Are we killing our Soldiers?

By Mike Sparks

Part 1: Inefficient Daily Time Schedule results in a Lack of Sleep

"Space and territory I can recover; time, NEVER".

--Napoleon

As bad as the conflicts in Iraq/Afghanistan are, the sad truth is that more Soldiers die each year in preventable accidents and suicides. Army leaders claim that ìSoldier welfare and safetyî are priorities and its time we hold them to this and stop this scourge that takes away combat power before we even get to the battlefield. To do this, ALL factors will be placed on the table to include the entire Army lifestyle and ingrained ways of operating--our very culture.

There are no bad Soldiers just bad Leaders

As a reservist coming from civilian life, I offer a fresh perspective to whatís going on. Comparing/contrasting the physical and mental well-being of my men from before they were mobilized to now after theyíve been on active duty for over half a year, some dramatic realizations are apparent. After 8 months of working out every day and in some cases twice a day, many of our Soldiers still cannot run fast enough to pass the current Army sports PT test, primarily the 2-mile run; while time standards vary with age/sex, generally everyone need to run at an 8 minute-a-mile pace to pass. While everyone is burning more calories and have lost weight to not appear civilian chubby to fit the Army machismo (ìmachoî) image, I find the entire unit is groggy and is constantly tired. Its obvious that on a daily basis, our men are not getting enough rest so their bodies can recover from PT to be of maximum--or in some older Soldiers' case--any good. The Army 19th century harassment mentality insists that those that have not passed the sports PT test are "inferior beings" to be punished and must do PT twice a day and thus the people that need the rest the most to gain in strength and aerobic conditioning get the least. The elitist mentality that seeks to find/create scapegoats to be ostracized and eventually "run out of the Army" sours the entire atmosphere of a unit and destroys teamwork at every opportunity by an ìusî and ìthemî mentality. Knowing your leaders are eager to throw you to the wolves is not loyalty from the top down. The blame-the-individual-Soldier-for-everything mentality also does not mentor these Soldiers at risk by running with them to see if their stride mechanics could be improved, their running form enhanced and breathing/pace worked on, or even if the very act of running on pavement in sports attire is relevant to combat fitness or wise in light of the dozens of foot, ankle, knee and back injured Soldiers flocking to morning sick call attests--things that leaders who care and want their men to succeed would do as in a civilian cross-country team or successful business. If the Army is going to do sports distance running, then it should be at least as good at it as high school track and cross country teams--clearly its not. Instead, the Army is run by an anti-analyze-the-problem and solve-it, blue-collar, fix-yourself-or-you-will-be-destroyed mentality that makes waking up each morning and wearing the uniform of the U.S. Army a loathsome chore when it should be a joy to be amongst a band of brothers pulling for each other to succeed. All of these things are signs of an organization failing to intelligently and with the right moral values, overcome a challenge, in this case, a mere sports run in t-shirt and shorts for time. Iím sure if a high a school cross-country coach were put in charge of our Soldiers having trouble with their 2 mile runs theyíd in short order be not only passing the test but would become COMPETITIVE with the ìspeed demonsî in their unit. The difference? Civilian coaches would motivate and inspire not brow beat and make the training productive in any way it needs to be not counter-productive and demeaning.

An Army not getting enough sleep?

However, as I worried about the plight of some of my good Soldiers getting forced out of the Army because after months of inadequate preparation/rest they do not run like skinny x-country teens, I pondered my own experiences with a lack of sleep driving a Personally Owned Vehicle (POV) and wondered if there is a linkage to the overall lack of sleep during an active duty Army day to these needless fatalities we keep on reading about?

I'm convinced there is.

If you look at the mandated XVIII Airborne Corps work day, formation at 0630 for PT and the day ending at 1700 gives the Soldier only 6 hours of human life to unwind after he drives off post to home. If he lives on post, the stress of Army life never actually leaves him; try it sometime and youíll see. If he goes shopping for food, does laundry, he then only has 5 hours of waking life ëtil midnight. If he goes to sleep at midnight, he has to wake up at 5am to have 30 minutes to shower/shave and leave at 5:30 to get to the unit at 6am to be early and not late for formation. Thus, on the average, Soldiers in the XVIII Airborne Corps get less than the recognized 6 hours of sleep the average human being on planet earth needs each day. If the Soldier wants to get 8 hours of sleep he has to go to bed at 9pm each day. This means after he leaves work and goes home, he has just 3 hours of life to himself each day.

