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Battlefield Medkits Improve 314

Posted by michael from the sulfa-powder dept.
ApharmdB writes "CNN has an article on the US military's fielding of a bandage containing clotting agents that can stop blood flow within two minutes. Obviously, the hope is that they will save a lot of lives. What's next straight from your favorite FPS? Who has an estimate on how long it will take for the Army to outfit its troops with anti-personnel rocket launchers?" Those have been around for quite a while.
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Battlefield Medkits Improve More

Battlefield Medkits Improve

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  • Rocket jumping! (Score:5, Funny)

    by DoctorPhish ( 626559 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @05:07PM (#5199107) Homepage
    that's what I want to see on CNN!

  • future weapons (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    When are they going to make a railgun?

    • Re:future weapons (Score:5, Interesting)

      by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @05:22PM (#5199303) Journal
      They've been working on railguns for awhile. They have them working, and can electromagnetically accellerate aluminum rings at insane speeds (like twice that of the average bullet).

      They just can't get the thing down to a portable size, nor figure out how to supply it with the jiggawatts(TM) of juice it needs to fire.

      But they do exist.

      • Re:future weapons (Score:3, Informative)

        by alcohollins ( 64804 )
        More info on US Navy railgun project can be found here [janes.com]. They're launching projectiles at mach 8! Talk about instagib...

    • Re:future weapons (Score:2, Interesting)

      by felonious ( 636719 )
      They already have.....http://www.railgun.org/

      If you're talking Quake 2 or 3 I own with it!
  • those who are camping next to those medkits. Damnit! Why someone would put a rocket launcher and a mega-health in the same room is beyond me...

  • I could have used one of these (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward


    The time I got hit by a car on my motorcycle.

    Owww!

    EMT's should be given these, they could save lots of lives.

    Now, my girlfriend at her time in the month...I'm sure she'd like these too! Our sheets thank you.

  • I wonder if... (Score:5, Funny)

    by gpinzone ( 531794 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @05:09PM (#5199128) Homepage Journal
    ...these bandages would make effective tampons?

    • ..these bandages would make effective tampons?

      Good idea! I'd keep some used ones around for those full moon nights when I feel like a cup o' tea!

    • Re:I wonder if... (Score:5, Informative)

      by shotfeel ( 235240 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @05:31PM (#5199399)
      No, they wouldn't. The whole idea behind "the period" is to get rid of unnecessary material so the cycle can start again. To that end, you don't want to stop the "bleeding" (which is what these bandages do) so much as simply prevent the discharge that does occur from making a mess. Two completely different objectives.

      For more info, I'll simply refer the reader to any physiology textbook. For info on what happens if you do too good a job at preventing nature from taking its course, look up toxic shock syndrome.
  • ...not an anti-personnel weapon, but I'm running out of hairs to split.
    • ...not an anti-personnel weapon

      speaking of splitting hairs... the spec sheet does imply human targets with the "1x2 Meter Target" spec which incidentally 250m for a rocket launcher hitting a human is not too shabby...

  • Spin (Score:2, Funny)

    by Graspee_Leemoor ( 302316 )
    But do they spin round so you can see them more easily in the heat of battle ?

    Spin, little medkit, spin!

    graspee

  • Antipersonnel (Score:4, Insightful)

    by amigaluvr ( 644269 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @05:12PM (#5199157) Journal
    Who has an estimate on how long it will take for the Army to outfit its troops with anti-personnel rocket launchers?

    We don't really need more anti-personnel equipment

    War nowadays is more about accuretley knocking out specific enemy targets. Communications and flight and aircraft and the like

    Not just killing everybody

    America had developed small antipersonnel nukes during the cold war. These are well known of, but they don't see the light of day

    Some things are better left unbuilt.
    • Wow, you really missed the point. He was commenting on the similarity of this bandage with medkits in games and made a humorous speculation that other aspects of FPSes would follow.
    • Have you ever heard of LandWarrior? The US Army is spending tons of money improving the fighting abilities of infantry and the individual soldier. To win a war you need troops on the ground to take and hold territory.
    • Tell that to Bush and the Pentagon. Didn't anyone notice last year when they started producing them?
  • "Who has an estimate on how long it will take for the Army to outfit its troops with anti-personnel rocket launchers?" Those have been around for quite a while.
    Which part of anti-personnel did Michael not understand, that led him to link to an anti-armor rocket?

