ARRCADE INOCULATION and CASUALTY MOVE
2025 Maj David McBride
Medical provision to the force is a key aspect of the moral component of fighting power. It is the responsibility of all leaders to ensure injured soldiers can receive the lifesaving care they need. Without this a force can lose its will to fight, reducing combat effectiveness.
The challenge of delivering this in warfighting is huge. The complexity of scale, austere environments and conflicting priorities present hard decisions to any chain of command. To overcome these challenges requires collaboration and sharing of resources between nations. HQ ARRC Medical Branch has been striving towards this through two key exercises, ARRCADE INOCULATION 25 and CASUALTY MOVE 25.
Exercise ARRCADE INOCULATION saw six members of the medical branch and one logistics planner from support division visit the Finish Defence Force( FDF) Logistics HQ in Tampere, Finland. Over a 2-day visit we engaged in information sharing and visited a surgical field exercise.
Medical Director Col Bowley presents a gift to his FDF counterpart
Starting in Tampere the medical team spent a day with a mixed team from the FDF HQ learning about the wellintegrated Finnish medical system. They described Finland as an island due to the geographic isolation between the Gulf of Bothnia, High North and their border with Russia. This mindsight is foundational to all that they do when considering military medical planning.
On the second day the team got to enjoy the crisp, sunny Finnish weather visiting surgical teams on a medical exercise across two sites. The first was a small, tented facility that can conduct limited surgical procedures to save life. This was staffed by a conscript team who were completing their voluntary service and would support a Brigade. They have built their medical system around an ability to continue delivering high quality care despite the elements. Each tent was equipped with wood burning stoves. We received our briefs inside a tent that was 25oC + before walking out into a balmy 7oC outside. The team hosting us said that in the middle of winter they can maintain 35oC inside the tents and the medical team need to work in their underwear. It also had an ambulance team attached who utilised a converted Mercedes Sprinter van with space for 4 casualties inside. This would then transport the casualties to the next level of treatment.
FDF Medics transfer a patient into the Field Hospital
Following our heated tent experience we visited another unit providing the next level of care. This larger facility can deliver damage control surgery to sustain life and limb and is staffed by a mix of regulars and reservists. They were running casualty simulation and could complete up to 24 surgeries a day. A continuing theme we saw with the FDF is the easy and smooth integration of their military with the civilian sector. This is born out of their collaborative mindset of a whole nation approach.
After a successful week in Finland some of the med team then moved onto Ex Casualty Move( CAMO). This was a medical exercise ran by NATOs Multinational Medical Coordination Centre. For the first time mixed civilian and military medical teams from multiple nations exercise the new Patient Flow Management system. The ARRC team as one of the NATO Corps in the scenario was for balancing our medical resources with the casualty rates and sending Bulk Patient Movement Requests( PMRs) to the Rear Medevac( RM) Hubs. From there the casualties were tracked and nations were able to collaborate on the return of individuals back to their own nation.
The spectacle of a doctor in action among soldiers in equal danger with equal courage, saving lives where all others are taking them, allaying fear where all others are causing it, is one which must always seem glorious, whether to God or men.
Winston Churchill
This was only possible due to each nation bringing a mixed team of the appropriate experts. The Norwegian team, for example, had a response cell of 20 people in Norway for whom their deployed team could contact to appropriately move and allocate national hospital beds to returning patients. The other nations present were Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Sweden, UK and the USA.
Sprinter van fitted with rails that can hold four stretchers
This depth of reality and exercise play was invaluable to improving nations preparedness for future large scale combat operations. From the UK we had a mixed military civilian team who are heavily involved in the Reception Arrangements for MOD Patients( RAMP), which is the national response to repatriating injured service personnel from overseas. CAMO25 also saw the extensive use of LOGFAS to exercise the movement of medical materiel from national supply to Corps via the JLSG. Maj Dave Hall from SP Div was one of the exercises key Subject Matter Experts( SMEs) and was able to take great strides forward in improve both our, and other nations understandings of how to use this platform to effectively manage medical logistics.
Across these two weeks the medical branch, and wider Sp Div, have taken significant steps forward in improving our collaboration with our NATO partners and improving our processes around patient movement and medical logistics. This will prove invaluable in the future as the Corps continues to mission rehearse for NATOs worst day.
Sp Div team with their Finish medical colleagues
the imjin SUMMER 2025
7