Helpers in an emergency

In recent decades, Western navies have had little experience in treating casualties in combat. Land-based operations by the US armed forces therefore form the basis for today's on-board medical concepts.

When people were preparing for the big battle in the Cold War, they expected the fighting to last a few days and looked with a certain fatalism at the expected probability of survival.

The circumstances have changed fundamentally over the last 30 years. Where a quick nuclear exchange of blows used to be the order of the day, we now expect conventional operations of longer duration, but also hybrid scenarios with a large number of casualties.

At the same time, the structure of the Bundeswehr has changed. The navy of the large conscript army has been replaced by a small one,