 Backflash area clear! Ready, fire! Rock it out! Rock it out! Rock it out! The Neurotactical Research Team is studying the neurological effects of low-level blast exposure from shoulder-mounted rockets during heavy weapons training. We intervene during training and test our participants at strategic time points to identify both short-term and long-term effects and to create operationally directed guidelines to help mitigate these effects. Our ultimate goal is to improve our Warfighter's mission readiness, as well as to improve their overall quality of life. When we compare blast exposure from deployment to actually being a range safety officer or going through the land warfare cell, most of the exposures actually for me have came from the training. Usually per year we put six classes through, which would equate to 36 blasts a year, approximately six every other month. Usually after those blasts I feel a slight pinch in the backside of my head, sort of like a headache. My sleep seems very sporadic and my eyesight actually starts to blur in my right eye. Since the research team has arrived, we've cut down on the amount of exposures that the range safety officers have experienced. It used to be that they would go until there was no more students. Now it's switched to each instructor can only take six exposures a day and no more than that. I was a SEAL, I retired after 22 years, I was a medic, I show operations, independent duty corpsman. In my platoons I was RSO, we would shoot 15 Carl Gustafs or AT-4s in one day. You know, that's a common theme in almost all the guys that have been around for a while. I don't know how many of our guys have had, you know, moderate exposures to blast because the problem is unless you completely get knocked out, nobody goes to a hospital so there's no personal casualty report. You kind of suck it up, you say, wow, that was something and then you move on. A mechanical amputee is one thing or a gunshot one is one thing or a burn, but the invisible blast guy that's whole, nobody looks at you to stop and say, are you okay or anything because it's not obvious. And hopefully we can help put together a really good surveillance program for NSW that will track that. Like a dive table because that's what we know as combat divers, just like a hearing conservation program or your vision. Well maybe it's time to also track exposure to blasts and nobody really knows what blast does and I'm privileged to be working with such smart people that care and that are really invested in what we're doing.