Photo By Gino Mattorano | Senior Airman Amaya Anderson, an Air Force dental assistant assigned to the 21st...... read more read more
Air Force dental providers and technicians from the 21st Medical Group received a briefing on the importance of dental treatment in the combat environment during a field dentistry presentation on Aug. 7, 2026.
Army Lt. Col. Jesse Thietten, a U.S. Special Forces dentist, conducted the presentation and drew heavily from his recent experiences working alongside allied forces overseas to emphasize the realities of battlefield medicine.
"I have had the unique opportunity to live with, train alongside, and provide care to allied and partner forces overseas for weeks at a time," Thietten said. "I feel a profound responsibility to share the knowledge and experience these soldiers have shared with me. I am also fortunate that my command values the role of dental in their institution and understands that sharing knowledge with the larger conventional force will enable Special Operations Forces (SOF) to better support their mission."
Thietten explained that the need for expeditionary dentistry became apparent during overseas training exercises, where access to traditional medical facilities was limited.
"Our U.S. SOF teams identified a high demand for dental emergency treatment while running these exercises," he said. "It was the teams on the ground that requested our help, and the result was the development of a lightweight portable expeditionary dental platform that could travel across Europe and provide the extensive dental care required in these remote settings. Typically, they were able to do that right out of the Soldier’s barracks after hours or early before training.
“Since arriving at SOF in 2022, I have had the honor to continue to develop and adapt our expeditionary dental platform to meet the increasing demands that this extended modern conflict has on oral health." Air Force Col. Anita Shade, chief of dental services for the 21st Medical Group, said the training provided a crucial readiness perspective for her dental teams.
"In the Air Force Dental Corps, less than 1% deploy,” Shade said. “Our dental teams are often disconnected from the heart of the readiness mission that we work to support, day in and day out. "Offering opportunities like Lt. Col. Thietten’ s brief, reminds us of the importance of the work we do, helps boost military pride and confirms our purpose."
The presentation also highlighted how modern combat tactics are impacting medical evacuations and field care. "This presentation brought awareness that current warfare tactics are vastly different from what we are familiar with from previous conflicts," Shade said. "Asymmetric/hybrid drone warfare shows us that we now need to plan and prepare for prolonged patient management in the field due to the unpredictability of patient transport."
Thietten, who also provides dental care for the Fort Carson Dental Activity, warns that dental emergencies will place a significant burden on medical resources during Large Scale Combat Operations, or LSCO.
"Dental is a low hanging fruit solution for medical as a whole,” Thietten said. “Military medicine needs solutions to account for the anticipated systemic medical overload in LSCO. We can reasonably anticipate dental being in the top five most common reasons for casualty evacuation. In the multinational deployed setting, dental has been the number one reason for casualty evacuation, attributed to the lack of operational dental capabilities in many of our partner forces. Military Medicine has an opportunity here to significantly mitigate the overall evacuation incidence in LSCO by acknowledging what many of our allies are currently experiencing – a little attention to dental before the conflict can have a huge impact four years into the conflict."
Addressing these future challenges will require structural shifts within military medicine, according to Thietten. "The future of military dentistry will need to change in three ways: First, we will need to be able to upscale pre-deployment dental processing to account for the mass mobilization in LSCO," Thietten said. "Second, our deployed medical forces will need to be prepared to be lighter, faster and more modular. Third, we will need forward expeditionary dental teams that can provide extensive care in ‘locations of opportunity’ within relative proximity to our forward troops."
Shade agreed that training must evolve to meet these demands, particularly for Air Force Independent Duty Medical Technicians, who are specialized enlisted medical professionals authorized to provide independent health care at remote, isolated or deployed locations, where a physician or physician assistant is not available. "The presentation also shed light on the importance of dental training exposure for our medics, especially our IDMTs," Shade said. "Although they have a small dental requirement on their training checklists, the dental requirement needs to evolve from just shadowing a dentist to a more robust curriculum with hands-on training in areas such as local anesthesia, simple extraction techniques and more."
She added that the event helped motivate her dental teams and fostered unity between the branches. "Our staff left the training feeling proud of their role in the fight and motivated to pay attention and stay engaged during training opportunities," Shade said. "They are excited about future joint training opportunities."
For Thietten, this educational outreach is a direct tribute to those operating on the front lines.
"As a prior enlisted soldier, if sharing my experience can help get our front-line Soldiers better access to care, then it is my duty and privilege to try," Thietten said. "My goal is to bring attention to the necessity of better equipping our operational dental teams and our front-line medics for the burden that dental emergencies will have in the prolonged constrained medical environment of LSCO."
He concluded by reflecting on the heavy price paid by allied partners overseas to yield these modern medical lessons.
"The knowledge and insight our allies have provided about the nature of future conflict came at a tremendous cost," Thietten said. "Each of us can honor that sacrifice by becoming a student of these conflicts, identifying the gaps in our own positions, and helping to implement the institutional change that will be required to accomplish our mission."
| Date Taken: | 08.25.2026 |
| Date Posted: | 08.25.2026 13:18 |
| Story ID: | 573186 |
| Location: | PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, COLORADO, US |
| Web Views: | 99 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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