MSG Anthony “Tony” Meza on the Next War’s Medic, Ridge Healer, and Life Without the Golden Hour
When the helicopter is not coming, the plan has to change. MSG Anthony “Tony” Meza, a Special Forces medic who started as a Navy corpsman, tells WarDocs and OpMed TV what that means for surgical teams preparing for the next fight. He spoke with COL (Ret) Douglas W. Soderdahl, MD, at the Defense Strategies Institute Operational Medicine Symposium in San Antonio.
From the Sea to Special Forces
MSG Meza began as a Navy corpsman, deployed with the Marines as a Fleet Marine Force corpsman, and served as a Special Boat Team operator in Naval Special Warfare. After a break from operational duty he taught wilderness medicine, then moved to the 20th Special Forces Group. Today he is the NCOIC of Ridge Healer, an irregular warfare medical exercise in West Virginia that runs under the Greater Ridge Runner program.
What Ukraine Changed
The training model started with a hard look at Ukraine. MSG Meza saw medical personnel being targeted and small, portable special operations surgical and resuscitative teams taking shape in response. As the force moves from the Global War on Terror toward large-scale combat operations, he says the U.S. has a gap in that capability, and Ridge Healer exists to test it.
Training Without a Safety Net
Ridge Healer brings special operations surgical and resuscitative teams from the United States and allied partners into a scenario where they work in a covert status, embedded with the local population. There is no base and no proctor feeding prompts. Teams operate on live role players in cut suits, in a basement with no power, out of a small bag instead of a full kit. MSG Meza says the point is realism: the feeling of being in a basement without power or access to all of your gear, and having to decide what to do next.
Holding the Patient
His assessment of what the exercise reveals is direct: the force is not prepared. Teams still rely on loadouts built for air superiority and fast evacuation. Now a team of eight may perform a thoracotomy or a laparotomy and then hold that patient for seventy-two to ninety-six hours while more casualties arrive. MSG Meza describes forty patients over twenty-four hours, six to nine surgeries, and the constant questions of triage, logistics, and the next resupply.
Old Is New
The answers, he says, may come from the past. Portable surgical hospitals from World War Two and Korea, and the small logistics lines built through partners, are models for denied territory. Allied teams arrive rigid and wanting everything laid out, and by the end they are moving from one patient to the next and sorting out the rest on the backside, because saving the patient comes first.
How to Get In
Ridge Healer runs four 12-day courses a year, with academics, rehearsals, vehicle load-out, and an infiltration phase. Units can start through the West Virginia National Guard portal, and visitors can come to observe. His advice to young medics and corpsmen is simple: find a mentor, and do not show up unprepared.
Listen to the full conversation on YouTube or your podcast platform, then share it with the medics, surgeons, and planners in your unit. The questions MSG Meza raises are the ones the force has to answer before it needs the answers.
HOW TO WATCH
Check out the full episode featuring MSG Anthony “Tony” Meza on our YouTube channel:
WarDocs YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@wardocspodcast
Full YouTube Episode Link: https://youtu.be/5E3ZueOz4P8
GUEST BIO
MSG Anthony “Tony” Meza is the Noncommissioned Officer in Charge of Ridge Healer, the irregular warfare medical exercise run in West Virginia under the Greater Ridge Runner program, and a member of the 20th Special Forces Group (Airborne). He began his career as a Navy corpsman, served as a Fleet Marine Force corpsman with the Marines, and became a Special Boat Team operator in Naval Special Warfare before moving to Army Special Forces. He has also taught wilderness medicine. Ridge Healer brings special operations surgical and resuscitative teams from the United States and allied partners together to train for prolonged casualty care with small teams and thin logistics.
More from the Operational Medicine Symposium
This episode is part of the WarDocs and OpMed TV interview series recorded at the Defense Strategies Institute Operational Medicine Symposium in San Antonio, March 2026. Watch the full set of DSI OP MED videos here: https://hubs.li/Q04jRhjP0
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@FNF When Ridge Healer teams have to care for multiple casualties for 72 to 96 hours without reliable evacuation or resupply, how is the exercise designed to test whether their medical supplies and triage decisions will hold up as resources become increasingly scarce?