    Quake and cousins would be so much more boring if you could only use the rocket launcher against enemy vehicles -- there are a lot fewer of those than enemy troops :)

  • Closer than you think... (Score:5, Informative)

    by neocon ( 580579 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @05:13PM (#5199187) Homepage Journal

    About those anti-personel rocket launchers, we're closer than you may think. The OICW [atk.com] (the next-generation combat weapon being tested for deployment throughout the armed services) includes a computer-aimed grenade launcher which is smart enough to compute a perfect air-burst over a designated target, and which can handle a range of ammunition types.

    • AIOC or something like that.

      It's not a nade lancher AFAIK. It's 20mm HE shell which has a programable fuse. Distances is acquired via laser range finder. The intent is to allow a squad to kill around corners, behind fox-hole, through walls and lightly armored targets, as well as over the top of hills (range to top...shoot above it -- targets on top get unpleasant surprise).

      The REALLY cool thing is, it sorta looks like something like one of the Aliens movies. Very futuristic indeed.

      • AFAIK, all grenade launchers are actually shells, designed for indirect fire. (To not be, it would have to either use a seperate launch mechanism (a spring or some such), or be like the WWII-era rifle grenades.

        This is a particularly nice implementation, though, yes. :-) For more on it, see here [fas.org].

  • The next thing we need are little blue vials, so you can raise your health [i]above[/i] 100%.

  • Michael misread (Score:4, Informative)

    by silicon_synapse ( 145470 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @05:14PM (#5199198)
    The SMAW is anti-armor, not anti-personel. Oh and Slashdot is incredibly slow. Maybe you should invest in some more hardware or bandwidth.
  • We're just waiting for medkits that work the moment you step on them.

    And medkits that can "scale" from healing a minor bruise with one of them to healing multiple gunshot wounds if you have 6 or 7.

    Imagine a Beowulf cluster of medkits?

  • How about (almost) shoulder launched nukes? (Score:5, Informative)

    by nufsaid ( 230318 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @05:16PM (#5199231)
    My favorite from the U.S. stockpile:

    The Davy Crockett [brook.edu]

    If you work out, you might be able to carry one on each shoulder!

    • "Here, the 37-millimeter spotting gun is being loaded (this gun is fired before the warhead to check the weapon's trajectory and make necessary adjustments)."

      Can you really be that inaccurate with a short range NUCLEAR WEAPON!?!?
      • Can you really be that inaccurate with a short range NUCLEAR WEAPON!?!?

        Don't get the wrong idea about these guys. Actual explosive yield of the weapon is on the order of 20 tons-- not kilotons, tons. That's a big boom, but not one so big that you don't have to aim.

        If I recall, they used a munition of about the same size in the SADM. I forget what the acronym stands for-- something like Special Atomic Demolition Munition-- but it was basically an atomic fission land mine. Probably would have been very effective if Russian tanks had ever come plowing through the Fulda Gap. Fortunately we never got to find out for sure.
      • Imagine being on the receiving end.

        The American army rumbles up... stops a couple of miles away. They seem to be fiddling around with something... after a couple of minutes, they ATTACK!

        -plink- A single 37mm shell lands on one of your tanks, bounces and rolls into a ditch.

        You and your comrades laugh at the sheer impotency of the attack. You crawl out of your bunkers and tanks, and mock the enemy for such a feeble effort.

        But they seem to be fiddling with something ELSE now...

    • Didn't the British develop one with a blast radius larger than its range?

      I don't think it was ever deployed.

  • Cut Stop Powder (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Art_XIV ( 249990 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @05:19PM (#5199265) Journal

    Doesn't the military already use a powder that helps clot blood much faster than normal? Similar to the cut stop powder that farmers and ranchers use for animals? Or is this a product that they used to use?

