Vanquishing Virus
Indo-Pacific militaries provide a first line of defense in COVID-19 battle
FORUM Staff
The story of how New Zealand prevailed in “crushing the curve” and halting the advance of the coronavirus within its borders can be traced, in part, to a crucial step taken soon after the nation’s first COVID-19 case was confirmed in late February 2020. By April’s arrival, the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) had been enlisted in the fight, with more than 700 personnel supporting local and national authorities with logistics, intelligence, strategic planning and operational coordination in the pandemic’s infancy.
It would prove an opening salvo in New Zealand’s battle against COVID-19 — an ongoing campaign that has garnered worldwide acclaim for the country’s quick, decisive action — and serve as a bright illustration of the military’s centrality in the whole-of-government response, deemed essential to conquering a relentless and deadly foe. Fourteen months after the coronavirus arrived on its shores, the island nation of 5 million had tallied just 2,500 cases and barely two dozen deaths.
Over that time, the NZDF response to the public health crisis grew in scale and scope to include: supporting police with vehicle checkpoints; assisting in personal protective equipment acquisition and supply chain management; operating facilities; and planning vaccination deliveries. Royal New Zealand Navy maritime patrol and response assets supported the New Zealand Customs Service in securing and monitoring ports nationwide, and New Zealand Army Brig. Jim Bliss was seconded to lead the nation’s managed isolation and quarantine program.
Throughout, the NZDF has balanced its pandemic contributions with its duty to protect the nation, as well as with its force generation activities, mandated operational deployments, training obligations and additional assistance to civil authorities. “Regardless of the alert level, we continue to play our part in the all of government response while maintaining our normal responsibilities and operational commitments,” the NZDF website states. “We are structured, equipped and trained for a range of crisis contingencies, and it’s this preparedness that has seen us fill a wide range of roles as part of the COVID-19 response.”
A Generational Challenge
Military forces are no stranger to epidemics. In Cuba, during the Spanish-American War of 1898, yellow fever and other infectious diseases killed more United States Soldiers than died fighting. Two years later, the U.S. Army’s surgeon general created the U.S. Army Yellow Fever Commission to study the disease’s cause and prevention. Led by Army Medical Corps Maj. Walter Reed, the commission established that yellow fever is mosquito-borne, rather than spread by poor sanitation. That discovery helped the Army eliminate the disease as a threat in future conflicts.
Since the coronavirus was first detected in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, however, it has posed a generational challenge like few seen before, taxing the resources and patience of the planet’s population. As of late November 2021, there had been more than 260 million cases globally, including 5.2 million lives lost, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), and national economies have shuddered under the burden of lockdowns and disappearing jobs. If adversity is a test of character, then the pandemic has revealed much, stripping away any lingering illusions about the motives of some of the world’s authoritarian regimes.
Nearly two years on, the world has witnessed inspirational efforts, from the science community’s extraordinary work to outwit the virus to the combined contributions of allies and partners in delivering care, equipment and hope to vulnerable communities. It has also seen deeply disturbing acts, no more so than the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) concealment of potentially lifesaving information, a cover-up that began at the pandemic’s outset and persisted even as WHO scientists visited Wuhan in February 2021 to probe the virus’s origins.
Across the Indo-Pacific, military forces have teamed with civilian agencies, nongovernmental organizations and private companies to combat COVID-19 on multiple, concurrent fronts, all while safeguarding the health of their own service members and their families. “At the most basic level, the military possesses a national command network and constitutes a pool of disciplined manpower, including reserves, that can be deployed at relatively short notice to supplement civilian frontline services during national emergencies,” according to Euan Graham, a senior fellow for Asia-Pacific security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “Some armed forces have acquired substantial experience in crisis planning and emergency response, including during previous epidemics, at home or overseas.
“Most militaries can offer logistical support, including transport, as well as medical staff and infrastructure,” Graham wrote in an April 2020 analysis on the think tank’s website. “The more capable armed forces possess specialist knowledge in epidemiology and virology, as well as self-protection capabilities developed for biological and chemical warfare.”
Among the contributions of Indo-Pacific military forces and civilian defense agencies:
- In Australia, engineers and researchers with Defence Science and Technology (DST), part of the Department of Defence, used 3D printing to design a face shield for health care workers, moving from initial concept to mass manufacturing capability in just three weeks. DST sent prototypes to hospitals for testing and hired a military-accredited contractor to manufacture the shields, which are easy to disinfect and reuse. “We often need to rapidly respond to defense and national security challenges by generating engineering solutions, and we’ve used the same approach to help get protective equipment to frontline health care staff,” DST program leader Ben Barona said in an article on the Defence Department’s website.
- In May 2021, as India battled a devastating spike in COVID-19 cases, the nation’s Armed Forces were at the forefront of relief efforts. The Air Force and Navy transported critical supplies of oxygen and medical equipment, including donations from around the world. The Indian Army and the Defence Research and Development Organisation opened hospitals for civilians, with nurses, physicians and other staff assigned from the Directorate General Armed Forces Medical Services. “People have great faith and trust in the capabilities of the Armed Forces,” Defence Minister Rajnath Singh wrote in a blog post. “As the whole of India stands united in the fight against the current surge in the pandemic, the Armed Forces are walking the extra mile for the nation to emerge a winner.”
