The U.S. Department of Defense will require cognitive assessments for all new recruits as part of a broader effort to protect troops from brain injuries resulting from exposure to blasts, including during training.
The new guidance also calls for greater use of protective equipment, “minimum distances” during certain types of training and a reduction in the number of people in the vicinity of explosions.
Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine who sits on the Armed Services Committee, applauded the Pentagon for “accelerating these necessary changes.” He pointed to concerns that an Army reservist responsible for the deaths of 18 people in Maine had a brain injury that could be linked to time he spent training West Point cadets on a grenade shooting range.
But Lt. Gen. Jody Daniels, head of the Army Reserve, emphatically stated that a traumatic brain injury revealed in a post-mortem tissue examination was not linked to Robert Card’s military service. An Army report said Card had previously fallen down a ladder, a potential cause of head injuries.
The memo focused on repetitive exposures to heavier weapons such as artillery, anti-tank weapons, and large-caliber machinery that produce a certain level of impact, rather than the grenades and small arms used by Card.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks described the new guidance that replaces a 2022 interim memo as “identifying and implementing best practices to promote overall brain health and combat traumatic brain injuries.” The new memo, released last week, builds on existing efforts while leveraging the investigation to protect personnel in the future.
The cognitive assessments, to be required for new military personnel by the end of the year and for high-risk active and reserve personnel by the fall of 2025, allow for the possibility of additional cognitive testing in the future to establish changes in brain function that could be caused by repeated exposure to explosions, authorities said.
The cumulative effect of lighter “subconcussive” blasts, repeated hundreds or thousands of times during training, can produce traumatic brain injuries similar to a single concussive event in combat, said Katherine Kuzminski of the Center for a New American Security, a think tank. Washington-based think tank that focuses on national defense and security policies.
“This is a step in the right direction, as Department of Defense guidance clearly states that we are not trying to harm our commanders, but there are ways we can be more thoughtful about this,” she said.
The Department of Defense has been evaluating units for brain health and the effects of blast overpressure performance on brain health for about six years, said Josh Wick, a Pentagon spokesman.
Information emerging from assessments of acute blasts and low-level repetitive exposures is linked to adverse effects such as inability to sleep, degradation of cognitive performance, headaches, and dizziness, and the Department of Defense is committed to understanding, preventing, diagnosing, and treat the explosion by overpressure “and its effects in all its forms,” he said.
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Associated Press reporter Lolita Baldor at the Pentagon contributed to this report.
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