We Cannot Allow a Sleep Gap!

[Van]

a soldier was supposed to retain more or less full combat efficiency for a period of 7-10 days on 1 1/2 to 2 hours' sleep a day

That is a load of blithers.

Multiple independent observations (including my own) is that when you go past about three days (72 hrs) on this kind of sleep cycle, judgement and quality of higher brain functions goes right out the window. The problem is that in training, most small unit field exercises are about three days, so you can usually push your people and get away with it.

Yes, I had some near misses because a group of soldiers I was leading had gotten to about four days without sleep and were still handling pyro. To this day, I am fire-breathing death on sleep discipline.

[Redactor]

May be of interest.

[jcustis]

That is a load of blithers.

Multiple independent observations (including my own) is that when you go past about three days (72 hrs) on this kind of sleep cycle, judgement and quality of higher brain functions goes right out the window. The problem is that in training, most small unit field exercises are about three days, so you can usually push your people and get away with it.

Yes, I had some near misses because a group of soldiers I was leading had gotten to about four days without sleep and were still handling pyro. To this day, I am fire-breathing death on sleep discipline.

As I am confident jmm99 can attest to, leaders stand to be at the highest risk of losing judgement and higher brain functions, especially when crappy sleep patterns are interrupted by those moments of sheer violence.

In the days leading up to the moment when I crossed into Iraq, I had a series of tactical problems, kinetic events, and the issue of a large caliber HE round landing 50m away from my vehicle ruin any sleep discipline I was hoping to maintain. When the embedded Fox News reporter ran footage of my passed out on the back of my vehicle, with a CVC helmet still connected, I was just that...passed out. No effort by anyne to rouse me would have worked, because I had been going for at least 72 hours with about the 1-2 hours of interrupted sleep mentioned so far. jmm99 likely witnessed that clip, but I had no idea he had followed out movements until just recently...small world.

I think the key distinguishing factor here revolves around the fight or flight reflex. When there is enough going on to retain a certain level of excitement and interest to one's mind, sleep can definitely be avoided with some degree of impairment. It's when you mix in the parasympathetic backlash from life-and-death events (I think this is the only thing I believe from Grossman) that you get the massive dumps of adrenaline which cause your body to short circuit and crash. That happened time and time during the invasion, leaving me half-asleep in the turret as we moved north. The exhaustion never really went away until we were outside Samarra, and watching elements of the 4th ID roll north.

The body and the brain can be condition to adjust to the lack of sleep, and would hazard a guess that at the time I was most adjusted, I could have gone 96 hours without too terrible impairment. Now, throw in a firefight or two, and that changed the calculus significantly.

Some of you may know CWO5 Timothy Gelinas. He was our battalion's Gunner, or Weapons Officer, during the invasion. A multiple-tour vet of Vietnam and Silver Star winner, Gunner Gelinas was some 55 years old IIRC when we crossed the border. He spoke to the mortarmen of my company a fe w months before the war, and when asked what could be done to do well in combat, he spoke highly of the notion of physical fitness. He was very clear in stating that a high state of physical fitness wil allow one's mind and body to withstand the rigors of combat.

I offer that if we are going to look for ways to beat back the body's reaction to fatigue and stress, functional fitness is where we should focus our effort.

[jmm99]

to any recollection of Custis sacking out, passing out or engaging in any other sort of inactivity caused by counting sheep. But, I now understand the real reason for this thread, Counting sheep...

I have to plead guilty to watching Fox News and have always liked Rick Leventhal's reporting. So, when in spring 2003 (because of post-surgical complications), I was stuck for several months at home, lying on my side surfing the Net and watching TV, I followed Jon's company as it led the "East Side" charge to Baghdad.

I can truthfully say that Custis is the best combat officer posting to this forum whom I've seen in action. Of course, he is the only one whom I've seen in action.

Call it coincidence, but tomorrow I have to sit down with a "sleep doctor" to go over the results of my recent "sleep test". A small world indeed.

Regards

Mike

[carl]

The body and the brain can be condition to adjust to the lack of sleep, and would hazard a guess that at the time I was most adjusted, I could have gone 96 hours without too terrible impairment.

and

I offer that if we are going to look for ways to beat back the body's reaction to fatigue and stress, functional fitness is where we should focus our effort.

