US Army calls adopt Israel's advances in combat medicine: IDF reports mortality rate among wounded soldiers dropped from 15% to 7.1%

A report by the U.S. Army dated April 2026 states that the world's most powerful military must incorporate as soon as possible the medical lessons learned from Israel's war since October 2023.

The document, revealed by Fox News, is 78 pages long and titled "Israeli Defense Force Medical Lessons Learned," warns that Israel had to undergo "a painful process of transformation" in the heat of battle and that Washington can now avoid it.

"The time for preparation is now. Simply possessing clinical and tactical skills is insufficient," the authors wrote.

According to data from a senior combat medicine specialist with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), whose name is not disclosed, the mortality rate among wounded soldiers dropped from 15% during the 2006 conflict with Hezbollah to 7.1% in 2023, when the war in Gaza following the Oct. 7 terrorist attack. This indicator is known as "case fatality rate," which the specialist considers the best measure of the quality of care and which, simply put, reflects the percentage of the wounded who die.

The other improved metric is response time. In 2006, advanced life support took between 15 and 20 minutes to reach an injured person, but today it arrives almost instantly or within a maximum of four minutes, stated the specialist, who attributes this to several changes.

First, each unit has a doctor on board, which allows for decisions to be made within the first few minutes. Israel is also prepared to transport seriously injured patients by helicopter to Israeli hospitals quickly, and, furthermore, since 2013, more blood products have been used to stop bleeding. According to the specialist quoted by Fox, the IDF were the first to apply plasma at the site of the injury rather than saline solution. He also mentioned blood transported in coolers that first responders carried on their backs—a method that, he said, "saved significant numbers" of wounded soldiers—and a system that shares each patient's data with all medical personnel throughout the care continuum.

That is why the U.S. Army stated in the report that there is an urgent need to learn from the IDF: "In the fields of operational health and force readiness, the IDF executed proactive public health measures — including robust bio-surveillance, forward-positioned preventive medicine teams and stringent food safety protocols — to mitigate health threats and maintain operational readiness."

The relationship with the United States works both ways. The same specialist said that Israeli military medicine drew on a 2012 U.S. study, "Death on the Battlefield (2001–2011)," regarding the care of the wounded in the Iraq War. An Israeli military spokesperson stated that the U.S. Army report "was a joint collaboration, and American officers came to learn from the IDF." The U.S. document also highlights other Israeli measures, including health monitoring, preventive medicine teams near the front lines and strict food safety standards.

The backdrop is the war that followed the Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, which left more than 1,200 dead on Israeli territory—including more than 40 U.S. citizens—and 251 people taken hostage. Dr. Marc Siegel, a medical analyst for Fox News, said that developments in Israel—including new surgical techniques and the NexoBrid burn treatment—benefit current casualties and advance medicine in other countries.