![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AP17319692399380.jpg.jpg\")
Plasma is a straw-colored liquid that contains proteins that make the blood clot. Unlike current plasma supplies that have to be slowly thawed from frozen storage, the dehydrated and powdered freeze-dried version needs no refrigeration and can be used within minutes after swirling it in water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over the past five years, the military\u2019s special ops units in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines have received about 1,000 kits of the freeze-dried plasma, including 430 this year. While specific numbers on usage are scarce, the U.S. Special Operations Command said it had been used at least 24 times by Green Berets and other special operations teams in the past five years. Of those treatments, 15 patients survived long enough to be transferred to a hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
U.S. forces used freeze-dried plasma in World War II, but quit after it was linked to hepatitis outbreaks. In the years since, the safety testing of it improved and for years militaries including the French, Germans, Norwegians and Israelis have used it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Army Special Operations medics saw it in use and said they wanted it, too. The U.S. military currently gets its supply from the French, whose plasma is made from volunteer donors. It has a shelf life of about two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The U.S. is using the French product as a stopgap while Teleflex Inc. partners with the Army to win Food and Drug Administration approval by 2020. The slow pace led some in Congress to propose giving the Pentagon the ability to circumvent the FDA and allow emergency approval of new medical devices or drugs to treat troops, while other lawmakers propose speeding up FDA approvals for military medical products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Teleflex is shooting to buy its donated plasma from blood banks and produce enough for the armed services and civilian emergency rooms in what is projected to be $100 million-a-year market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The granulated plasma could help in civilian emergencies, said Dr. Jeremy Cannon, a former trauma surgery chief at San Antonio Military Medical Center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whether it\u2019s an accident victim arriving at a rural Texas hospital without a blood bank or a mass casualty event such as the Las Vegas shooting massacre, powdered plasma could be crucial, said Cannon, who now teaches surgery at the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is the ideal situation for FDP use \u2014 first responders and in emergency departments swamped with bleeding patients \u2014 especially when the supply of conventional plasma becomes depleted,\u201d Cannon said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This story has been corrected to show that all Marine Corps special operations units began carrying plasma into field in October.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n All of the U.S. military\u2019s special operations fighters now being sent to war zones have freeze-dried blood plasma, a crucial addition to first-aid kits that can prevent badly wounded troops from bleeding to death on the battlefield.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":102363,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":65,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[101,12,26,65],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1052],"class_list":["post-67143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-news","category-newsletters","category-your-navy"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"R3PA5GVXNVGGVLCI45JKSSGOJM","arc_canonical_url":"\/news\/your-military\/2017\/12\/01\/us-troops-get-freeze-dried-plasma-for-battlefield-bloodshed\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AP17334533951937.jpg.jpg\")