The Navy’s elite Topgun Pilot School quietly underwent an effort called Odin Project in the fall of 2024 to try to detect and treat brain injuries to fighter members, leaders kept it so confidential that even the broader Navy did not Know this.
Now, a strong oversight and government reform committee requires understanding of the project, as well as the Navy’s understanding of the risks posed by high-performance jets to the flying crew’s brains.
“It is necessary to ensure that the fighters have complete, accurate information about health risks and tools on the mind and physical,” said the committee chairman James Comer in a letter sent on Thursday. Acting Secretary of the Navy.
The letter cites a report published in December by The New York Times detailing years of catapults ejected from aircraft carriers and the sudden and unexplained experience under crushed GForces Well-trained training, this is a detailed introduction to many F/AA-18 Super Hornet crew members. Mental health issues. Problems include insomnia, anxiety, depression and PTSD-like symptoms – all of which can be caused by repeated brain damage on subsets.
Many problems begin when pilots end their careers in their 40s, even after leaving the Navy, affected people often hide their struggles so that they can continue flying.
The Navy told its pilots that there is no evidence that flying poses a risk of brain damage. Even after three symptoms were consistent with brain injury, this was the official route, dying from suicide within 12 months.
But in November, the Navy’s best fighter pilots, the leader of the naval struggle, quietly adopted Odin’s eyes, a brain injury program that has been used by some Navy SEALs. The move allowed Topgun to use his own budget to screen pilots and avoid the sometimes slow naval bureaucracy.
The letter from Congress asked the Navy to share knowledge about possible brain injuries in the crew, including all research and communication on the issue, as well as data on the number of pilots injured in the past decade.
It also asks why Odin’s eyes are kept secret. “It’s about what the Navy Command may not be fully aware of,” the letter said, adding that the situation “provoked about the Navy’s understanding of potential issues and whether it is mitigating them in an all-round way Other ways to problem.”
“Our Navy has invested a lot in these pilots to make sure they are the best, we want the best, but we also want to make sure they are cared for.”
Even with the power of an influential House committee, the problem can be difficult to see clearly. Symptoms of brain injury are often similar to symptoms that are not related to mental illness, and many pilots who have experienced it say that the Navy has never evaluated brain injury, so data on injury prevalence may not exist.
Even so, retired pilots show that this problem is not new, and has been undermining high-performance pilots for decades.
Frederic G. Ludwig Jr. According to his son Eric Ludwig, the public interest in naval pilots was so strong that he left The plane sometimes puts out the red carpet for him.
But a few years later, after 20 years of flight and 1,200 aircraft carrier landings, Captain Ludwig began to unravel. He suffered a panic attack in the cockpit and had to stop flying a single-seat plane. While directing an aviation group, he was mentally broken and escaped through a window a locked psychiatric hospital in Singapore and disappeared for several days.
The Navy gave him an electric therapy and quietly retired in 1995, but his problems got worse, and his mood swings between reckless confidence and incredible sorrow. His ability to plan and complete projects has left him abandoned. He had never had an accident in his flight career, but as a civilian, he became so incongruous and distracted that he repeatedly fell into the fender bender.
His brain damage was never evaluated. He died in 2023 when he was 78 years old and had a bleeding brain.
“It’s so miserable,” his son said in an interview. “He tried and tried to get better for decades, but he could never do it.”
Neil Sullivan, known as Sully, trained under Captain Ludwig of Topgun, and encountered similar after 14 years of flying a naval fighter. The problem is another 10 years of passenger planes. At the age of 48, he suddenly started to wake up and wake up and wake up and develop cruel anxiety.
“I tried to keep it going for six months, but it ended up getting so bad that I had to stop flying,” he said in an interview.
He divorced, turned to alcohol, and then hard drugs, feeling unable to work.
“My life was completely broken and I can never understand why,” Mr. Sullivan said, who eventually recovered from alcohol and drug use. “I’ve been trying to treat what I think is a mental illness, but there’s a good chance I’ve suffered hundreds of cerebellar injuries.”
He added: “We must have a lot of people. You just can’t see us. They never make movies about this part of the story.”
The cause and scope of the fixed problem are not simple. No brain scan or blood test can detect unique patterns of microscopic damage caused by repeated subset vibrations in the living brain. Only autopsy can be seen.
Admiral William Catlett, the son of the latter Admiral, went by the nickname opportunity, the first Totten Squad in the late 1960s, flying for 24 years. His daughter, Mallory Catlett, said he felt anxious and depressed in his 40s, who often prevented him from leaving home.
She saw similar problems among other pilots of his generation, including a friend of his family – another decorative altitude test pilot, whose father was a post-Admiral – who died of suicide shortly after retirement.
“These fathers are crazy, and we never really understand why,” she said. “But of course, if you look at it from the perspective of brain damage, it makes sense.”
Her father continued to struggle with mood swings and decades of brain function and died in January.
His family donated his brain to the Department of Defense’s Brain Tissue Repository, a senior lab that studies military-related brain injuries, but that only one fighter pilot’s brain is in its collection, partly because The risk of brain damage is largely gone and unrecognized.
“My father and grandfather dedicated their lives to the Navy,” Ms. Cartlett said. “We want to give back. Maybe his brain can provide some understanding.”
If you have a thought of suicide, please call or text 988 to reach 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to showeofsuicide.com/resources A list of other resources. go here Used for resources outside the United States.
