China’s military medical experts are making progress in finding cures for common injuries seen in drone warfare, drawing on lessons from the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, according to state broadcaster CCTV.
Chen Juxiang, a senior Chinese military doctor, told CCTV on Monday that cranio-maxillofacial injuries – damage to the hard and soft tissues of the head – had become a particularly big problem in conflicts dominated by drones.
Chen, director of neurosurgery at the First Affiliated Hospital of Naval Medical University, cited battlefield experience from Ukraine and the US-Iran conflict, saying that “in drone warfare, cranio-maxillofacial injuries account for more than 30 per cent of battlefield trauma”.
Chen said his team had been preparing for the shift for years and had made progress in treatment protocols and haemostatic materials for these kinds of head injuries.
“Our team began adjusting the direction of our military medical research as early as 2017 to make it more directly responsive to combat-readiness requirements,” said Chen, who has practised medicine for more than 30 years.
Chen did not elaborate on the progress his team had made.
The developments come as Beijing doubles down on building both offensive and defensive drone capabilities.
President Xi Jinping has repeatedly stressed that China “must accelerate the development of uncrewed intelligent combat forces and countermeasure capabilities”.
According to Fu Qianshao, a military analyst and former People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force officer, “China is continuously observing the use of drones on battlefields around the world and drawing lessons from them to build its own systems to adapt to drone warfare.”
A 2024 study from the PLA General Hospital compared the proportions of different types of injuries among Ukrainian troops in conflicts before and after 2022, finding that traditional gunshot wounds were increasingly giving way to explosive injuries caused by kinetic weapons and drones.
It often took more than six hours for casualties on the Russia-Ukraine battlefield to be moved from the site of injury to a casualty collection point, according to the PLA General Hospital study.
Frontline medical units should therefore be able to carry out prolonged casualty care, damage-control resuscitation and repeated damage-control surgery, it argued.
The researchers also proposed using drones to transport casualties, blood, oxygen and medicines, as well as to provide airway support.
Another 2024 study from a PLA hospital said that injuries caused by drones were becoming more complex, including blast injuries, burns and chemical burns, with traumatic brain injuries and lung injuries among the most serious.
This study proposed that, in preparation for future battlefields, China’s military medical system should consider using extracorporeal membrane oxygenation in the battlefield, or ECMO – an external system that provides respiratory and circulatory support – to treat critically wounded patients with severe lung injuries.
The research comes as drones have become increasingly widespread in conflicts, with injuries different from those traditionally caused by bullets and artillery shells presenting new and serious challenges for military medical services around the world.
The United States has reportedly also adjusted tactical casualty-care training for drone-dominated battlefield environments.
US military news outlet The War Horse reported in April that an emergency medical course for 50 California National Guard soldiers had added a standard component on “modern warfare concepts, POV unmanned aircraft system explosives”.
Its focus was the risk of aerial attack and the importance of high-quality burn care.
In July, The War Horse cited Pentagon data covering about 400 wounded personnel in the US-Iran conflict between February and April, saying head injuries occurred more frequently than any other category amid extensive drone and missile attacks.
Head injuries were recorded more than 170 times among the roughly 400 casualty incidents – a finding consistent with Chen’s assessment.
The War Horse also reported that the large number of head injuries could result in traumatic brain injury (TBI) – damage to the brain that can affect thinking, movement and emotions – potentially making TBI a signature injury of the war.
According to MedGlobal, an aid organisation providing medical support in Ukraine, drones detonating at close range can cause complex injuries to the upper body, neck and head.
US media outlet Business Insider reported in January that medical workers in Ukraine were seeing relatively few gunshot wounds compared with blast and shrapnel injuries in what it described as a “war of remote destruction”. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
