Patriot Medic 25 tests Reserve medical readiness in large-scale combat operations
Patriot Medic 2025 took place August 6 to 12 at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, and Grissom Air Reserve Base, Indiana. The multi-national exercise, led by the Air Force Reserve, included more than 9,000 personnel from all U.S. military services and international partners including Australian, British and Canadian forces.
Patriot Medic is the Air Force Reserve’s premier medical readiness training event. It provides immediate medical certifications for service members and fosters long term capability development. The exercise also helps to prepare participants for future conflicts where they could face mass casualty events across varied terrain.
Maj. Gen. John Bartrum was the senior trainer for Patriot Medic 25. He is also the mobilization assistant to the Air and Space Force surgeon general where he directs Air Force Medical Service operations.
"We have to be ready to operate in a world of constrained resources," Bartrum said. "The exercise conditions Reserve Airmen for high stress operations. We build resiliency in peacetime so that we can respond and perform effectively in any environment."
More than 100 Tactical Combat Casualty Care trainers and evaluators participated in the exercise and trained new trainers and other servicemembers at the event. This helped some participants complete required deployment cycle TCCC Level 2 training certifications. Trainers also certified new training cadre that returned to their units with the ability to train more Airmen.
"The enhancement [to the exercise] came from realism and stresses induced on our medics,” said Col. Ramil Codina, command surgeon for Air Force Reserve Command. “We prepare our medics as we fight in the field with combined forces operators."
Codina also shared how the exercise validated the Reserve's immediate readiness capabilities and supported the AFRC priorities Ready Now! and Transforming for the Future.
"The 'Ready Now' piece is measured by our ability to provide long-term care and evacuate our patients in the field with current technologies," Codina said.
The exercise included contested terrain scenarios where Army forces moved equipment across hundreds of thousands of acres at Fort McCoy. Other teams also replicated real combat conditions and flew patients between multiple locations and medics exchanged patients between Army, Navy, and Air Force personnel.
"Trauma physicians from the Army, Navy and allied medical forces all perform medicine in a similar fashion," Codina said. "Our Air Force Reserve medics who are trained in tactical combat casualty care were able to pass those skills onto our joint and allied partners."
Capt. April Pulver, chief nurse with the 920th Aerospace Medicine Squadron at Langley Air Force Base, also participated in the exercise.
"When you're deployed, Reserve Airmen come from various units and stations, and you need to learn how to work as a team," Pulver said. "I very much learned how to be a part of one team at Patriot Medic 25."
Patriot Medic 25 demonstrated the Reserve's unique value in providing experienced medical support globally. In a world where peer competitors threaten global stability, the Reserve's medical capabilities could determine mission success or failure.
"The reason we do this every year is readiness," Bartrum said. "We are ready now, anytime, anywhere."