    Are there any former/current medics than can shed some light on this?


    It's interesting that the new clotting agent permeates a bandage, though.

    • Re:Cut Stop Powder (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Daniel Dvorkin ( 106857 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @06:21PM (#5199887) Homepage Journal
      Well, as a former medic (1989-1997) I can say, with authority, that I know nothing about any such stuff. ;) A few posts back, someone was talking some spray called "Tropostat," which was apparently something along those lines, but it sounds like it may have been pulled from the market. Probably caused cancer in rats that would otherwise have bled to death, or something ...

      Some userful things never get approved by the FDA for "NIH" (Not Invented Here) reasons. When I was stationed in England, we worked with the British hospitals a lot, and they had some cool epoxy-like bandaging stuff -- basically, you'd pour it into thw wound, and it would form perfectly to the shape of the wound, and then get slowly absorbed by the patient's body as the wound healed. Now, British medicine is just as good as US; I see no reason why we couldn't have trusted the stuff for our patients. But we couldn't use it because it hadn't been approved by the FDA yet -- and since that was over ten years ago, I suppose it probably never has been or will be.
    • I also remember that "cut stop powder". I probably know why it got ditched as well.

      I grow up in a small warehouse in Hong Kong. When I was a kid, I felt so sleepy one day and crashed my head into the sharp edge of construction material when crawling to my makeshift bed. The cut bled like hell.

      At that time (late 70's) many household stored a powder can "Yunam White" manufactured by China, which claimed to be a very effective blood clotting powder and proven to work well in Vietnam War (well, for the other side). It really worked. I saw a tv documentary that showed how it stopped bleeding on an animal within about 2 mins... But, the nurses in ER really hated that. She kept on swearing when cleaning up my wound. That powder is not soluble in anything and must be cleaned before stitching.... Maybe, that's the reason it got banned /phased out of the market later on...

      It is a bit dumb IMO... I would rather suffer in the hospital then bleed to death on the way to it...

  • How barbaric (Score:5, Funny)

    by Strange Ranger ( 454494 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @05:20PM (#5199283)
    I can't believe we're still using soldiers with blood in them.

  • What I want is... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Asprin ( 545477 ) <gsarnoldNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Friday January 31, 2003 @05:22PM (#5199308) Homepage Journal

    What I want is an orange suit [half-life.com] that dispenses morphine whenever I take damage and lets me run around with a broken leg.

    "Whaddaya mean you stapled yourself 127 times?!"

  • anti-personnel rocket launcher (Score:3, Insightful)

    by GooberToo ( 74388 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @05:23PM (#5199313)
    Who has an estimate on how long it will take for the Army to outfit its troops with anti-personnel rocket launchers?

    It's called an M203, law, vlaw, and rpg. ;)

  • What happened to the good ol' days? You know, when the army had technology that took 20 years until it showed up in the public marketplace.

    For those not in the army, we can enjoy that same tech [coachdepot.com] today.

  • topostat (Score:5, Interesting)

    by frovingslosh ( 582462 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @05:27PM (#5199364)
    Back in the 70's a friend, who had been an army medic in the 60's, told me about a spray on clotting agent called, if I remember right, Topostat. It could stop bleeding and save lives by spraying on a bleeding wound and forming an instant scab. He even tracked some down from a civilian medical supply house and I got a can from him. It worked.

    Why is this apparently a lost technology? I couldn't even find mention of it in a google search.

    • I got a can from him. It worked. Why is this apparently a lost technology?

      They discovered that it causes impotence, hair loss, and many of the canisters were contaminated with herpes.

    • Re:topostat (Score:2, Informative)

      by Wyatt Earp ( 1029 )
      I had some of this.

      When I first got cancer in 1980 they applied paper tape to my back after a bone marrow asperation.

      A couple hours later it was time for a spinal tap and they needed to remove the bandage. Well I learned that day I was allergic to paper tape adhesive. It pulled my skin off with the tape so I was sent home with 3 cans of Topostat to help stave off infection (I had ALL and a depressed imune system.)