With such little time is there any point even going home?

Is it a wonder then that Soldiers family lives are in chaos, stress and dis-array?

Is it a wonder Soldiers commit suicide?

Or there are high divorce rates?

Is it a wonder Army Soldiers are dying each day in places like Iraq? Whatever happened to "BE ALERT, STAY ALIVE"?

Soldiers are not on a daily basis given adequate time to rest and unwind and its killing not only them due to lack of alertness while driving and doing other dangerous activities, but its ruining the the Army as a whole as morale plummets made worse by extended 1 year+ combat deployments.

Look Busy at all costs

Here is the kicker, the typical Army get-up-before-the-sun paradigm has you ìhurrying up and waitingî; you are not spending every second doing absolutely critical and important tasks, you are standing around in human wannabe robot formations, finally you do PT at 0640 then waste almost 3 hours fooling around with it until 0900 am formation in duty uniform. Then, the tired troops work ëtil 1100 am then go on lunch until 1300, wasting another 2 hours. At 1300, they stay ëtil 1700 groggy--if they ate lunch working off digesting two meals. Is it a wonder nothing seems to get accomplished during the day other than herding people from one location to the other and having them operate by going-through-the-motions? The 21st century battlefield with alert, thinking enemies who creatively seek asymmetric situations to place strength against our weaknesses demands we have ALERT and THINKING Soldiers not drones. Dr. C. DiGiovanni, M.D. writes in Sleep and Sleep Deprivation
www.mcu.usmc.mil/TbsNew/Pages/Officer%20Courses/Infantry%20Officer%20Course/Human%20Factors/Pages/page4.htm :

You cannot condition yourself to get by with significantly less sleep, and the more sleep debt you acquire, the worse will be your performance. Sleep debt, however, does not produce deterioration in all activities. For example, in static and repetitive tasks, accuracy is generally maintained, but the time it takes to perform those tasks progressively lengthens. Also, many forms of physical activity are not affected, at least initially, by sleep debt. What is affected by sleep debt is the ability of the brain to perform its higher functions, such as learning new information, recalling previously learned information, reacting to information, and analyzing information and making decisions.

The current Army daily time schedule is like a government bureaucrat on a time clock wasting time to appear busy by changing gears (changing functions) There is this undercurrent, an unspoken worry in the minds of regular Army Soldiers that if we are not "earning our pay" that civilians who are watching us could take our jobs away with---so WE MUST LOOK BUSY, in fact we must look busier than our civilian employer counterparts who in contrast as mature adults not worried about appearances build in adequate sleep into their schedules. You can't make a profit if you cannot make a good or service because your employees are groggy or worse DEAD. Unlike the U.S. Government, civilian companies cannot force people into their ranks, they have to value and protect their workers. However, without a draft to fill the ranks regardless of what's causing the attrition, can the Army afford to squander away its volunteers?

Get away on the weekend even if it kills you

Amidst this miserable set of parameters, the ì4 day weekendî becomes an oasis of hope for all involved. However, even if you stayed put and slept all 4 days you cannot store sleep and when you return to the daily Army grind, your body is again sleep-deprived or you go to bed unrealistically early and have no human life apart from the drag-events-out and do things in a mediocre, lowest common denominator (LCD) way Army life. So what do Soldiers do on their long weekends tied in to holidays? Or even the regular 2-day weekends?

They drive home.

Why?

To get away from the Army.

To be with people that love them unconditionally and not constantly back-bite and harass them over trivial and unimportant matters (BS) because the Army has a hierarchy of instant obedience powers meant actually only for war-time necessity that however can be easily abused daily during peacetime by those with rank but without humanity or maturity/wisdom. Our Soldiers go home to be with adults who treat them like the human beings they are---not by their demeaning social rank in an obsolete, 19th century set of institutional norms.

The problem is that for many ìhomeî is a very long drive and they are then doing it without adequate sleep. And/or they drive to someplace to drink alcohol (a drug) to escape their Army existence. Then when they drive back on post, running out of time due to time/distance factors or else be late to morning formation and get UCMJ punishment, they drive too fast, fall asleep at the wheel, make bad driving decisions due to intoxication and/or fatigue and they end up DEAD as a statistic on the Gruber road marquee or a blurb in the post newspaper.

