Military doctrine on the control of stress in combat is presented in a new Army field manual (pdf).
“In our own Soldiers and in the enemy combatants, control of stress is often the decisive difference between victory and defeat across the operational continuum. Battles and wars are won more by controlling the will to fight than by killing all of the enemy combatants. Uncontrolled combat stress causes erratic or harmful behaviors, impairs mission performance, and may result in disaster….”
See “Combat and Operational Stress Control,” U.S. Army Field Manual 4-02.51, July 2006.
A recent Congressional Research Service report “presents difficult-to-find statistics regarding U.S. military casualties in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF, Afghanistan), including those concerning medical evacuations, amputations, and the demographics of casualties.”
“Some of these statistics are publically available at the Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) website, while others have been obtained through contact with experts at DOD.”
See “United States Military Casualty Statistics: Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom,” June 8, 2006.
“Medical Program Support for Detainee Operations” (pdf) is the subject of Department of Defense Instruction 2310.08E, issued June 6, 2006.
In anticipation of future known and unknown health security threats, including new pandemics, biothreats, and climate-related health emergencies, our answers need to be much faster, cheaper, and less disruptive to other operations.
To unlock the full potential of artificial intelligence within the Department of Health and Human Services, an AI Corps should be established, embedding specialized AI experts within each of the department’s 10 agencies.
Investing in interventions behind the walls is not just a matter of improving conditions for incarcerated individuals—it is a public safety and economic imperative. By reducing recidivism through education and family contact, we can improve reentry outcomes and save billions in taxpayer dollars.
The U.S. government should establish a public-private National Exposome Project (NEP) to generate benchmark human exposure levels for the ~80,000 chemicals to which Americans are regularly exposed.