Photo By Tech. Sgt. Bradley Tipton | Airman Carrier Kloe-Leah, 927th ASTS aerospace medical service specialist completes...... read more read more
A stretch of hot June summer days on MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., were punctuated by the dust kicked up from repeated take-offs and landings of a U.S. Army Reserve UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter assigned to the 159th Aviation Regiment, outside the warehouse of the 927th Aeromedical Staging Squadron. The Navy-Reserve-led exercise titled Operation Blue Horizon gave joint-service, total-force medics, doctors, nurses and other military healthcare professionals the chance to experience the full depth of tactical combat casualty care and aeromedical evacuation.
“The goals here are to have our forces trained, ready, agile and ready to support the fleet and all the joint forces when they are called down range and ultimately bring home our warfighters,” said Cmdr. Courtney Walker, Blue Horizon assistant officer-in-charge.
Combining fundamentals of tactical combat casualty care with real life and artificial stressors such as the heat, loud noise and shouting from cadre along with seemingly randomly scheduled physical training tasks designed to keep heart rates and breathing high meant that the participants could truly find out how they operate under stress. In the midst of the exercise, the 927th ASTS did what they do best – Set up an en-route patient staging system (ERPSS) next to an improvised helicopter landing pad, allowing Blue Horizon participants to see the Air Force’s agile combat employment capability first hand and see training through all the way to the aeromedical evacuation stage.
“One of the things that’s new for us is partnering with the Army,” said Air Force Capt. Joseph O’Brien, 927th ASTS medical readiness officer. “We’re used to medevac’ing on fixed wing all the time. The new piece is doing it with a helicopter.”
Medical teams interwoven from all the military branches positioned their patients on litters and carried them out to the Black Hawk helicopter that responded to the 9-line emergency call on the radio, landing right outside the ASTS’s medical staging area. While Operation Blue Horizon spanned multiple days of instruction and covered a vast amount of military medical fundamentals, the inclusion of the ERPSS by the 927th ASTS was a chance to practice the type of agile combat employment necessary for preparing for the era of Great Power Competition.
“Today we set up a basic foundational unit, a 10-bed ERPSS,” said O’Brien. “This is the hallmark of agility. It allows us to see and treat patients, get them to a safe location and to the definitive care they need, and still be able to pack up, move ten miles down the road and do it again tomorrow. That’s what we train for.”
Inside the ERPSS, medical professionals ranging from Airmen freshly out of aerospace medicine training all the way to career doctors and nurses provided care to the simulated patients preparing to be evacuated by air to more capable facilities. For Airman Carrier Kloe-Leah, 927th ASTS aerospace medical service specialist, Blue Horizon punctuates her second-ever unit training assembly with the 927th ASTS. She quickly related the skills necessary for success in the exercise to those she learned in technical school following basic military training and saw the value in the joint force component.
“I feel like the exercise is really helping me see what my job is going to be here at the 927th ASTS,” said Kloe-Leah. “Working with the different branches more closely in this exercise shows you how their structure works and you learn what their combat training is like.”
Gaining these skills and training early on in her career sets Airmen like Kloe-Leah up for success in a military that is always growing more interconnected between the services and components.
“I got to help teach a course on K-9 TCCC [Tactical Combat Casualty Care,]” said Kloe-Leah. “Teaching to higher ranking Navy individuals was helpful in building my confidence. We had open communication - Air Force, Navy and Army all teaching each other”
Having the confidence to ask questions of and share skills with a diverse military medical community is fundamental to mission success and opportunities such as Blue Horizon provide the perfect platform for Citizen Airmen to grow and showcase their capabilities to the total force.
| Date Taken: | 06.07.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 08.22.2024 12:23 |
| Story ID: | 479225 |
| Location: | FLORIDA, US |
| Web Views: | 56 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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