And its all killing our Soldiers. Seniors.org reports:

In a study on the effects of sleep deprivation, investigators at the University of Pennsylvania found that subjects who slept four to six hours a night for fourteen consecutive nights showed significant deficits in cognitive performance equivalent to going without sleep for up to three days in a row. Yet these subjects reported feeling only slightly sleepy and were unaware of how impaired they were. The research article, "The Cumulative Cost of Additional Wakefulness: Dose-Response Effects on Neurobehavioral Functions and Sleep Physiology From Chronic Sleep Restriction and Total Sleep Deprivation," appears in the March issue of the journal 'SLEEP'.According to Principal Investigator David Dinges, "This is the first systematic study to look at the prolonged cognitive effects of chronic sleep restriction lasting for more than a week. The results provide a clearer picture of possible dangers to people who typically are awake longer on a regular basis," he explained, "including members of the military, medical and surgical residents, and shift workers. Reduced cognitive abilities can occur even with a moderate reduction in sleep."Cognitive performance deficits included reduced ability to pay attention and react to a stimulus, such as when driving, or monitoring at airports. Other deficits involved impairment of the ability to think quickly and not make mistakes, and a reduced ability to multi-task -- to hold thoughts in the brain in some order while doing something else.

Studies also show that having our Soldiers sleep deprived for the entire week and then before cutting them loose on weekend to drive home giving them platitudes about "not driving when sleepy" during the safety brief is not going to cut it. In fact, not even one whole day set aside to recover from sleep debt would be enough. What has to change is the daily reality of our Army.

The Solution is in our grasp: change our ways

Its time for Army Leaders to put their money where there mouths are, and to face the fact that whatís making our Soldiers miserable and what is killing them is the uninspired, unfulfilling Army mentality/lifestyle/time schedule which is COMPLETELY UNDER OUR CONTROL TO FIX IMMEDIATELY.

Human beings need at least 6 if not 8 hours of sleep each day, regardless of dumb blue-collar macho mentalities that would brow-beat you to say otherwise. When Soldiers get this rest, their bodies recover from training and get stronger, they are more alert and productive at their jobs and consequently they drive more safely. Thus, its time we build this adequate rest into daily Army life, stop time-wasting during the day and be more ALERT, sharp and focused.

Look at the precautions firemen and policemen (actually facing dangers daily) take to be ALERT and rested--many are on duty one day and off duty for two days. If getting enough rest to be ALERT is important to fight fires and arrest dangerous criminals its also important enough to do to win FIREFIGHTS. The current Army long-day outward appearance takes place instead of being time-efficient, ALERT and focusing rested, thinking concentrated energy upon tasks and getting them done by greatest common denominator (GCD) not just get by so the sergeant-tyrant doesnít yell at me. This means empowering Soldiers so they GIVE A DAMN and realize they are OWNERS of the Army, too not its prison inmates so we accomplish tasks faster and with higher qualities pf performance.

During hot summer weather, the duty day should begin at 0800, combat-oriented PT ëtil 0830 and shower up and report for duty by 0930. Breakfast is an option from 0900 to 0930. Work until lunch at 1200 noon. Return to duty at 1300. Duty day ends at 3:30 pm unless doing field training. During winter months, no PT until the end of day, and then in BDUs, no shower change time wasting, just drive home afterwards. This means a CONCENTRATED, FOCUSED 8 hour work day that leaders must intelligently plan and utilize second-by-second instead of the current drawn- out, we-have-the-morning, we-have-the-afternoon, we-have-the-evening, mentality that is boring, uninspired and listless, assuming you got a whole day to spread out things to get done. The Army needs to learn how to be alert and to hustle--multi-tasking on a daily basis---by stop being condescending, rigid assholes to its men, so they will like being in the Army and will put the full force of their creativity into it, building thinking, seeing loyalty so we can get more done using less time as we would in combat where multiple problems will be thrown at you; requiring multiple answers. Anal retentive, rigid, linear thinking and plodding task organizing will not prevail on the non-linear battlefield against creative enemies who also think on many levels at the same time. We could begin at HQDA level by improving the current inadequate Army values of LDRSHP to a full L-E-A-D-E-R-S-H-I-P with the addition of the letter "a" for ALERTNESS added as an Army value. Other needed values are INITIATIVE and ENTHUSIASM. Details:

