Building tents and partnerships

CAPLJINA, Bosnia and Herzegovina -- Participants of Shared Resilience 2012 set up a Bosnian-Herzegovinian military tent during the Expeditionary Medical Support course here May 31, 2012. More than 500 military members from nine nations are participating in SR12, an annual U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff sponsored exercise, May 28 - June 8. The goals of the exercise are to strengthen interoperability, facilitate training in crisis response and disaster management, and validate the readiness of deployable military medical and humanitarian assistance teams. The exercise, in the spirit of partnership for peace, directly supports U.S. European Command's theater cooperation efforts and strategy for active security with European countries.

SR12 attendees demonstrate expeditionary medical support

Published June 1, 2012
By Staff Sgt. Daryl Knee
52nd Fighter Wing Public Affairs

CAPLJINA, Bosnia and Herzegovina -- More than 50 U.S. Air Force and Marine Corps students are attending an expeditionary medical support course during Shared Resilience 2012, May 28 - June 8.

The Air Force Medical Service EMEDS course instructors are showing students how to build and populate rapid-deployment medical facilities out of tents and mobile hospital systems.

The students are from the 48th Medical Group of RAF Lakenheath, England, and the Detachment Personnel Retrieval Processing company out of Smyrna, Ga., and Washington D.C.

"We're training airmen and Marines within the medical career field, but being in this environment out here allows us a chance to work hands on with different nations' medical teams," said U.S. Air Force Maj. Charles Cambron, element chief of EMEDS and stationed at Joint Base San Antonio, Texas. "Once we know each others' capabilities, we can land in the middle of a situation and work smoothly and efficiently together."

The mobile hospitals use a variety of modular equipment and can be set up in many locations around the world. Using these medical systems can aid in operations such as humanitarian assistance, disaster relief and wartime contingencies. The students train for rapid deployment of the mobile hospital to support the needs of emergency first responders.

"The people in the (U.S. military) medical community pretty much know how to work with each other," said Tech. Sgt. Melissa Rodriguez, instructor supervisor for the EMEDS course and deployed from Joint Base San Antonio, Texas. "However, it's when you add the other nations and their capabilities that you really have to slow down and share processes.

"We do these international exercises every year to see how these medical communities work," she continued. "We have to know what they can do, and they have to know what we can do. We have to ready our forces now."

Military readiness depends on the ability of the U.S. Defense Department and allied and partner nations to respond to incidents before they become major crises. SR12 is designed to improve the capability of armed forces to collectively conduct disaster and crisis response.

"How we work internally is written in Air Force instruction," Cambron said of medical U.S. airmen. "Working with other countries can sometimes be unknown territory. The unknowns aren't written on paper -- those are the things we have to work on and iron out."

The training ends June 1 and is followed by a three-day exercise. The teams will be able to facilitate most aspects of emergency medical operations, including surgery and trauma.