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Various-critical situations caused by mankind or natural disasters that require blood to be infused into people to save lives can trigger a race against time and distance. Members of the Australian Defence Force and U.S. Department of Defense’s Combined Joint Theatre Medical Component supporting Talisman Sabre 2025 achieved a first-of-its-kind mission to advance blood resupply efforts between the Allied nations. “Today, we secured nine units of low titer O blood,” said U.S. Army Sgt, 1st Class Eric Jimenez, senior noncommissioned officer, Hawaii Area Joint Blood Program Office, 18th Theater Medical Command, CJTMC. “This blood will be supporting our Special Operations Surgical Team that’s supporting the efforts for Talisman Sabre and will continue to support our Troops and also our Australian counterparts.” “This is the first time we’ve had any low titer O whole blood U.S. arrive here,” said Royal Australian Air Force Sqdr. Ldr. Kath Staughton, blood advisor, CJTMC. “It’s a pretty exciting moment because obviously this is breaking new ground for us and it’s going to be a force multiplier as products like this find their way to our area of operations and exercises so that we can better support our troops on the ground.” Overcoming the tyranny of distance and time is critical when transporting perishable cold chain blood products over 5,100 miles (8,200 kilometers) of ocean and air. “Australia’s a long way from the U.S.,” said Staughton, “it’s a big tyranny of distance to get this blood supply across the big ocean which separates us.” “One of the challenges that we had to overcome is the logistical communication, [by] having support from the rear and also here,” said Jimenez, “we were able to get that done within 36-to-96 hours … it's our sweet spot. The mission relied on a whole-of-government approach on both the Australian and U.S. side to include the Defense Logistics Agency, Australian Army, U.S. Army, Royal Australian Air Force, U.S. Air Force, Royal Australian Navy, U.S. Navy, and other defense and civilian agencies. “The interoperability piece for the U.S. and the Australian Defence Force allows us to operate and know about each other’s capabilities and carry out those short emergency critical care and short turn around resupplies,” said RAAF Flt. Lt. Pooja Sapkota, who is a scientific officer by trade and a pathology advisor within the CJTMC. “It’s very essential for some of the far forward medical units to hold the patient and treat the patients when they're [in the field]. “Being able to communicate,” said Jiminez, “being able to ensure we have the right assets to help us generate this in the proper strategic format to ensure that we are following all guidelines as needed – not only through Australia’s biosecurity and also through our [Federal Drug Administration] establishment.” The CJTMC worked through the challenges and viewed it as an opportunity to validate their systems while making adjustments to become more efficient. “I think this has been a valuable learning exercise in the time it’s going to take to do this realtime,” said Staughton, “we’ve started now to map some of the processes on how we would be able to do this more effectively, even quicker, and smoother through both the Australian and American end to get a success when we do this in the future.” Talisman Sabre is the largest bilateral military exercise between Australia and the United States advancing a free and open Indo-Pacific by strengthening relationships and interoperability among key allies and partners, while enhancing our collective capabilities to respond to a wide array of potential security concerns.