www.oocities.org/equipmentshop/realarmyvalues.htm

Soldiers would be encouraged to go to sleep each night at 11 pm (2300 hours); a midnight on-post curfew could be enforced by Charge of Quarters (CQ) Soldiers walking into the barracks areas and insuring all our 18-24 year-old junior Soldiers are "lights out and quiet" to get their needed rest. This will insure each day they will get 6-8 hours of sleep while having 8 hours of family/personal life so we do not have the epidemic of suicides, divorces, car accidents and one-term enlistments that we now have. They will have time to reflect and study/think about the modern battlefield by visiting the library, reading books and doing online searches for information. Maybe the new found job satisfaction and physical uplifting of being in the Army will make trying to escape to someplace else by drugs or long car trips not needed at all, resulting in many lives saved from the outset.

A DA civilian and Army wife/mother writes:

"PRIVATE
I received your article, and I have to say that I am speechless and blown away. It is PERFECT, I would not change a thing.

You really did your research, this could definitely be the new norm for the military. You have spoken for every person that wears the uniform, and for every Soldier that has wanted and tried to stand up for themselves and their peers, but new they would suffer the consequences.

GET THIS PUBLISHED, SET THE NEW STANDARD.

The sad truth is that the military at one time was the best of the best and set the norm for society, now politics has taken over, everyone now believes that Soldiers and their dependents are "bad apples", rejects that could not make it as a civilian, what people fail to realize is that most of these people join the military for two reasons, personal and professional, they want to make a difference, learn skills, be better role models."

Part 2: Lack of Daily Combat Relevant Reality: what reformers miss

"We need to change not only the capabilities at our disposal, but also how we think about war. All the high-tech weapons in the world will not transform the US armed forces unless we also transform the way we think, the way we train, the way we exercise and the way we fight."

--SecDef Rumsfeldís Remarks to National Defense University, 31 Jan 02

When I was in USMC officer training in the thickly undergrowth vegetated areas of Quantico, Virginia, we would conduct different missions and create elaborate schemes of maneuver that on paper sounded promising. However, regardless of the plan, it always ended up with us trudging on foot through "wait-a-minute vines". What was hoped for---a speedy, stealthy movement ended up in a grim and tiring struggle that could be heard by an alert enemy hundreds of meters away.

The parable of the wait-a-minute vines expresses a truth that military reformers with grandiose plans of wire diagram reorganizing fail to understand: there will be no actual reform unless the daily, minute-by-minute physical reality is changed to make it so.

In most situations in life, there is no "zero sum game" of limits, you can with extra effort get more of everything except TIME. Time is truly "zero sum"; if you waste it doing bullshit (BS) you lose that time for things that are truly important. We have already seen how the daily time schedule reality of the Army creates tired, brain-dead people who are not likely to read or think about anything let alone writings by the military reformers. If you do not remove the "wait-a-minute vines" in the daily life of the Soldier, there will be no reform or as the buzzword of today calls it: "transformation".

CRS or is it NKSS?

Some have suggested that the technotactical vacuum we experience today takes place over the years as an ongoing amnesia as rank and privileges (RHIP) increase, leaders get out of touch with daily details. One Army officer writes:

"It's all CRS Syndrome (Can't Remember Shit). Our officers and NCOs do not take time out to learn from history.

Those that do are often relegated to the margins within their organizations because they aren't 'normal' (ie; mediocre) and are a threat to the "main stream" (like the "Geeks" in High School).

It comes from a lack of self-directed and command directed OPD/NCOPD reading. The Leader Professional Development is a three-legged stool (According to Army Doctrine):

Institutional Training (OES/NCOES) - TRADOC
Unit Training (Occurs at the unit from 0600 - 1700)
Self-Directed Study (Occurs 1600 - 0800)

Any weak or missing leg and the stool falls apart. But less than 10% of the Officer/NCO corps actually practice the THIRD leg with real purpose and the second leg is barely practiced (and when it is it is often unimaginative).

