“Experts say the drug therapy they’re working on may be the first big advance in treating battlefield casualties since the Vietnam War.”
This is absolutely not true. There have been dozens or hundreds of gigantic leaps in medical technology directly useful for battlefield casualties.
What they are talking about is treatments that can be used on the battlefield itself within less than ten minutes to extend the life of the person being wounded by a combat medic or other soldier.
Survivability rates once the wounded person reaches the hospital have improved dramatically since Vietnam. As has the speed of evacuation which means they generally get there in a shorter time.
But the number who survive the initial wound for a period of a few minutes (the most severely wounded who were not actually killed instantly) and then die before they reach medical care hasn’t changed anywhere near as much.
Where this drug treatment shows promise is that in a lot of case it extends the ‘critical period’ for the most seriously wounded from 5-10 minutes between wounding and death to more like an hour - and sometimes longer. It increases the chance they will still be alive by the time they reach the care of a surgical team - and if they get there in time, their odds of survival are pretty good.