Innovation at the Speed of Relevance

Fielding Blast Overpressure Solutions Now

By the 75th Ranger Regiment Brain Protection Task Force

Article published on: April 1, 2026 in the Infantry Spring 2026 Issue

Read Time: < 10 mins

Introduction: The Unseen Threat

For generations of mortarmen, headaches, tinnitus, and cognitive fog have been written off as the price of employing a devastating weapon system. These symptoms, often mirroring those of a traumatic brain injury (TBI), were accepted as an unavoidable cost of lethality. Now, the U.S. military is confronting the invisible cause behind them: blast overpressure (BOP). This silent threat, produced by the very weapons that ensure our dominance, represents a serious danger to warfighter health, particularly for communities in close proximity to high-caliber and explosive weapon systems.¹ The insidious nature of these injuries, coupled with a lack of objective, field-expedient diagnostic tools, makes this a complex problem for both leaders and medical personnel.

The urgency is heightened as warfighters report these symptoms even during routine training, not just in combat. This creates a persistent readiness challenge that cannot wait years for enterprise-wide solutions. It demands immediate, practical innovations from the operational force. In response, the 75th Ranger Regiment has stepped into this gap, establishing its Brain Protection Task Force (BPTF) to move beyond cautious, flawless solutions and implement data-driven, field-expedient solutions needed to protect the force today.

From Policy to Action: Building the Foundation

The call to action is clear. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2022 established the Warfighter Brain Health Initiative (Section 734), and a subsequent Department of Defense memorandum on 8 August 2024 mandated a comprehensive approach to addressing blast exposure.² The Regiment’s task force was created to translate these high-level directives into tangible action at the unit level.

While the Department of War (DoW) pursues the necessary long-term, enterprise-wide solutions, the BPTF is bridging the gap by implementing agile, evidence-based tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) that can protect the force right now. In partnership with academia, researchers, and partner units across Special Operations Command (SOCOM), the task force is developing “quick-win” solutions that both mitigate immediate risk and generate the critical data needed to inform the Army’s long-term strategy. This dual approach — advancing immediate interventions while simultaneously shaping the solutions for tomorrow — is at the core of the task force’s mission.

The Task Force Philosophy: Innovation at the Speed of Relevance

To bridge the gap between long-term research and the immediate needs of the warfighter, the BPTF has operated under a clear and agile philosophy since its inception 12 months ago. This framework ensures that every initiative is not only grounded in data but is also immediately relevant to the Ranger on the ground.

Preserve Cognitive Lethality. The task force treats cognitive function as a core component of combat effectiveness. The goal is to develop solutions that preserve and enhance a Ranger’s cognitive performance, ensuring they maintain a decisive advantage on the battlefield throughout their career and after their service.

Empower the Frontline Leader. The foremost authority is the leader in the field. The BPTF is designed to answer questions coming directly from the force and to put effective, data-driven tools into the hands of the individuals making decisions at the point of action.

Provide Sustainable Solutions. Innovation without a path to implementation is meaningless. All solutions are evaluated for their real-world feasibility, and any recommendations provided to command teams include a risk-associated assessment of the resources required and cost of implementation. This ensures that proposed TTPs are practical, sustainable, and ready for immediate adoption.

Maintain a Bias for Action. An 80-percent solution that can be implemented now is superior to a 100-percent solution that may never arrive. The traditional research cycle can take years, with findings often failing to reach the end user.³ The BPTF subverts this paradigm by executing effective solutions based on emerging data, choosing to act decisively to protect the force today rather than waiting for a perfect solution tomorrow.

This entire philosophy operates within the 75th Ranger Regiment’s unique role as the bridge between Special Operations and the conventional force.⁴ The solutions developed by the task force are designed with this dual purpose in mind: While some are tailored to the specific needs of SOF, many are deliberately engineered to be scaled for adoption across the wider Army, ensuring that lessons learned within the Regiment benefit the entire enterprise. We are the Army’s Ranger Regiment.

Exposure Documentation — SF 600

In response to the DoW’s urgent mandate to address warfighter brain health, the BPTF faced a critical challenge — how to begin capturing individual BOP exposure immediately, without waiting for the development of future enterprise-wide systems. The goal was to document BOP exposure into a meaningful system of record at scale, now.

