Abstract:
Future warfare will likely involve near-peer or peer-peer conflict in which there is a great risk of mass casualty scenarios. Because of anti-access and area denial, air superiority will not be guaranteed, which will hamper rapid evacuation of casualties as well as resupply. Under such circumstances, military medical personnel may be forced, due to the constraints of the battlefield and tactical necessity to return servicemembers to duty, to implement reverse triage in which servicemembers with less severe injuries are treated first. However, reverse triage is potentially incongruent with international humanitarian law. Furthermore, should reverse triage need to be implemented, from the extant military doctrine it is not certain when this would be appropriate or the steps that might be followed, which highlight the gaps that exist before reverse triage should be considered as military doctrine on the battlefield. Lastly, we question the psychological impact that reverse triage could portend on military medical personnel, unit morale and unit cohesion. While there have been recent recommendations that reverse triage might need to be implemented in a near-term future conflict, these issues linger. It is time for Western militaries to assess the merits of reverse triage and the potential drawbacks.
摘要:
未来的战争可能会涉及近乎对等或对等的冲突,在这种冲突中,大规模伤亡的风险很大。由于反访问和区域拒绝,空中优势将无法保证,这将阻碍伤亡人员的迅速疏散和补给。在这种情况下,军事医务人员可能会被迫,由于战场和战术必要性的限制,实施反向分类,其中受伤较轻的服务人员首先得到治疗。然而,反向分类可能与国际人道主义法不一致。此外,如果需要实施反向分诊,从现有的军事学说来看,这不确定何时合适或可能采取的步骤,这突出了反向分类之前存在的差距,应该被视为战场上的军事理论。最后,我们质疑反向分诊可能对军事医务人员的心理影响,单位士气和单位凝聚力。虽然最近有建议认为,在近期的未来冲突中可能需要实施反向分类,这些问题挥之不去。现在是西方军队评估反向分类的优点和潜在缺点的时候了。