      Neat damn stuff, had cans of it around for about 2 years then all of a sudden we couldn't get any from out doctors.

      It really helped out on the farm, one of the farm hands lost a finger tip in some machinery and started to bleed bad, the spray came in handy.
    • It is called NewSkin®, made by MedTech Systems in Colorado, and it is probably available in your local drug store. The stuff is similar to the consistency and odor of model-airplane glue, you brush it on your cuts and bruises (it is also available as an aerosol spray) and it forms an instant scab. It is simply the best stuff out there for minor wounds. Your kids won't tolerate it though, 'cause it stings.

  • BFGs (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nick_davison ( 217681 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @05:29PM (#5199386)
    Who has an estimate on how long it will take for the Army to outfit its troops with anti-personnel rocket launchers?

    OICW - Entering service late this decade [hkpro.com] You can chain fire grenades, set them to explode on impact, just after impact (for penetrating windows) or at a set distance (for exploding over people's heads).

    Alternatively, if you want a BIG F***ING GUN, nothing says I love you quite like a GMG (Grenade Machine Gun) [hkpro.com] - yeah, that's right, a Grenade MG - 40mmx53 grenades, 350 cyclic rate. If I remember rightly, it comes with an optional nightsight (Oh so useful if 350 grenades a minute don't light the target up enough for you)

    • Re:BFGs (Score:2, Informative)

      by Kargan ( 250092 )
      The U.S. Army has utilized a belt-fed automatic 40mm grenade launcher (the Mk-19 AGL) for some time now. It's typically mounted on helicopters or, more recently, on the pintle-mount of the Humvee in place of the usual M2 .50cal MG.

  • Now that is what the truly prepared GI needs!

  • BFG (Score:3, Informative)

    by DeadBugs ( 546475 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @05:32PM (#5199412) Homepage
    The army already is looking to buy a BFG.

    Take a look at the CRUSADER 155MM SELF PROPELLED HOWITZER [army-technology.com]

    No Frag Limit.

  • Battlefield medicine has done a lot (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @05:32PM (#5199418) Journal
    A lot of medical innovations have come out of the military in the past, much like innovations in other industries (computers, aviation)

    Blood plasma comes to mind. Way back some army docs realized that if you lose a huge amount of blood, you're more likely to die of shock simply because your heart has nothing to pump around.

    They realized you can use a centrifuge to take out all the red blood cells, dehydrate what's left, and all you need to do is add distilled water and get it into the body of an exsanguinated soldier. Just the fact that theres some fluid in the system for the heart to pump is enough to keep you alive until you can replace the red blood cells, and other gook in there..

    It works regardless of blood type, takes less space, and doesn't require refrigeration (keeps longer).

    Science has long been at it's best when its at war. Make of that what you will, but it's always been so.

  • User friendliness (Score:2, Insightful)

    by dynayellow ( 106690 )
    Here's my question... can they be applied using only one hand? This has been a big problem with personal first aid kids for quite some time.
    • And it always will be. One-handed bandages would be much more complex, and much more expensive. Distributing them as standard equipment to every soldier (as the current bandages are) would not be practical.

      Since the military rightly uses a buddy system where no soldier is ever deployed without one partner, plus the larger squad and platoon teams of which the buddy teams are a part, it's only sensible to plan on having at least one other soldier available to apply the bandage (and all the other immediate first aid). This is how they're trained (and not just for first aid, either), and it's a good system. It reinforces teamwork, and helps to ensure small-unit cohesion; both valuable commodities on the battlefield.

      Obviously, special troops with special missions might be exempt from the universal buddy-system rule, and fielding small numbers of special variants on the standard equipment probably is feasible (and probably already happens).

  • Hope we get the GPS effect (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cbuskirk ( 99904 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @05:34PM (#5199437)
    Durning the final couple of months in the last War with Iraq, several companys built hundreds of thousands of Personal GPS's to supply one to every soldier. When the war ended they were stuck with most of their inventory and the public got the GPS's at affordible prices 5 to 10 years quicker than normal military trickle down. I hope the same thing happens with those bandages, otherwise they will be quite expensive for local ER's to stock them. Hell in a few years we could all have them stocked in our home.

