DARPA ‘MASCAL’ to simulate a mass casualty event
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DARPA is looking for input from the public and private sectors for its upcoming mass casualty simulation called Realistic Mass Casualty (MASCAL) Medical Simulation Capabilities.
The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is seeking “input from industry, government support organizations, military training organizations, and civilian emergency preparedness entities regarding capabilities to plan, resource, execute, and assess high-fidelity, large-scale mass casualty (MASCAL) medical simulation events,” according to the special notice.
“This Request for Information (RFI) is a preliminary step to assess current capabilities to conduct realistic MASCAL simulations involving greater than 50, 100, or 200 simulated patients within a single event lasting less than 72 hours, and data sources to assess these events”DARPA, MASCAL, May 2026
DARPA is quite descriptive with which types of injuries it is looking to simulate, and most are consistent with what you would expect in warfighting scenarios, such as burns, blast injuries, lascerations, hemorrhages, and contaminations.
For example, MASCAL is looking for performers who have experience in conducting simulations that had at least 25 casualties, along with information on what types of capabilities they could provide.
Those capabilities include:
- Moulage techniques, providers, and injury catalog (e.g., penetrating trauma, burns, blast injuries, amputations, evisceration, contamination).
- Live actors/standardized patients–number employed, training level, and ability to portray injury patterns, symptomology, and behavioral states (combative, unresponsive, pediatric, etc.).
- Manikins with active physiology–make, model, fidelity level, physiology features (respiration, circulation, hemorrhage, pharmacological response, monitor outputs), and quantity employed.
- Class VIII consumables–categories used, approximate quantities, and whether expended/inert/training variants (e.g., tourniquets, hemostatic dressings, needle decompression, cricothyrotomy, Intravenous and Intraosseous (IV/IO) access, blood/fluid administration, airway management).
- Caregiver LSIs [Life Saving Interventions] that trainees were able to perform end-to-end on actors and manikins.
- AR/VR/MR complete or augmented solutions