Pentagon updates guidance for protecting military personnel from ‘blast overpressure’
The U.S. Department of Defense is going to require cognitive assessments for all new recruits, part of a broader effort to protect troops from brain injuries from blast exposure, including during training.
The new directive also requires greater use of protective equipment, minimum stand-off distances during certain types of training and a reduction in the number of people in proximity to explosions.
Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine who serves on the Armed Services Committee, praised the Pentagon for “moving quickly to make these necessary changes.” He cited concerns that an Army reservist responsible for killing 18 people in Maine had a brain injury that could be linked to his time training West Point cadets on a grenade range.
But Lt. Gen. Jody Daniels, chief of the Army Reserves, has stated emphatically that a traumatic brain injury revealed by a postmortem examination of tissue was not related to Robert Card’s military service. An Army report said Card had previously fallen from a ladder, a possible cause of head injury.
The memorandum focused on repeated exposure to heavier weapons, such as artillery, anti-tank weapons and heavy-caliber machinery that have a certain impact, and not on the grenades and small arms that Card used.
Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks described the new guidance, which replaces a 2022 interim memorandum, as “identifying and implementing best practices to promote overall brain health and prevent traumatic brain injury.” The new memorandum, released last week, builds on existing efforts and uses research to protect personnel in the future.
The cognitive assessments, which are set to be mandatory for new military personnel beginning later this year and for existing high-risk active and reserve personnel beginning in the fall of 2025, provide the opportunity to conduct additional cognitive tests in the future to identify changes in brain function that could be caused by repeated blast exposure, officials said.
The cumulative effect of milder “subconcussive” explosions repeated hundreds or thousands of times during training can cause traumatic brain injuries comparable to a single concussion in combat, said Katherine Kuzminski of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank focused on national defense and security policy.
“This is a step in the right direction because the Department of Defense guidance is clear that we don’t want to limit our commanders, but there are ways we can think about this better,” she said.
The Department of Defense has been evaluating units for brain health and the performance effects of overpressure on brain health for about six years, said Pentagon spokesman Josh Wick.
New information from evaluations of both acute blasts and repeated low-level exposures has linked them to adverse effects such as inability to sleep, decreased cognitive performance, headaches and dizziness, and the Defense Department is committed to understanding, preventing, diagnosing and treating blast overpressure “and its effects in all its forms,” he said.
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Lolita Baldor, an Associated Press reporter at the Pentagon, contributed to this report.