Figure 1 — Mortar SF 600 Template

The task force pioneered a simple yet powerful solution by leveraging an existing and universally recognized medical document within military medicine: the Standard Form (SF) 600 (Chronological Record of Care). We developed a customized SF 600 template, formatted as a Subjective-Objective-Assessment-Plan (SOAP) note, with pre-populated fields to systematically and consistently document BOP exposure events. The approach is tailored for the Regiment’s most at-risk operators — mortarmen, Carl-Gustav gunners, and breachers — ensuring that every significant exposure during training is captured in a standardized format.

Once completed by a medical provider, this document is uploaded directly into the service member’s electronic health record in MHS GENESIS. This creates a permanent, longitudinal data trail of a Ranger’s occupational blast exposure throughout their career. This initiative serves as a critical bridge, capturing blast exposure today while the DoW pursues long-term solutions in the Individual Longitudinal Exposure Record (ILER) and Deployment Occupational and Environmental Health Readiness System-Industrial Hygiene (DOERS-IH).

The Surprising Power of the Wool Blanket

A core tenant of the BPTF is the pursuit of practical, datadriven solutions that can be rapidly implemented. While formal acquisition programs of record, managed by entities like Program Executive Office (PEO) Soldier and U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) Soldier Center, pursue long-term, materiel solutions for the enterprise, the task force focused on identifying immediate, low-cost TTPs to protect Rangers from BOP associated with breaching operations. Unlike explosions in open areas, a blast within enclosed structures creates reflected blast waves that often amplify to higher pressures than the initial blast wave.⁵ The goal was to find a readily available tool that could meaningfully reduce exposure without impeding training value.

To achieve this, the task force leveraged a powerful network of expertise, drawing on established lessons learned from partner SOCOM units and collaborating with leading research institutions. This collaboration provided access to a field-expedient BOP measurement tool: the biofidelic head form (BIHF), a human surrogate head designed to accurately measure the precise overpressure that reaches the skull during a blast event.⁶

A biofidelic head form (BIHF) is outfitted with Ranger personal protective equipment and other industry-standard sensors to measure blast overpressure. (Photos courtesy of the 75th Ranger Regiment)

With the technologies, the BPTF designed a series of rigorous tests in a realistic operational environment: a subterranean concrete room at Fort Benning, GA. During live internal breaching scenarios, the team evaluated several material types to disrupt and dissipate the blast waves. The results were both surprising and definitive. The most effective solution was not a piece of expensive, high-tech gear, but one of the most ubiquitous items in the Army’s inventory: the standard-issue wool blanket.

The data captured from eight SOCOM-provided blast gauge sensors and sensors embedded within the BIHF was conclusive. A double layer of wool blankets hung 2-4 inches from the wall demonstrated a 30-70 percent reduction in reflected overpressure across all sensors. This simple, cost-effective, and immediately fieldable TTP provides a practical and effective method for Rangers to mitigate BOP, proving that impactful solutions can be found by combining operational ingenuity with scientific validation. Importantly, this project was completed in weeks, not years, demonstrating that with the right partners and when paired with frontline leaders, effective solutions exist right now while we wait for more rigorous studies years from now.

Instrumented Mouthguards in Airborne Operations

A continuing challenge within warfighter brain health is the lack of objective data. For decades, the true incidence of head impacts during military parachuting was unknown, relying on self-reporting in a culture where jumpers are often conditioned to downplay injuries. To solve this, the 75th Ranger Regiment partnered with the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) and the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) to monitor and measure head impact during parachute landing falls and military freefall activities. This work built off previous instrumented mouthguard (iMG) testing with the U.S. Army Airborne School, the 82nd Airborne Division, and other SOCOM units.

The benefit of this technology is twofold: injury prevention and injury tracking. For prevention, the Regiment leveraged evidence from the contact sports community, namely rugby and ice hockey, demonstrating that mouthguards can significantly reduce the risk of concussions.⁷ For tracking, the iMGs offer a revolutionary leap forward. These devices contain sophisticated sensors that measure the linear and rotational forces acting on the head during every phase of the jump providing objective data on impacts that have historically gone unrecorded.

