I'm also a little confused by your accusation, since the article discusses a comparative study of two groups, both in a warzone, and finds increased mental health effects in the group with higher caffeine consumption. No one is denying that combat conditions contribute to adverse mental health effects, but the whole point of the article is that these seem to be exacerbated by caffeine use.
Sleep deprivation is becoming a real concern in multiple military branches, and I suspect that the mental impact is not due to the caffeine per se but due to the culture around it: consumption of hundreds of mg of caffeine is viewed as an acceptable alternative to sleep. This is definitely also an issue with coffee, but energy drinks seem to be predominant today.
How many is that per day? Like 20??
Most people wouldn't get the 4 meals a day served (breakfast, lunch, dinner, midrats) all at DFACs. I usually ate once or twice a day in the DFAC, and in the summer, especially if you didn't have a physically demanding job, it was hard to even want to eat once a day in 100-120F heat. I often ended up reverse-cycle so had dinner for "breakfast" and then maybe went to midrats or maybe didn't, usually was too busy.
Coffee from "green beans" (the starbucks knock-off) with a total of 6 shots of espresso into a regular-sized paper coffee cup worked pretty well, too -- I could leave the cup in my truck for a few hours and in 120F inside a closed car it would stay rather hot.
It was pretty amazing to me how different things were at different times/places within the war. There were huge bases (where I nominally lived) with 5mph speed restriction (you could actually be pulled over and ticketed; I was once!), strict "you must wear your reflective belt" policies, multiple swimming pools, world-class hospitals, almost walmart-sized PXes, on-base vehicle registration, etc. There were guys living 6-12 in a house out in the country, and people on long range patrols in trucks and (rarely) dismounted, etc. And everything in between.
I'm actually curious now if the 30 year old boomer meme is in any way an outgrowth of the Iraq war. The aesthetic the meme embraces reminds me a lot of the guys I knew my age and older who served. Gonna have to reflect on this a bit.
Personally, I think the 30 year old boomer meme is rooted more in the fact that internet culture moves so fast these days that anything even a few years old is considered dated. Combine that with the definite cultural differences between Millennials and Gen Z, and the boomer meme makes sense.
I would assume that people who consume excessive amounts of a sweat fluid from neon colored cans with ridiculous names tagged on it also have lower capability of self reflection and additional tendency towards drug abuse. That might also contribute to less efficient processing of traumatic experiences.
"Long-term potentiation in the hippocampus" in conjunction with traumatic stress is plausibly causally related to PTSD.
"The amounts of guarana, taurine, and ginseng found in popular energy drinks are far below the amounts expected to deliver either therapeutic benefits or adverse events".
You have to do epidemiological studies to find problems with compounds that have a negative effect only in certain circumstances, because it probably won't be noticed in clinical trials. The foundational example is thalidomide, which is a harmless sedative except in pregnant women. Clinical trials aren't normally done on pregnant women, and they also aren't done on soldiers in active combat.
There may well be no problem, but this is the sort of epidemiological evidence that justifies further study.
The MilFit/CrossFit group I train with now frequently issues warnings about no energy drinks before big workouts.
No - it's Taurene (caffeine as well of course)
Taurene is a whole different game.
Taurene will mess you up long term far more than just caffeine. Taurene has less worse short term effects ... and there doesn't seem to be consensus on long term, but I personally had a serious bout with it messing up my endrocrine.
1 small red bull now and again is enough.
Soldiers need to get more sleep, for god's sakes there's guns and lives on the line. Yes, sleep dep training is important, but with live munitions ... my god man.
Personally I drink similar stuff maybe 2x per year, when I have a long (>1000km) drive ahead. Otherwise wouldn't touch that chemical junk with a 10 foot pole.