Fort Hood soldiers shift to underground training to prepare for battlefield medical care

This week, the 1st Medical Brigade of the III Armored Corps at , Texas, held a training exercise called “Operation Silver Lightning.” 

The exercise, according to the 1st Medical Brigade, “is designed to simulate the challenges of providing advanced medical care in a contested, large-scale combat environment.”

Between March 23 and April 1, the 1st Medical Brigade employed the tactical arm of the Army Health System. Combat medics, optometrists, doctors, veterinarians, and other medical personnel simulated a mass casualty event in combat conditions in underground tunnels on the Fort Hood base. 

This week, Fox News got an up-close look at how this training exercise was implemented.

“So the medics have understood that you cannot set up a multi-tent field hospital that occupies four or five, up to 15 acres and provides that world-class care, above ground anymore,” said Col. Kamil Sztalkoper, director of public affairs for the III Armored Corps.

Sztalkoper said the shift is driven in part by drone warfare observed in the war in . 

“We have to disperse, number one. And then hide in plain sight, is number two. So dispersing is using multiple different kinds of locations. Hiding in plain sight could be in a building, a warehouse, or here. Using one of our unique training facilities that was designed in the 1940s. Utilized in the 1950s to house nuclear and atomic weapons,” Sztalkoper told Fox News.

The tunnels have since been decommissioned and cleaned out for use as a training facility — in this case, an underground field hospital. Sztalkoper said the several miles of tunnels are used as a “triage emergency room, operating room, vet, optometry [and] clinics,” allowing troops to avoid what he described as the growing drone threat observed in .

During this exercise, about 300 soldiers and role players portraying wounded troops ran through different evacuation and medical drills, with soldiers rushing the wounded from a helicopter to a military medical vehicle and then into the tunnels.

Combat medics are then trained to treat wounded soldiers, or, role players. Each of the wounded imitated the pain and symptoms of an injury that could happen on the battlefield.  

“Really the dilemma for them is managing how they deal with all of this with what they have,” said Col. Brad Franklin, deputy commander of the 1st Medical Brigade.

Franklin, who also serves as a chief nurse, said he has experienced similar challenges in real-world operations. 

“Knowing you don’t have enough people, you don’t have enough surgeons, you don’t have enough nurses, don’t have enough medics and there’s more patients than you can handle,” Franklin said. “So it’s forcing them to triage, reverse triage and take care of these casualties.”

Aside from treatment for soldiers, K-9s and their handlers are also training in this exercise. Further down a dark tunnel, veterinarians work on a simulated wounded K-9, while the handler is being treated for simulated injuries across the room.

Lt. Col. Cynthia Fallness, commander of the 43rd Medical Detachment providing veterinary service support, said the personnel conducting this training are doctoral-level veterinarians.

“In this case, it is a traumatic fracture, a compound fracture of the hind limb. And the dog also has a chest wound and also, is having trouble breathing because there’s a traumatic injury to the mouth,” Fallness said. 

“So these are our diesel dogs,” she said of the fake K-9 on the operating table.

Out of the dozens of combat medics training, one medic says his role in the military is more than just a job. 

“My grandfather actually served in World War II as a combat medic,” William Rothwell, a combat medic with the 1st Medical Brigade, told Fox News. “He went into Normandy, I believe, after the push on Omaha Beach.”

Rothwell, a Boston native, never met his grandfather, but heard stories from his father.