Over the past century, an evolution in battlefield casualty care has occurred. As the current cen–tury unfolds, we expect even more remarkable advances as increasing resources are focused on the out–of–hospital phase of emergency care. The Wound Data and Munitions Effectiveness Team (WDMET) study provided one of the first objective databases from which inferences re–garding evacuation and enroute care were drawn. The WDMET study identified the following three conditions as primary causes of preventable death on the battlefield: [1] airway obstruction (6 percent), [2] tension pneumothorax (33 percent), and [3] hemorrhage from extremity wounds (60 percent). To further underscore the need for out–of–hospital phase early airway support, a subanalysis of the Registry of Emergency Airways at Combat Hospitals (REACH) study by Ad–ams et al. reported that 76 of 1,622 subjects (5 percent) reached a Combat Support Hospital (CSH) without a definitive airway, despite needing one.