Military service members exposed to chronic low-level shocks to the head, such as jolts from maneuvering a fighter jet, blasts from firing weapons like heavy mortars, or crashing through the surf in a speedboat, are at risk of experiencing debilitating mental health symptoms stemming from the accumulation of microscopic damage to their brains, Dave Philipps reports in his 2024 investigative series in The New York Times.

There is no blood test or imaging scan for such brain injuries, and because these service members don’t meet the criteria for a traumatic brain injury, many don’t receive a brain injury diagnosis, Philipps found. Instead, doctors in the military prescribe them antidepressants, headache medicine and sleeping pills, he reported in May 2024.

“These people are sidelined and marginalized and oftentimes pushed out without ever knowing” they suffered from brain injuries, says Philipps, who writes about war, the military and veterans for the Times.

His 2024 series builds on his reporting in 2023, which exposed how artillery crew members’ brains were damaged by the shockwaves of their own weapons, injuries that were often misdiagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder.

The 2023 investigation, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, raised a question for Philipps: Were the same kinds of injuries occurring in other military personnel, and were they also going unrecognized?

Philipps would eventually find the answer: Yes.

His 2024 investigations revealed a pattern: Most military personnel repeatedly exposed to what’s considered low-level head trauma experienced brain damage, with symptoms ranging from headaches and anxiety to psychosis and suicide.

“It’s a slow-moving chronic injury,” says Philipps.

He uncovered that elite forces such as the Navy SEALs and TOPGUN pilots were often among the hardest hit, impacted by the chronic jolts to the brain from years of firing weapons, riding wave-slamming high-speed boats, or aerial dogfighting maneuvers.

The investigation was unique and challenging. No one in the military was tracking the issue, according to Philipps. No one fully understood it and there were no documents or reports about it. Although a few studies have found patterns of brain damage in service members exposed to low-level head trauma, there have been no large, long-term studies that could guide his investigation.

When a state-of-the-art Department of Defense laboratory in Maryland analyzed the brains of eight Navy SEALS who had died by suicide, it found brain damage in all of them, but the findings were not made public. Even the Navy was not informed about those findings until Philipps’ investigation.

“Even though one side of the military was recognizing this is really bad, another side of the military had no idea that this type of [research] was going on,” Philipps says.

His access to officials and military personnel was also extremely restricted.

Philipps, who has nearly 20 years of experience reporting on combat veterans, relied on dozens of interviews with service members and their families.

The Department of Defense and Special Operations Command tried to cut off access to the few experts with firsthand knowledge of the problem, Philipps says. In addition, troops in uniform are often told not to talk to the press. And elite troops like Special Operations forces can be very insular.

He also pieced together evidence by obtaining autopsy reports that the Department of Defense Brain Tissue Repository refused to disclose. Longtime enlisted leaders gave him reports that the Navy said did not exist.

His persistence allowed him to expose how the Department of Defense and Special Operations Command attempted to silence researchers, cut off media access and suppress critical brain injury data. The stories ultimately forced military leaders to confront the problem.

The impact of Philipps’ reporting has been significant:

• In December 2024, a bipartisan group in Congress enacted the Blast Overpressure Safety Act as part of the National Defense Authorization Act, mandating all branches of the military to track blast exposure and design safer weapons.
• The Pentagon began implementing the bill’s mandates, including baseline brain scans for new recruits. As of December 2024, 36,000 recruits had been scanned.
• The investigation spurred policy changes in allied countries, including Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, that use weapons and training like those in the United States.
• Philipps’ work was the catalyst for the creation of a medical code in the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases, or ICD, to document repetitive blast exposure injuries so that these conditions can now be officially diagnosed and studied.
• The number of family members donating veterans’ brains to the Defense Department’s research lab more than doubled to 120 in 2024. The lab director attributed the increase to the Times’ coverage.
• A Swedish official heading a NATO research effort on military speedboat safety wrote that Philipps’ reporting prompted the project to look at brain injury for the first time. The official said the coverage would be used “to inform higher levels of decision-makers worldwide about the necessity to establish when it’s time to slow down. Now, we understand this can save lives,” according to the Times.

We spoke with Philipps about his investigation. He shared the following nine tips for journalists who cover the military or are new to the beat.

1. Set aside preconceptions about the military and veterans.

Many journalists come into military reporting with assumptions about service members, often shaped by media portrayals or personal beliefs.

“Put aside any of your preconceptions about what the military or veterans are,” says Philipps. “I think that’s often the thing that gets lost. These are real complex people who have very interesting lives outside the military and do interesting things inside.”

“If we boil it down to a one-word label [veterans] that generally means ‘the flag’ and ‘thank you for your service,’ we risk doing a great disservice,” Philipps adds.

2. Build trust with sources through a shared mission.

Gaining trust with military sources and families is challenging, as many are told to avoid talking to the press. Philipps found success by framing his reporting as a way to help others in the military community rather than just exposing problems.

“I will never call somebody up and say, ‘I want to talk to you about what you were exposed to and how it harmed you, and about the brain injury you’re now struggling with,’” Philipps says. “That doesn’t work with the folks that I talk to. But [instead] I say, ‘Hey, the people that you deployed with were trying to do the best they could, and they got injured, and now someone doesn’t see it, and we need to lay this out there so they can get help. So can you help me get help for the other people you serve with?’”

If you and your source have that shared mission, it breaks down suspicion and it gives them some direction and agency in your work, he says.

3. Follow hunches, but don’t let assumptions cloud your investigation.

Some of the most impactful stories don’t start with clear questions or answers. Instead, they begin with a hunch, a pattern, or something that doesn’t quite add up.

