The Perfect Soldier: Special Operations, Commandos, and the Future of Us Warfare by James F. Dunnigan
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Dirty Little Secrets
Tired and Deadly
by James Dunnigan
May 18, 2005
Discussion Board on this DLS topic
The use of stimulants to keep troops awake is becoming increasingly common. But
while these drugs will keep you awake, they don’t preserve your cognitive
ability or judgment. In the field, it’s been found that if troops are using
stimulants to keep awake, the incidence of friendly fire incidents goes up, as a
result of reduced perception and judgment combined with an increased impulse to
act. The ability to determine friend from foe and “right” from “wrong” can
disappear entirely in as little as 24 hours without sleep. “Muscle memory,”
however, does not degrade so quickly. A study of Special Operations personnel
has determined that their ability to hit targets does not diminish much even
after 60 hours without sleep. However, after only about 24 hours without sleep
the troops totally lost the ability to distinguish innocent from foe. Despite
this, they “killed” every target that came into view. Although mileage may vary,
for most people getting less than six hours sleep in 24 hours reduces cognitive
abilities by about 15-percent. Try that for four days and you’ll be down about
70-percent. Recovery of full cognitive abilities can take several days of
“proper” sleep (7-8 hours).
In addition to being a very serious problem
for troops in the field, loss of sleep can seriously impede the decision-making
abilities of commanders. In an age of global 24/7 operations, staff and senior
personnel ought to be aware of the potential deleterious effects of lack of
sleep on their ability to take an effective part in activities such as
conference calls or video-teleconferences.
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