- Beginning in early 2020, the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) provided transportation and quarantine assistance for returning Japanese nationals and foreign travelers, including nearly 3,000 cruise ship passengers after a coronavirus outbreak aboard the Diamond Princess, according to the Japan Ministry of Defense. JSDF personnel also trained staff members from private companies and local governments on the use of protective clothing. In late May 2021, the JSDF was deployed to support the nation’s mass vaccination campaign, with medical officers and nurses administering vaccines in Osaka and Tokyo, Nikkei Asia reported. “I am relieved after seeing vaccinations being carried out in an orderly and organized manner expected of the SDF,” then-Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said.
- As the world’s third-most densely populated nation, with 8,000 people per square kilometer, and a global hub of trade and transportation, Singapore faced steep challenges in preventing a mass contagion among its 5.7 million residents. Within days of the island state recording its first coronavirus case in late January 2020, about 1,500 Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) personnel were distributing masks to the public, monitoring air travelers and making contact tracing calls. The SAF employed tactics honed during the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak in the Indo-Pacific in 2003. “The deployment of the SAF is not just about the government’s commitment toward addressing the contingency; by involving everyday Singaporeans through the largely conscript SAF, it also communicates the message that the entire nation is united in overcoming the common adversity,” Vivian Ng, a retired Republic of Singapore Navy officer, wrote in the online news magazine The Diplomat in March 2020.
- Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense designated all military hospitals as health care and testing facilities for COVID-19 patients and established nearly 1,200 quarantine shelters at nine military camps on the island. Meanwhile, more than 70,000 troops were deployed to assist with supplying face masks, and chemical task forces totaling almost 1,500 personnel disinfected inbound flights. Despite simultaneously dealing with increasingly aggressive activities by the CCP’s People’s Liberation Army, the democratic island has been “treating the fight against the virus as real warfare,” according to the Defense Ministry.
- The Royal Thai Armed Forces set up more than a dozen field hospitals nationwide, with thousands of beds for coronavirus patients, the Bangkok Post newspaper reported in April 2021.
- The U.S. Armed Forces have played an integral role at every stage of the nation’s pandemic-mitigation campaign, from researching potential vaccines to administering vaccinations, while also supporting partners and allies worldwide with expertise, personnel, equipment, transportation and more. U.S. Army Gen. Gustave F. Perna was appointed chief operating officer for Operation Warp Speed, the U.S.’s private-public initiative to develop, manufacture and distribute COVID-19 diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines. “I’ve talked to some of our local officials and civilian agency heads, and they’ve told me that [what] the military brings to this equation is discipline, organizational skills and effectiveness,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told active-duty and National Guard troops operating a massive vaccination hub in California in February 2021. “They were impressed by the fact that, every day, our troops take a look at things and endeavor to get better. They know good is not good enough.”
Embracing a New Reality
As it has for much of civil society, virtual has become the new reality for military forces, as pandemic travel restrictions and quarantines saw functions such as recruiting, training and planning shift heavily to remote formats. Indo-Pacific allies and partners quickly transformed long-running bilateral and multilateral training events and exercises for the digital age. In June 2020, with much of the world still in lockdown, the Royal Thai Air Force and U.S. Pacific Air Forces and Washington Air National Guard held their annual Airman-to-Airman Talks by video conference — a first in the seven years of the collaborative discussions. “Despite everything going on in our world, the fact that we are having this virtual Airman-to-Airman Talks highlights the importance of the relationship between the Kingdom of Thailand and the United States,” said Brig. Gen. Gent Welsh, Washington Air National Guard commander.
Even with the expansion of in-person military activities with social distancing, masks and other precautions in place, the evolution of day-to-day operations will persist as the pandemic leaves its lasting imprint on the world.
“Despite the availability of a vaccine, [COVID-19] restrictions are going to remain with us for a while yet, precluding a return to large-scale training activities and preventing international travel to exercise with allies and partners,” Tony McCormack, a Royal Australian Air Force veteran and fellow with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, wrote in a February 2021 article for the think tank’s online publication The Strategist. “Greater investment is needed in alternative approaches that leverage emerging trends in simulation to rectify the deficiencies that the reduction in training will produce.”
Meanwhile, the military medical community is dissecting the experiences of the pandemic, using analytics and data modeling to guide how fighting forces and civilian populations alike can be protected in years to come.
“We don’t know how long this is going to go on or what the next crisis will be,” U.S. Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Sheryl Green, a public health career field manager, said in an April 2021 article on the U.S. Military Health System website. “We’ve certainly dealt with outbreaks before — Ebola, Zika, H1N1 — but what is the next big pandemic-type disease going to be? Based on the experience that all of our public health professionals have gained over the past year, they will absolutely be ready for anything that comes their way in the future.”
It’s just one of the cascade of challenges, from force protection to combat readiness, with which armed forces across the Indo-Pacific continue to grapple almost two years into a global health crisis — a mission that’s been compared to “building a fighter jet while flying it.” As in New Zealand, however, the military’s central role in the whole-of-government pandemic response has spotlighted its ability to adapt and evolve in real-time. Such adaptations, Adam Saxton and Mark F. Cancian of the Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote in February 2021, have ensured that “deployments, training, and personnel movement have been able to recommence without the collapse of readiness, the fraying of alliances, or the emboldening of adversaries.”