Wool blankets dissipate blast overpressure and reduce exposure on average by more than 50 percent.

The preliminary analysis from the USUHS/WRAIR study is challenging long-held assumptions and revealing a dramatic gap between reported injuries and actual exposure events. Previously published research placed the rate of closed head injuries at approximately .15 percent per jump, or 1.5 out of every 1,000 jumpers.⁸ In stark contrast, the instrumented mouthguards are revealing that 6-8 percent of all landings qualify as “hard landings,” which is 60-80 out of every 1,000 jumpers, defined as those exceeding 40 Gs of force.

Even more alarmingly, the data shows that 60 percent of the jumpers experiencing these hard landings subsequently present with diagnosable signs of a concussion. This suggests that the true concussion incidence rate may be between 3.6 and 4.8 percent per jump — more than 10 times higher than the previously published rate. This paradigm-shifting data demonstrates that significant head impacts are not rare events but a common occupational hazard of military parachuting.

BIHFs measure BOP in mirrored orientation to the gunner and assistant gunner.

By participating in the study, the Ranger Regiment is helping to quantify the true risk, enabling leaders to move beyond anecdote and implement data-driven changes to TTPs, equipment, and medical surveillance to better protect the force. Figure 3 shows a proposed algorithm to be used during airborne operations with iMGs and other emerging technology that may offer field-expedient, objective options for the military.

Mortar Leader-Driven Questions, Straight- Forward Answers

Perhaps the most compelling example of the BPTF’s agility is its rapid response to a critical question raised directly by the Regimental mortar community: Can firing mortars without a helmet reduce blast overpressure (BOP) exposure to the brain? This question was not speculation but based on both operational experience and a known biomechanical phenomenon. Operators’ anecdotal reports of feeling less BOP effects firing without helmets in combat are backed by scientific research on how blast waves interact with combat helmets.

The phenomenon, called the “underwash effect,” involves the primary blast wave traveling around the helmet’s edge and reflecting off the torso, creating a secondary pressure wave that travels under the helmet. This can result in the blast wave becoming trapped and amplified in the space between the helmet and the head, leading to a significant increase in the overpressure experienced by the face and skull. Multiple studies have confirmed this effect, demonstrating that in some scenarios, the overpressure measured under the helmet can be two to 10 times greater than the initial blast wave itself.⁹ What is unknown is if this effect occurs in mortarmen, based on standard body position, and provides a clear, ground-driven impetus for testing.

Figure 2 — Instrumented Mouthguard Scatter Plot Data from USUHS/WRAIR Study

Answering this question swiftly with objective data is precisely what the task force was designed to do. In a collaborative project with the Infantry Mortar Leader Course (IMLC), the BPTF collaborated with Vanderbilt University to set out to measure the BOP experienced under various conditions. The test matrix was comprehensive, evaluating the effects of wearing no helmet, a standard Army Combat Helmet, an Ops-Core helmet, and a bump helmet. To further refine the data, each configuration was tested with and without a posterior helmet mitigating shield, the Pelta-6

Figure 3 — BPTF Concussion Algorithm including Emerging Technology

This initiative epitomizes the task force’s agile “weeks versus years” operational model. With full data analysis expected within three weeks, the BPTF will provide an evidence-based recommendation directly to the Regimental command team. This process — transforming an operator’s question, validated by scientific literature, into a data-driven policy change in a matter of weeks — is a powerful demonstration of how the task force is directly improving the health and safety of the force at the speed of relevance.

The 75th Ranger Regiment has long served as a “schoolhouse” for the Army, a role formalized by the 1986 Wickham Charter.¹⁰ Today, its Brain Protection Task Force is writing the next chapter of that legacy. By combining operator-driven questions with scientific validation and agile implementation, the Regiment is not only protecting its own but also developing a playbook for the entire enterprise, ensuring the U.S. Army remains the most lethal and most protected fighting force in the world.

Members of the 75th Ranger Regiment (Team 10) compete in the 2025 Best Mortar Competition at Fort Benning, GA, on 9 April 2025. (Photo by SPC Samuel Dreher)

Notes