Radical evolutions in both military medicine and body armour in recent decades have resulted in an impressive jump in survival rates among injured soldiers from richer nations. Even as firepower has increased, lethality has fallen. US Department of Defence data shows that two-fifths of those with wounds died during the late 18th-century revolutionary war, a third during the second world war and a quarter in Vietnam. Today, nine-tenths of soldiers injured while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan will live.

US surgeon Atul Gawande says one explanation behind the improved survival rates has been a reorganization of how military medical care is provided. In an article in The New England Journal of Medicine, Gawande revealed how leaner, faster-moving military units are now accompanied by surgical teams working closer to the front line.