The US military is looking into modifying a fleet of their transport planes to install systems that would allow any of the planes to be rapidly converted into a transport hospital.
From Defense Industry Daily
For several decades, the USA had a fleet of dedicated aircraft, the last being its DC-9 derived C-9A “Florence Nightningale” fleet. In its place is a new approach devised by USAF Lt. Gen. Paul K. Carlton Jr., the Air Force surgeon general until 2002. The idea is that every USAF Air Mobility Command aircraft can become an aeromedical aircraft, as newly arrived aircraft on the tarmac are loaded with about 800 pounds of gear and supplies per patient and diverted to hospitals like Landstuhl in Germany. Instead of waiting for days to stabilize a patient, outbound flights are sometimes coordinated while a patient is still in surgery. The result? Lower average cargo volume and weight statistics for US transport aircraft missions, and a 90% survival rate for troops injured in current operations. In Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the rate was about 75%…
What if the lighter systems used for helicopters could be adapted for larger fixed-wing aircraft, and used to create a portable litter system that needed no cargo equipment support, and could be kept with aeromedical evacuation crews?
AMB (Air Mobility Command) teamed with Lifeport, Inc. to demonstrate the concept using the company’s stacking litter system (SLS) which weighs less than 150 pounds. The initiative’s initial approval date was April 2007, and the concept demonstration was completed in June 2007 on a KC-135 Stratotanker. The team demonstrated compatibility with the NATO mesh litter, a litter backrest, and the special medical emergency evacuation device. The SLS encountered some minor compatibility issues due to its helicopter origins, but none were show-stoppers and the system could be loaded by 2 people without equipment, and installed in the plane in under 20 minutes.
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