The cure is easy...3.5 hours of professional reading per week (how many of you practice that?) You don't just read either. You LEARN. Buy your own books (never borrow). As you read and a thought strikes you about how what you're reading applies to now, or the texts jogs you to ask a question, then you make a Note # in the margin, go to a clean cover page (normally at the front/back of the book) write down the same note # and the page number you refer to and then write down your thoughts. You'll find that the more you read and note, the more you retain. Also, as you read other books, you'll find recurring themes and lessons. You'll find the hand written indexes useful as you trace those themes back through other books you've read. You will read the word, meditate on it, understand it and then you'll soon find you are ready to apply it with a clarity that others will not fathom."

As you can see, another officer pleads for professional military reading, but does not insure it can or will take place by slicing with a time/opportunity-creating "machete" the "wait-a-minute vines" that will strangulate any attempts to make headway into the prevailing technotactical ignorant culture. I suggest its not CRS but actually "Never Knew Shit Syndrome" (NKSS). From the time we make Citizens into Soldiers we fail miserably to train them on the actual physical realities of war which is composed of two battles; the battle against the earth to stay fed and intact while gaining mobility and the battle against man to surprise and defeat other thinking, seeing humans.

Buildings are not weapons systems, you don't go to war with a building

In the ground combat forces of America there is in the Soldier's daily life a disconnect between the mundane peacetime tasks time is spent on and the tasks that need to be trained on for combat. In contrast, the AF and Navy abide in air/sea platforms that force daily realities to be close to combat realities; humans don't reside in the air/sea. If the AF or Navy does something stupid someone dies if the platform fails catastrophically. However, in the Army/Mc the medium which they operate from--the ground--is not an unnatural arena requiring an artificial platform and sharp, focused actions to stay alive. There is very little "battle against the earth" for ground forces and zero battle against man during peacetime to veto stupidity/inefficiency in their actions. Thus, Army ground units get bogged down with care/maintenance of their only immediate pressing quasi-life support system: their barracks, office areas and outdoor grassy lawns; because failure to do so could result in lost free time and promotions/pay to have funds to hop in your car and get away from the Army on weekends. The centerpiece of the Air Force is the airplane, the Navy, the ship. However, for the Army and the marines its the BUILDING. You don't attack "the gates of hell" with a building.

The curse of the building is the "barracks" mentality of the Garrison Army that has plagued units for centuries. The American Congress is more willing to throw billions of dollars into new troop barracks construction than they are to fund light tanks that will win wars by giving infantry needed fire support so they can survive the war to marry their hometown sweetheart and have a life after the Army. Barracks buildings mean inspections and more lawns to mow that robs troops of training that will save their lives in combat. We are killing our troops with mis-directed kindness.

The first thing we need to do is be honest and state on our training schedule that the entire specified day will be devoted to lawn care instead of LYING and saying the platoon was training on combat tasks when we know darn well that the classes didn't take place because everyone was scattered to the four winds of doctor's appointments, schools in addition to the lawn care. Next, we should put the ENTIRE unit on the lawn care E5s and up INCLUDED (this means officers) so the lawn care gets done quickly in one day and is not dragged out all over the week in little bites. Just like Heinlein's Starship Troopers; "Everybody works, everybody fights". Pull together, teamwork, lead-by-example. Next, we need to as soon as possible, get civilian crews to do ALL lawn maintenance--this will require a huge HeadQuarters Department of the Army (HQDA) effort to get dollars from Congress but once officers start pitching in and doing lawncare with their Soldiers they'll soon see the importance of getting someone else to do it. Lastly, every Army post should have a simulated Forward Operating Base (FOB) an austere maneuver area set up to be a place to live in a combat field environment; a "tent city" where they spend at least 3 days each month living in where all the focus on is COMBAT tasks not garrison barracks building non-sense.

The last I checked, ALL of the current crop of U.S. military reformers' visions fail to address daily time/culture realities: thus not enough people are even reading their books(!) let alone acting on their changes. The vacuum game: without a good culture, those perpetuating bad culture will most certainly fill time with bad culture; the Army/Mc garrison non-sense of outward appearances and barracks inspections gobbles up any time for constructive, reflective thinking and actions that would enhance the COMBAT capabilities of the units involved. Remember, time truly is a zero sum game; every minute you waste on barracks is a minute that cannot be spent on combat training tasks or equipment enhancements.

