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The Tactical Field Care airway sequence in the current TCCC Guidelines, published May 1, 2026 by the Committee on Tactical Combat Casualty Care, is concise: assess for an unobstructed airway, position the casualty, suction if available, and if those measures fail, perform a surgical cricothyroidotomy. Nasopharyngeal and supraglottic airways are not part of that TFC sequence except in one narrow circumstance. That is a significant departure from how airway management was taugh

Most departments and units certify personnel in tactical medicine skills and consider the job done. The certification is real. The assumption behind it is not. Psychomotor skills, the kind that require the hands and the brain to work together under pressure, decay without practice. That is not a training philosophy. It is a documented physiological process. And the timeline is shorter than most certification schedules reflect. CPR Quality Drops Within Months Compression depth

The conditions that produce exertional heat illness and significant UV exposure do not require a hot day. They require exertion, gear, and time outside. May has all three, and the thermometer reads nothing alarming. That last part is the problem. Temperature is not a reliable indicator of what the body is managing under load and in gear. A 68-degree overcast morning on a range is not a neutral environment. It is a comfortable one, which is a different thing. Two separate thre

In an emergency, hesitation is not neutral, it changes the outcome. By the time a unit arrives on scene, the situation has already been shaped by whoever was there first. Most of the time, that is someone with no training, no equipment, and no real idea what to do. What they do in those moments, and where they get it wrong, is worth understanding. The average time from dispatch to arrival on scene in the U.S. runs around 9 to 10 minutes. A person can bleed to death from a sev