Philipps’ 2023 investigation that unveiled how artillery crew members’ brains were damaged by the shockwaves of their weapons started with a call from an Army artillery soldier. He told Philipps on background that he was in an artillery unit that was part of secret strikes against Islamic State in Syria, killing a number of civilians.

The unit was suffering from moral injury, the soldier told Philipps. Many were suicidal and couldn’t sleep. (Moral injury is the psychological distress and emotional pain people may experience when they do something, see something, or can’t stop something that goes against their core beliefs or values. )

“And I was like, ‘Whoa, that’s a big story!’”

He interviewed the soldier right away and asked the soldier to introduce him to other members of his unit.

It turned out that for many others moral injury was not the source of their anguish. Rather, Philipps would find that the source of mental health symptoms was silent brain injury resulting from repeated jolts to their brains from firing their weapons.

“I walked into this room I thought was the moral injury story room, but it’s not,” Philipps says. “And everything I keep running into is not moral injury…. I think of it as fumbling around in a dark room with your hand out, feeling everything and it’s just trying to figure out what it is.”

There was always enough there — another interview, another researcher to talk to — that convinced Philipps he was on the right path.

4. Check obituaries.

Through his reporting, Philipps learned that some of the service members who suffered from undiagnosed brain injuries died by suicide in their 30s and 40s, shortly after the end of their military careers.

So he began looking at the obituaries and contacted the families, sharing his ongoing investigation with them.

“The family is looking for meaning,” he says. “They want to know what happened, and they can tell you about their son, their husband, their father, whomever.”

“I’d say, ‘Okay, tell me about your family member. I think this may be the problem, but I want to find out more,’” Philipps says.

After talking to the families, he would then ask if they knew the other service members who had attended the funeral and then would reach out to them.

5. Find ways around institutional secrecy.

The military, like many large bureaucracies, can be highly secretive. Journalists often can’t rely on official documents or Freedom of Information Act requests because they may be delayed, redacted or denied.

“Unfortunately, in the military, everything’s classified,” Philipps says. “Literally, what the SEALs had for lunch on Tuesday is classified.”

Instead of relying on traditional access points, Philipps relied on brain autopsy reports that military families had shared with him and internal reports that inside sources gave him.

For instance, the Navy had reports that speed boats had been concussing soldiers since the 1990s, and it had done a few studies to measure the force and number of hits as the boat smacks against the water, Philipps says. All the documents were there but not attainable through the usual routes. Insiders gave them to Philipps.

6. Work with intermediaries to enter tight-knit communities.

Military communities are often tight-knit and skeptical of outsiders. The best way to gain access is through intermediaries who can vouch for you, Philipps says.

“If I know one Navy SEAL who knows another SEAL, who knows a SEAL’s wife, who can call a friend who knows another Navy SEAL, and they can say, ‘You should talk to Dave Philipps,’ that goes a long way,” he says.

Persistence is key. Expect rejection but keep working through connections until you find sources willing to talk.

“I think the ratio of getting the door slammed in your face is higher in the military, maybe like 90%, and then even higher in Special Operations and top-secret parts of the military,” he says. “Use the best techniques you can, reach out to people, frame the story they’re receptive to and be willing to run the numbers and get shut down a lot, and know that chances are you’ll get lucky.”

7. Look for unreported angles.

Look beyond the obvious for stories that no one else is covering.

War stories often focus on combat, explosions, and heroics, while quieter but equally impactful issues — like workplace safety, long-term health effects and institutional failures — may go overlooked.

“I guess I always zig when other reporters zag,” Philipps says. “I’ve never once been to a combat zone. I don’t write about the flashes and bangs. But sometimes in those quiet areas, there can be really compelling stories that affect a lot of people’s lives. I mean, basically what I’m doing is a boring workplace safety series, but it makes such a profound difference to so many people that it’s worthwhile.”

8. Use accessible metaphors and analogies.

Throughout his stories, Philipps uses clear and approachable language to describe complex issues and scientific topics. For instance, this is how he describes the brain and its neurons in his December 2024 story about TOPGUN pilots:

“The human brain has a consistency similar to that of Jell-O, and it holds 100 billion neurons connected by biological wires so delicate that 150 of them could fit within a single human hair. Enough force whipping through the brain can cause those connections to tear,” he writes.

During his interview with The Journalist’s Resource, Philipps described the low-level head trauma as minor earthquakes in a giant city, a metaphor for the brain.

The earthquake “is not going to set the city on fire but it might cause a bridge to crack and be roped off so you can’t use it, or some electricity might go out in the neighborhood,” he explains. “Now, one of these minor earthquakes is not a big deal. You get a couple hundred of them, maybe several a day, over time, you can no longer drive from one part of the city to the other. It becomes impossible.”

He advises journalists to ask researchers to explain the topics in simple terms that they can understand. He often runs his analogies by researchers to see if they can improve them.

He also tries his analogies and explanations on people around him.

“I usually explain what I learned to whoever happens to be close to me — my wife, my kids, the little group of folks in my jogging group,” Philipps said in a follow-up email. “If I can explain something in a way that is simple enough to say between breaths while jogging, and clear enough for the other runners to understand, it’s probably going to work in The New York Times.”

9. Remember your why.

There were times during his reporting that Philipps wondered if he should keep moving forward with the stories.

“You’re always asking if you’re beating a dead horse or spending too much time on something that nobody cares about or isn’t important,” he says. “I had a lot of conversations with myself and I was like, ‘No, this matters. These people’s lives are being destroyed, and no one sees it.’ And all you have to do with your reporting is, if you’re right, your reporting will turn on the light and everyone will see it, and then they can do something about it.”

Read the stories & watch a video