  • Bandage Tech (crabshells) (Score:5, Informative)

    by gnetwerker ( 526997 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @05:42PM (#5199504) Journal

    The anti-hemorrhagic bandage was developed by Dr. Kenton Gregory at the Oregon Medical Laser Center [providence.org], and there is much more material about it at the website of the company formed to commercialize the technology, HemCon [hemcon.com].

    The secret to the patch is a particular formulation of chitin, which is to stay, crabshells. The pro-clotting properties of chitin have been well-known for some time, but Dr. Gregory and his researchers were able to figure out how to make a viable bandage out of it, which hadn't been done before.

    The OMLC is working on lots of other cool stuff as well, such as laser suturing (very good for your liver, which won't take thread sutures).

    Full disclosure: I'm on their Board of Directors.

    gnetwerker

  • When can I get... (Score:3, Funny)

    by twemperor ( 626154 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @05:49PM (#5199577) Homepage
    ...a version for after I shave?

  • Geez... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Malicious ( 567158 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @05:51PM (#5199603)
    So we've got Medipacks, StimPacks, and Anti Personnel Rocket Launchers.

    Where's the Quad Damage and the Redeemer?

    • So we've got Medipacks, StimPacks, and Anti Personnel Rocket Launchers.

      Where's the Quad Damage and the Redeemer?

      I think the redeemer [boeing.com] is covered too...
  • This is just another example of how science is thwarted by evil warmongering men. All this will do is encourage governments to go to war, in the belief that there will be less casualties.
    Of course, bandages will only be available for soldiers. Will somebody think of the (children) collateral damage?

    By the way, In Soviet Russia, hemorrages bandage YOU!

    Of course, 1.Create clotting bandages. 2. ??? 3. Profit! (Where 2==sell to the US military at outrageously inflated prices).

    And, oh, yeah, the bandages arrived too late for BSD. Because it is already, well, you know...

  • AP rockets? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @06:11PM (#5199798)
    "Who has an estimate on how long it will take for the Army to outfit its troops with anti-personnel rocket launchers?"

    Why? In real life, assult rifles hurt a lot more than they do in some popular FPSs (Half-Life comes to mind).

    Besides, FPSs have the advantage of the Incredible Shrinking Ammo, the ability to carry dozens of reloads for that rocket launcher with no detrimental effects.

    Oh, and then there's the ability to fire (accurately!) what is essentially a support weapon while walking/running/jumping. And people/objects behind you don't need to worry about backwash...

  • A new mission for the CIA (Score:4, Funny)

    by geekoid ( 135745 ) <dadinportland&yahoo,com> on Friday January 31, 2003 @06:23PM (#5199905) Homepage Journal
    They will need to sneak in and hide these kits throughout a building, and hope they get found... ;)
  • If they are using high grade pure cocaine flakes to cauterize wounds like a lot of places then I doubt they'll be using them for what they intended.
  • ...can you use them to infect the enemy? Because if you can't, they're just not worth a damn.
  • Don't forget about the "LAW".. M-72 Light Anti-tank Weapon. It's from the Vietnam era. Compact, single shot rocket launcher.. It's 28 inches long collapsed, and only weighs 5 pounds..

    Pretty easy to work. Hmmm, it's been a while since I've seen one.. I think it went:

    1. Take it out of your pack,
    2. Pull the pin (to uncap the end)
    3. extend it (like a collapsable telescope or chinese yoyo)
    4. raise the rear sight
    5. aim
    6. squeeze
    7. Dead Enemy


    ya, and I know someone will add "??? -- Profit" No easy profit here. Once you blow up the enemy, it's kinda hard to go through the remains of his pockets, assuming you can find them. :)

    BTW, LAWs are for anti-tank and bunker use.. They'll go through 1 foot of armour. It'd make a pretty serious mess against a person too.. :)

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