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.
But in November, leaders at TOPGUN — where the Navy’s best fighter pilots learn aerial dogfighting — quietly adopted Odin’s Eye, a brain injury program that has been used by some Navy SEALs. The move allowed TOPGUN to use its own budget to screen pilots and sidestep the sometimes sluggish Navy bureaucracy.
The letter from Congress demands that the Navy share what it knows about possible brain injuries in aircrew members, including all studies and communications about the issue, as well as data on the number of aviators injured over the last 10 years.
It also asks why Odin’s Eye was created in secrecy. It “is concerning that Navy command may not be fully aware of its existence,” the letter says, adding that the situation “raises additional questions about the Navy’s knowledge of potential issues and whether it is acting to mitigate these issues in a comprehensive and effective manner.”
“Our Navy invests a lot in these pilots to make sure they are the best, and we expect the best, but we also want to make sure they are being taken care of,” Mr. Comer said in an interview.
The problem may be difficult to see clearly, even with the power of an influential House committee. Brain injury symptoms often resemble those of unrelated psychological disorders, and many aviators who experienced them said they had never been assessed for a brain injury by the Navy, so data on the injuries’ prevalence may not exist.
Even so, retired pilots suggest that the problem is not new and has been crippling high-performing pilots for decades.
Capt. Frederic G. Ludwig Jr., known as Wigs, commanded TOPGUN in the late 1980s, when the blockbuster movie carrying the same name was released. Public interest in Navy pilots was so strong that crowds would sometimes roll out a red carpet for him when he got out of his jet, according to his son, Eric Ludwig.
But a few years later, after 20 years of flying and 1,200 carrier landings, Captain Ludwig started to unravel, his son said. He had panic attacks in the cockpit and had to stop flying single-seat aircraft. While commanding a carrier air group, he had a mental breakdown, escaped a locked psychiatric hospital in Singapore through a window and was missing for days.
The Navy gave him electroshock therapy and quietly retired him in 1995, but his problems grew worse, with moods that swung between reckless confidence and inconsolable sorrow. His ability to plan and finish projects deserted him. In his flying career, he never had an accident, but as a civilian he became so uncoordinated and distracted that he repeatedly got into fender benders.
He was never assessed for a brain injury. He died in 2023, at age 78, of a brain bleed.
“It’s so tragic,” his son said in an interview. “He tried and tried and tried for decades to get better, but he never could.”
Neil Sullivan, known as Sully, who trained under Captain Ludwig at TOPGUN, had similar problems after flying Navy fighters for 14 years and airliners for another 10. At age 48, he suddenly started waking up soaked in sweat and developed crippling anxiety.
“I tried to John-Wayne it for six months, but eventually it got so bad that I had to stop flying,” he said in an interview.
He divorced, turned to alcohol and then hard drugs, and felt unable to work.
“My life completely fell apart, and I could never understand why,” said Mr. Sullivan, who eventually went into rehab for alcohol and drug abuse. “For decades, I was trying to treat what I thought was a psychiatric disorder, but there’s a very good chance I’ve had hundreds of small brain injuries.”
He added: “There must be a lot of us out there; you just don’t see us. They never make a movie about this part of the story.”
Pinning down the causes of the problem and its scope will not be simple. There are no brain scans or blood tests that can detect the unique pattern of microscopic damage caused by repeated sub-concussive blows in a living brain. It can be seen only post-mortem.
Capt. William Catlett, a rear admiral’s son who went by the nickname Chance, was in the very first TOPGUN class in the late 1960s and flew for 24 years. In his 40s he developed anxiety and depression, and those often kept him from being able to leave the house, his daughter Mallory Catlett said.
She saw similar problems in other pilots of his generation, including a friend of the family — another highly decorated test pilot whose father was a rear admiral — who, she said, died by suicide shortly after retiring.
“These dads were all kind of crazy, and we never really understood why,” she said. “But certainly, if you look at it in terms of brain injury, it makes sense.”
Her father continued to struggle with mood swings and deteriorating brain function for decades, and died in January.
His family donated his brain to the Defense Department’s brain tissue repository, an advanced laboratory that studies military-related brain injuries, but that has only one fighter pilot’s brain in its collection, in part because the risk of brain injury in aircrew members has largely gone unacknowledged.
“My father and grandfather gave their lives to the Navy,” Ms. Catlett said. “We wanted to give back. Maybe his brain can provide some understanding.”
If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources. Go here for resources outside the United States.
