Drones transport blood to battlefield for life-saving medical attention in NATO exercise
NATO plans to boost defence spending and strengthen military readiness in response to potential threats from Russia, with a focus on drones and medical preparedness.
READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/06/05/drones-transport-blood-to-battlefield-for-life-saving-medical-attention-in-nato-exercise
Subscribe to our channel. Euronews is available on Dailymotion in 12 languages
NATO plans to boost defence spending and strengthen military readiness in response to potential threats from Russia, with a focus on drones and medical preparedness.
READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/06/05/drones-transport-blood-to-battlefield-for-life-saving-medical-attention-in-nato-exercise
Subscribe to our channel. Euronews is available on Dailymotion in 12 languages
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00As NATO defense ministers meet in Brussels to discuss the alliance's capabilities and demands to increase defense spending to 5% of GDP close to the Russian border in the Baltics and Poland, multinational soldiers are conducting a large scale military exercise to determine readiness in the event of war.
00:20The evolution of critical field hospitals have been crucial as the first line of defense preventing death or major life changing injuries for soldiers on the battlefield.
00:30These drones are said to be a game changer for decreasing mortality rates as injured soldiers can receive rapid blood transfusions immediately.
00:38So this part of the exercise simulates the use of drone technology to deliver blood directly onto the battlefield.
00:45Soldiers are given a blood transfusion there and then in the event of them hemorrhaging or being caught in an explosion.
00:51It just buys them a certain amount of time before they can get to a medical aid center and to be treated properly or to get surgery.
01:00Here medical staff react to drills and emergency life saving treatments that are common to battlefield injuries.
01:06The patients you see here are notional but the field hospitals are there to stabilize patients with IV access intubations and CT scanners for head trauma and brain injuries.
01:17This is hospital 519. It's an American-led field hospital set up in the center of Lithuania.
01:23It's really part of NATO's exercises and readiness for war.
01:27At any point here there are two to three surgeons ready to do about 18 hours of surgery per day with two operating theaters and 30 medical staff.
01:36The patient here is intubated, he's suffered burns in his face and so we have our equipment set up.
01:43We have him on our cardiac monitor, he's on our mechanical ventilator and right now we're providing life saving treatment for this patient who requires him to survive.
01:51It could have been an explosion, a blast injury, something that could have obstructed his airway which requires this ventilation in order for him to breathe.
01:59The hospital also has an intensive care unit and a dental unit for specific war injuries including tooth disease.
02:06Most of the injuries we're seeing are different from what we saw in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
02:12Soldiers are wearing body armor and helmets so a lot of the injuries are to the extremities and to the face which highlights the need for a dentist on the battlefield.
02:21If a soldier has tooth injuries either from trauma or disease it might affect the ability to wear their helmet and then they can't fight.
02:28The war in Ukraine is informing how you're setting up this dental hospital within the battle?
02:34Absolutely, yes. The US army medical leadership both in the army medical department and the dental corps leadership have been studying the trends very closely to try to see how we can modernize our army medical team to include the dental team to be better prepared for large scale combat operations.
02:52Senior NATO military leaders say they advise armies to conceal the medical red cross sign at military hospitals or medical structures despite the fact that civilian and in particular hospital structures have protected status in international humanitarian law.
03:08However, this is no longer respected in many current wars or conflicts they say.
03:13Shona Murray, Kaunas, Kituenia.