Author: COL Nate Forrester
DUSTOFF Family,
Greetings from the Center of the Universe, Fort Liberty, NC (formerly Fort Bragg). Our team continues to make great strides across each of our five primary lines of effort, not without challenges, but I’ll try to provide a quick update on a few of our objectives.
Recruit and Retain Talent: We received a total of 28x flight school packets this year allowing us to select the top tiered from across USMA, ROTC, and the active force filling 23x authorized flight school starts. We have much improved our recruiting processes, sending out teammates to the academy, cadet summer training, and exploiting home station recruiting opportunities. Additionally, we are in the middle of selecting FY25 MEDEVAC Commanders. There will be 10x commands in this years Nominative Panel. We continue to struggle with getting the applicants and volunteers to command at a level that allows for flexibility in slating and selections of our very best.
Develop MSCs for Future Operating Environment 2030/2040: The Medical Service 67J of the future must be a master of not only our craft as an aeromedical evacuation officer, but also must be a medical logistician, they must be able to be a medical operations expert; our officers must be able to understand the patient movement and medical regulating processes in a theater. We can’t just be the ones who wiggle the sticks and look good in a flight suit (although that’s still pretty cool). To that end, our team is looking at ways to improve our Long Term Health Education and Training (LTHET) opportunities by adjusting what programs we are offering to the force. Some of the changes we’ll see in the out years are increasing Homeland Security courses; additional Fellowships with the International Red Cross, and internships with Health and Human Services.
Inform Future Force Structure: The PD Medevac team has introduced the Future Long Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) MEDEVAC internal cabin “technical demonstrator” to Fort Liberty paramedics and ground medics to gain critical feedback on space, functionality, and other ideas before the acquisition process takes it to the manufacturers for production of prototype FLRAA aircraft. The MECCD team, along with other partners from Medical CDID, PD MEDEVAC, DAMO-AV, and OTSG find themselves in a daily knife fight for our future state with respect to aircraft (UH-60L, HH-60M, FLRAA) and medical equipment packages for each. Additional historical challenges continue to rear its head in force structure debates (numbers of aircraft in our formations) as the Army has to make hard decisions in continued resource constrained environments.
It is my greatest honor to serve as our MEDEVAC Consultant and lead our 67J community into the future. Thank you for your continued thoughts and prayers for our fight crews serving abroad. You should absolutely be extremely proud of your MEDEVAC leaders across the enterprise. Thank you for your support! – Stay safe and take care of each other.
COL Nate Forrester
DUSTOFF!
