House Committee to Examine Secret Navy Effort on Pilot Brain Injuries

U.S.|House Committee to Examine Secret Navy Effort on Pilot Brain Injuries

The Navy’s elite TOPGUN pilot school quietly undertook an effort called Project Odin’s Eye in the fall of 2024 to try to detect and treat brain injuries in fighter crew members, and leaders kept it so confidential that not even the broader Navy knew about it.

Now, the powerful House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is demanding to learn about the project, and what the Navy knows about the risk that high-performance jets pose to the brains of the crew members who fly in them.

“It is imperative to ensure the warfighter has full and accurate information about health risks and the tools, both mental and physical, to safeguard their health,” the chairman of the committee, Representative James Comer of Kentucky, said in a letter sent on Thursday to the acting secretary of the Navy.

The letter cited a report by The New York Times published in December that detailed how a number of F/A-18 Super Hornet crew members, after years of catapult takeoffs from aircraft carriers and dogfighting training under crushing G-forces, experienced sudden and unexplained mental health problems. The problems included insomnia, anxiety, depression and PTSD-like symptoms — all of which can be caused by repeated sub-concussive brain injuries.

Many of the problems started when the aviators were in their 40s, near the end of their careers, but those affected often kept their struggles hidden, even after leaving the Navy, so that they could continue to fly.

The Navy tells its pilots that it has no evidence that flying poses a risk of brain injury. That remained the official line even after three pilots with symptoms consistent with brain injuries died by suicide in a span of 12 months.