Cannon, professor of surgery at the University of Pennsylvania and a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, said the contrast is stark. He told the audience that improvements developed during the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns — rapid evacuation, tourniquet use and forward blood resupply — produced "battlefield medical supremacy" in those theaters. In Ukraine, he said, casualty numbers resemble World War II levels, evacuation is…