I may get in trouble by saying this, but these statements frighten me. You are an extremely exceptional individual if these statements hold true for you; and you may be but this will absolutely not hold true for everybody else. It is not possible to condition to the body and brain to sleep deprivation. It is not possible to beat back the body's reaction to sleep deprivation no matter how fit you are. The only way to counteract the effects of lack of sleep is to sleep.

Performance after a period without sleep can be directly related to performance with a specific blood alcohol content, 24 hours without sleep and you will act as if you have a blood alcohol content of .10. You are drunk in all the states I know of. 72 hours without sleep and you are performing at about 20% of your normal capacity. You can breathe and maybe walk.

You must sleep. There is no way around it. I know the exigencies of combat dictate that sometimes you must go anyway and accept the consequences but it is vital that it be recognized that there will be consequences. They are absolutely unavoidable.

As I have pointed out before there is huge body of research and material available on this subject. Go to the websites of the National Transportation Safety Board, Flight Safety Foundation, Coast Guard, Airline Pilots Association etc and type in "fatigue". Dozens of extremely good, readable and concise references will come up. One of the classic fatigue accidents is the DC-8 a crew flew into the ground at Gitmo because they were just too tired to move the controls. This is a HUGE deal in the transportation business.

Here is a link to a PDF about the Sleep, Activity, Fatigue, and Task Effectiveness (tm) Model and Fatigue Avoidance Scheduling Tool (tm).

Link:http://faculty.nps.edu/nlmiller/Fati...hSAFTEFAST.pdf

It provides a nice overview of the problem. FAST (tm) is a computer program that provides a graphic depiction of sleep deprivation vs. performance and might be a useful tool, maybe good to use in a briefing.

You must sleep. You can't get around it.

[jcustis]

I think a point of clarification is in order. At "my prime" so to speak, I could function off of intermittent sleep that amounted to about 1 1/2 to 2 hours total. Not 96 hours straight. I may have been a little tired when I wrote that.

[reed11b]

Another factor is that our jobs are often highly "scripted" or regimented, which allows us to "function" despite sleep deprivation. If you found yourself needing to do complex formulas or compared reaction and actual choices to what you did when you were not sleep deprived you might not feel the same way. I find myself seeing ghosts and second guessing my actions after being awake for 48hours or longer.
Reed
P.S. I agree whole heartedly with Carl

[Jedburgh]

Another factor is that our jobs are often highly "scripted" or regimented, which allows us to "function" despite sleep deprivation. If you found yourself needing to do complex formulas or compared reaction and actual choices to what you did when you were not sleep deprived you might not feel the same way. I find myself seeing ghosts and second guessing my actions after being awake for 48hours or longer.
Reed
P.S. I agree whole heartedly with Carl

Many years ago, when I was working tac nukes, the relevant USAREUR reg dictated that any of us about to work on a nuke round had to have had a minimum of 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep prior to slapping it together.....

[Adam L]

One thing I have not heard yet is the definition of "combat effectiveness."
This claim of maintaining "full combat efficiency" is idiocy. There is no way that efficiency after 7 days isn't lower than after 1.

The way I see it is that we should look for ways of increasing human performance in periods of extreme sleep deprivation by chemical or other means. Also, we need to come up with a better concept than simply "combat efficiency."

My personal experience with sleep deprivation.

No Sleep: 72 hours...after that you start to go down hill very quickly. I've been out to 5 days without sleep a number of times, but my personal record is 7 days 6 hrs. Most people will be completely useless on day 5.

1-3 hrs/day: You can actually survive for quite a long time this way. you can maintain near full efficiency for 3 days. After this point there is a steady decline until 5-9. After that point you tend to level out. You won't start to hit bottom for a while. That comes somewhere from 3-14 days later. At that point you will have a hard time telling the difference between when you are sleeping and when you are awake. Somewhere between 21 and 30 days you will lose that ability. At this point you still are functional to some degree, but you will start to lose your sanity soon.

(I should note that my experiences with sleep deprivation were during periods of extreme pain. I'm sure that in some way impacted my ability to stay awake. Still, in times of non extreme pain I've found this to still hold true, but I have never had to go past 10 days since then.)

Adam L

[Ron Humphrey]

I think a point of clarification is in order. At "my prime" so to speak, I could function off of intermittent sleep that amounted to about 1 1/2 to 2 hours total. Not 96 hours straight. I may have been a little tired when I wrote that.

You at least have the catch up 5-6 hour power coma once every few days or so when scheds running like that.