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Acupuncture is a collection of procedures involving penetration of the skin with needles in order to stimulate certain points on the body.

United States
According to The Washington Times, the U.S. Military's first encounter with acupuncture occurred during the Vietnam War, when an Army surgeon wrote in the 1967 edition of Military Medicine magazine about local physicians who were allowed to practice at a U.S. Army surgical hospital and administered acupuncture to Vietnamese patients.

In 1995, Dr. Richard Niemtzow, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel who had earlier practiced medicine as a radiation oncologist, began offering acupuncture to military personnel stationed at the McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. A few years later, Niemtzow became the first full-time military medical acupuncturist for the U.S. Navy.

In 2009, the U.S. Air Force set up the Air Force Acupuncture Center at the Joint Base Andrews in Maryland to practice and teach "battlefield acupuncture" to physicians and other medical personal. That year, the Naval Medical Center San Diego reported that its pain management clinic had provided acupuncture to more than 2,600 beneficiaries. As of 2012, over a hundred medical professionals in the U.S. Air Force have been trained to use acupuncture techniques.



While the practice of acupuncture was mostly limited to the U.S. Air Force, it soon spread to other departments of the U.S. Military including the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Army. In late 2012, the Office of the Secretary of Defense officially approved a visit by U.S. military physicians to the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine in order to strengthen Sino-American military relations and to "exchange acupuncture information".

Other military forces
Since 2010, acupuncture has been practised by the German Bundeswehr in several military hospitals.

In the People's Republic of China, acupuncture has been used by the People's Liberation Army to aid in the treatment of battlefield injuries.