Simulated drone attack at Camp Pendleton puts spotlight on little seen, often deadly adversary
The blood was fake. So were the broken bones. But an otherwise authentic, torn-from-the-headlines drill was held Wednesday at Camp Pendleton involving an often deadly and rarely seen adversary: aerial drones.
Marines and Navy corpsmen had to react to a simulated attack by multiple drones that struck while they were having chow on the edge of a flat, open field.
The scripted exercise was part of Steel Knight, an annual two-week campaign to train troops for a variety of threats, including drones, whose use in warfare is rapidly rising and becoming ever more public.
Ukraine has used small drones to inflict unexpectedly heavy damage on Russian ships, tanks and trenches. Israel killed people in Gaza with the use of quickly assembled sniper drones.
This week’s mock attack focused on roughly three dozen Marines and corpsmen, many who will deploy to Australia for exercises meant to counter aggression by China, which has a huge inventory of drones.
Navy medical personnel are given additional deteriorating medical symptoms from an evaluator, for the team to treat and diagnose. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
The attack was a theatrical affair. Marines covered parts of their body with a red liquid resembling blood. Others donned broken bones made of plastic. A few wandered aimlessly, like extras in the horror movie “Night of the Living Dead.”
And some did nothing, pretending to be dead.
Cries of “Help me, I’m dying” and “I need a ketamine drip” filled the air, but only briefly.
The scene was largely taken over by Navy corpsmen who are trained, among other things, to be battlefield medics who serve shoulder-to-shoulder with the Marine Corps, which does not have its own medical department.
At Camp Pendleton, Navy medical personnel respond to a simulated attack by multiple drones that struck while troops were having chow at their forward base. The wounded are immediately taken to a field medical unit comprised of medical personnel from the U.S. Navy, where they are treated and stabilized before being airlifted to a hospital. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
At Camp Pendleton, Navy medical personnel respond to a simulated attack by multiple drones that struck while troops were having chow at their forward base. The wounded are immediately taken to a field medical unit comprised of medical personnel from the U.S. Navy, where they are treated and stabilized before being airlifted to a hospital. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
At Camp Pendleton, Navy medical personnel respond to a simulated attack by multiple drones that struck while troops were having chow at their forward base. The wounded are immediately treated by Naval medical personnel as the patient status board is continuously updated on the condition of the wounded. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
At Camp Pendleton, Navy medical personnel respond to a simulated attack by multiple drones that struck while troops were having chow at their forward base. The wounded are immediately taken to a field medical unit comprised of medical personnel from the U.S. Navy, where they are treated and stabilized before being airlifted to a hospital. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
At Camp Pendleton, Navy medical personnel respond to a simulated attack by multiple drones that struck while troops were having chow at their forward base. The wounded are immediately treated by medical personnel from the U.S. Navy and then given additional deteriorating medical symptoms from an evaluator, for the team to treat and diagnose. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
At Camp Pendleton, Navy medical personnel respond to a simulated attack by multiple drones that struck while troops were having chow at their forward base. The wounded are immediately taken to a field medical unit comprised of medical personnel from the U.S. Navy, where they are treated and stabilized before being airlifted to a hospital. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
At Camp Pendleton, Navy medical personnel respond to a simulated attack by multiple drones that struck while troops were having chow at their forward base. The wounded are immediately taken to a field medical unit comprised of medical personnel from the U.S. Navy, where they are treated and stabilized before being airlifted to a hospital. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
At Camp Pendleton, Navy medical personnel respond to a simulated attack by multiple drones that struck while troops were having chow at their forward base. The wounded are immediately taken to a field medical unit, where they are treated and stabilized before being airlifted to a hospital. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
At Camp Pendleton, Navy medical personnel respond to a simulated attack by multiple drones that struck while troops were having chow at their forward base. The wounded are immediately taken to a field medical unit comprised of medical personnel from the U.S. Navy, where they are treated and stabilized before being airlifted to a hospital. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
The drill was meant to test the limits of Navy corpsmen, many of whom will be soon deploying to Australia. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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At Camp Pendleton, Navy medical personnel respond to a simulated attack by multiple drones that struck while troops were having chow at their forward base. The wounded are immediately taken to a field medical unit comprised of medical personnel from the U.S. Navy, where they are treated and stabilized before being airlifted to a hospital. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
It was a deceptively tense moment. The corpsmen — or docs, as they’re widely called — were quietly shadowed by supervisors and commanders who evaluated their ability to secure the scene, assess casualties, triage the injured, provide care and, if needed, get the wounded ready for evacuation.
“We’re trying to stress them to make this as real as possible,” said Hospital Corpsman First Class Cory Holmes. “We’re making them physically carry the patients so they’ll get tired running back and forth.”
The drills are meant to prepare them for the sort of life-and-death moments that Camp Pendleton Marines experienced during a seven-month deployment to Sangin, Afghanistan, in 2010 and 2011.
Twenty-five members of 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines were killed and more than 200 were wounded — the highest unit casualty rate of the Afghanistan War.
Such battles test a corpsman in every possible way, said Navy Capt. Garfield Cross, division surgeon for Pendleton’s 1st Marine Division.
It leads you to think, “I’m in a bad situation. What do I do?” said Cross, who served in Afghanistan. “Who do I triage first?
“I want people to make mistakes in training like this so that when they’re called on to do it in real life, they can.”
Stabilized patients are loaded into an Osprey before being airlifted to a hospital. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Cross said the situation is becoming more complicated because the prevalence of drone attacks is on the rise.
“We’re looking in real time at what’s happening between Russia and the Ukraine,” he said. “That’s driving some of the change we’re going through.”
Innovation was occurring a short distance from where Cross was standing on Wednesday. The Marines made an operating room out of the type of steel container boxes commonly carried by large ocean-going ships. They’re exploring whether the boxes, which aren’t easy to transport, can be used in a broader way.
The exercise wasn’t without hiccups. It took the Marines a long time to shepherd patients to a pair of MV-22 Osprey aircraft for transfer to a medical facility. But the drill got a thumbs up from Lance Cpl. Matthew Burns, whose role was to pretend that he had a traumatic brain injury.
“I was treated accordingly, and it was pretty quick,” he said. “Everybody was checking on everybody. Not one person was neglected.”
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