Military medics train to keep casualties alive until evacuation. In the next war, that could take days, or even weeks.

Military medics and trauma teams are training for a potential battlefield where they must care for wounded teammates for weeks before they can be evacuated. Spc. Edgar Martinez/US Army Military medics are training for a future war where fast casualty evacuation is no longer a reality. Such a battlefield could see medics tending to stabilized casualties for days or weeks before accessing advanced care. A senior military trauma leader warned that prolonged casualty care cannot solve all looming evacuation problems. The corpsman strapped his patient onto the litter as the sound of swirling helicopter blades roared from a watchful instructor's hand-held speaker. Double-checking his IVs were secure, he and a stretcher team hoisted up their casualty and sprinted toward the landing zone amid flying debris from the helo's rotor wash — in this case, a leafblower.