The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that British Army weapons systems are causing brain injuries in soldiers exposed to repeated blast waves.
The MoD told ITV News that thousands of serving personnel may be affected by traumatic brain injury (TBI) not from enemy fire, but from the blast pressure of their own weapons.
Lieutenant Colonel James Mitchell, the MoD’s lead on TBI, said early attention focused on large munitions used in Iraq and Afghanistan, but this has now shifted to repeated exposure from British weapons.
He said: “Over especially the last five to ten years, we’re starting to appreciate the role of what we call low level blasts,” he said.
“The exposure of our service personnel to blast over-pressure from their own weapons systems.”
Mitchell said exact numbers are unknown, but “thousands” of serving personnel have been affected, with potentially higher figures among veterans.
Those at greatest risk include individuals repeatedly exposed to heavy weapons, such as mortars, shoulder-launched anti-tank systems, 50-calibre rifles, machine guns, and explosive charges.
Explosions produce a wave of overpressure—a rapid spike in air pressure above normal levels. This can penetrate the skull and cause microscopic damage to neurons and blood vessels in the brain.
Repeated exposure may overwhelm the brain’s ability to repair itself, leading to lasting neurological damage.
Symptoms overlap with post-traumatic stress disorder and include severe headaches, vision disturbances, sensitivity to light and sound, memory loss, and personality changes—making diagnosis more difficult.
UK researchers, with MoD financial backing, are investigating the causes and effects of TBI. The University of Birmingham is leading a study into mild TBI among veterans.
Professor Lisa Hill, a neuroscientist at Birmingham, said brain injuries release biomarkers—biological clues that indicate where and how serious the damage is.
She said: “If somebody gets injured, it changes the structure and function of the brain, but it also releases chemicals that you wouldn’t normally see.
“So if we can measure things in blood or in their saliva, that can tell us how potentially bad their injury has been and what symptoms they might go on to get.”
At the University of Nottingham, Professor Karen Mullinger is using OPM MEG, a scanning technique, to map signs of brain damage.
Hugh Keir, a former sniper with the Parachute Regiment who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and now hosts the H-Hour podcast, volunteered for a trial scan.
Results showed normal brain activity overall, with some possible signs of damage.
To draw conclusions, Mullinger’s team needs to scan many more veterans and healthy control participants to build a dataset of what “normal” brain activity looks like.
She plans to scan soldiers before and after training to study which activities carry the highest risk.
She said: “We can scan these soldiers before they go and do a training exercise and then immediately after, then we get a baseline which is specific to them.
“If the ‘wire paths’ have been damaged by blasts or whatever else it might be, then the function is going to change.”
