The US military will stop its practice of shooting pigs and goats to help prepare medics for treating wounded troops in a combat zone, ending an exercise made obsolete by simulators that mimic battlefield injuries.
The prohibition on “live fire” training that includes animals is part of this year’s annual defense bill, although other uses of animals for wartime training will continue. The ban was championed by Vern Buchanan, a Republican congressman from Florida who often focuses on animal rights issues.
Buchanan’s office said the defense department will continue to allow training that involves stabbing, burning and using blunt instruments on animals, while also allowing “weapon wounding”, which is when the military tests weapons on animals. Animal rights groups say the animals are supposed to be anesthetized during such training and testing.
I mean- this is where the training gets more practical, hands on, and graphic. I also don’t remember every detail, this was back in '08.
We were at a contractor school compound with shitload acreage and fields. this was set up in one of their fields. All the hogs are unloaded, drugged up, high as a kite, and on tables with a saline drip line in them for the drugs. It is all set up while we are going through the initial breifings. At no point in any time is any hog awake or aware of anything. Ever.
After the formal briefings, we start off easy with some demonstrations with a knife and cutting a leg artery and showing you what real arterial bleeding versus venous bleeding looks like with the color, the squirt, the vain retreat, then make you pressure it off then apply a tourniquet. Then they will do this on all 4 legs with everyone (groups of 4 to a pig and instructor) taking a leg. Then you start training on things like quick clot or celluclot or the other clotting agents out there to see and feel the difference and time it and all that stuff. This is where you also learn first hand how bad of a product quickclot is and to avoid it when you can (it gets to high Temps and burns both you and the patient. It was also the first generation of applied clotting agents). Then we would look at shallow cuts versus deep cuts and dressing them. IF the pig was still alive then the shooting starts and you start packing wounds.
By this point, normally your first pig has died, but they were also very clear about the value of the pigs life and that they were going to make you use up every bit you can before taking on another pig. If you can stabilize a pig, you must. If you took to long and your pig died they would get pissed because you are not just wasting resources, but you are wasting training for you and those around you, but you are also wasting a pigs life. But it was also expected to happen, you can only cut open and shoot a pig and patch it up so many times.
After your pig has died, then they go into autopsy mode and cut it open. You see not just entry and exit wounds, but also physically feel the cavity. They also cut into your clotting and show you how deep the clotting agents go and why you have to do certain things with them and avoid some areas of the body. We also looked at artery retreat from the inside so you can actually visualize how much it will retreat if done improperly. There was probably more, but I remember spending hours on just the first pig. They were sure to get every bit of training possible out of it before moving you and your team to the next pig.
The next pig, and several more after it, were all for hands on experience with more wound packing in different areas and calibers. Started with pistol, then upped to rifle (both M4 and AK47) then went to a shotgun. Most everyone was able to keep the same pug alive for all the gunshots. Then they introduce puncture wounds with a knife sticking out if it or something else. Then for the training they would keep shooting it or stabbing it again and you would just keep patching it again until it died.
Keep in mind, we were still being evaluated while doing this and getting critiques. If they felt like you were too stressed out while getting yelled at and trying to keep you pig alive, they would just ask you to step back and observe. They also pulled one or two people for them letting their pigs die too fast and basically said ‘you can only watch.’
Then things kick into high gear and it was clear why this is done at a contractor school and not at a base. It was the ‘combat care’ portion of training. So they have you start about 100 meters out and shoot your pig and do ‘something else’. You have no idea what the something else is until you get there. One time it was a hatchet to the stomach, one time it was a metal pole through it. So you have to run up with your full kit on and have half the team (2 guys) pull security while you and a partner do the first aid. You have to have your system down by now. You have to know the order to check things and you have to do it fast. All the while one instructor is yelling at you for every fuck up like he is Gordon Ramsey watching you fuck up boiling water, and you have another instructor with a gun shooting the ground a couple feet away from you and dropping firecrackers next to you. They after about a minute or two they start yelling at you to relocate (and drop in some mortar sims near by) and you have to aid and litter transport your pig around while all this continues around you. Anything you left on the ground is gone, and you just run with this pig keeping it alive till you are completely smoked. If they think you have sufficiently stableized it, they shoot it again and make you keep going.
All in all, it was a full day of just that. Our group went through maybe 20 or 30 pigs for a group of about 30 or 40 guys. Don’t remember exactly, it’s been a while. Honestly though, it was amazing training. I still remember a lot of the trauma training only because I was able to do it rather than just read about it and answer some test questions. It was the best trauma training anyone could ask for in the military, short of working on actual people. During my tour we were living next to a level two field hospital and helped out all the time (always short staffed). Even the docs commented on how good we were for not being real medics.
Feel free to ask any follow up questions.
That’s real fucked up, but it’s probably also the most effective way to train, short of doing the same thing to people.
I think that, as long as we are allowed to wage war, we should be allowed this training.