Pentagon updates guidance for protecting military personnel from ‘blast overpressure’

The U.S. Defense Department is going to 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 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 blasts.

Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine who sits on the Armed Services Committee, applauded the Pentagon for “fast-tracking these needed changes.” He pointed to concerns that an Army reservist responsible for killing 18 people in Maine had a brain injury that could have been linked to his time training West Point cadets on a grenade range.

But Lt. Gen. Jody Daniels, chief of the Army Reserves, has emphatically stated that a traumatic brain injury that was revealed in a postmortem examination of tissue was not linked to Robert Card’s military service. An Army report said Card had previously fallen from a ladder, a potential cause of head injuries.

The memorandum focused on repetitive exposures to heavier weapons like artillery, anti-tank weapons and heavy-caliber machines that produce a certain level of impact, not the grenades and small arms weapons used by Card.

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