Hearing on the battlefield: The challenge of protecting hearing while enabling the mission

Abstract

The auditory sense plays a critical role in human performance on the battlefield. Effective verbal communication is key to the success of all military operations, the ability to detect and localize sounds in the immediate environment is critical for supporting situation awareness, and the ability to identify sound sources is required for labeling items and events as hostile or friendly. However, operational environments tend to be extremely noisy, and most warfighters are regularly exposed to hazardous noise levels, necessitating the use of hearing protection to reduce the chance of experiencing temporary or permanent hearing loss. Unfortunately, the use of hearing protection can have a deleterious effect on communication, sound source identification, and overall situation awareness. For this reason, operators often choose to perform all, or part, of their mission without the appropriate hearing protection in place. In order to protect warfighters’ hearing, appropriate hearing protection needs to be selected that will provide enough protection from the expected hazardous sounds, while also enabling the hearing-critical tasks that are required for the mission. This presents a great challenge for those who make the decisions on what hearing protection to prescribe.The auditory sense plays a critical role in human performance on the battlefield. Effective verbal communication is key to the success of all military operations, the ability to detect and localize sounds in the immediate environment is critical for supporting situation awareness, and the ability to identify sound sources is required for labeling items and events as hostile or friendly. However, operational environments tend to be extremely noisy, and most warfighters are regularly exposed to hazardous noise levels, necessitating the use of hearing protection to reduce the chance of experiencing temporary or permanent hearing loss. Unfortunately, the use of hearing protection can have a deleterious effect on communication, sound source identification, and overall situation awareness. For this reason, operators often choose to perform all, or part, of their mission without the appropriate hearing protection in place. In order to protect warfighters’ hearing, appropriate hearing protection needs to be selec...