It should be no surprise that with today's mis-mananged time schedules, few if any Soldiers are reading about the main threats to their own battlefield survival like rocket propelled grenades (RPGs). However this was not always the case. Before we had the egotistically driven All Volunteer Force (AVF), we had the DRAFT. The draft was not about weak ego people seeking fulfillment in military service, it was about NATIONAL SURVIVAL IN WAR. It was about getting the job done and WINNING. It was about SURVIVING. So despite a lack of computers, in WW2 the common Soldier actually respected and studied the enemy to kill him before he killed them. We had the "know the enemy" and "how to fight" series of films that were aired and watched by everyone in our units. Yet today, despite the reality of portable DVD movie players there is no such know thy enemy film series. We need a DVD version of these things today, in fact we've needed it 20 years ago and we still don't have it. The current Army Center for Lessons Learned (CALL) is broken. CALL collects lessons learned from the field but is understaffed/funded such that all we have are boring written texts without pictures on non-inter-active web pages and drab paper products that get sent out to units where they collect dust in the day room. U.S. Army Combat Camera units should be tasked to work directly with CALL to produce broadcast quality "Know the enemy" documentaries to be widely distributed on DVDs throughout the Army to "get the lead out" so we can stop having our asses kicked in Iraq/Afghanistan due to technotactical ignorance.

The next immediate change is that EVERY UNIT in the Army needs to wear their FULL "battle rattle" at least once a week to constantly fine-tune and get used to wearing what they must wear in actual combat weather conditions. There must be battle training at least once a week when wearing this full TA-50 combat equipment. This day should be referred to as a "Combat 8" as in 8 hours in ready for combat configuration and combat preparations.

Part 3: Weak Minds should not run the week's training

"With wise counsel make war"

--Proverbs

Its an enduring principle/truth: to be successful you should put the Best Mind(s) On The Problem(s) [BMOTP]. In American industry, the adage is "surround yourself with smart people". We have seen earlier how the Army makes sleep deprived people who are made dull, not alert and unable to multi-task due to our inefficient, inflexible time schedules. However, the Army/Mc also doesn't recognize the latent talents of its individual Soldiers. To further keep smart people from running the show, the Army operates under the RHIP BS that training is created/conducted not by the best minds but by those with highest rank in the enlisted and officer classes. Small unit leaders with experience with troops handling concerns does NOT make them experts in technical fields that require formal training, abiding personal interest, lifelong research/experimentation and discovery on their own. The tendency is as SSG Brian Heitman observed is "pushy people repel knowledge"; they are too busy pushing away to take anything in. People that spend their time ordering bodies of people from one place to another have little functional respect for their own men, they are so focused on inflicting their will there is certainly no time or desire to RESPECT THE ENEMY and study the functional areas of the battlefield. Tyrants don't study what the enemy could do to prevail against us because they arrogantly think their pushy and ignorant plans will reign supreme regardless. They smugly think the enemy can't hurt us. In contrast, at the core of professional study is the implied understanding that we are all FALLIBLE; that things can and will go wrong as we fight the earth and other men, and that humility to accept these things is required to "what if" and pre-emptively compensate against these setbacks. The role model for this is LTC Hal Moore depicted in the opening scenes of the movie "We Were Soldiers" listing the pros and cons of his and enemy forces. That's a model of military humble professionalism. Sadly, today in the U.S. military we have a 19th century blind obedience culture in an ego-driven AVF that creates petty tyrants at the small unit level who don't know shit about the modern battlefield. Even after these micro-tyrants go on deployments to battle areas where they are indeed shot at, they lack the humble outlook of a warrior/philosopher to be able to compare/contrast---LEARN from what took place to be better from it. Their pushy arrogance to blindly follow and push down whatever the institution has handed down to them when it fits into their agendas/empires as "gospel" blinds them to any connecting-of-the-dots of battlefield failings to the prevailing garrison BS culture that created them. They think constant formations, spit shines and pressed uniforms translate into battlefield success.

Training should not be done by dumb-asses; petty tyrants who have rank but don't really know shit about the battlefield. In the current platoon-sergeants-as-tyrants paradigm, the best trained people in a company-sized unit are often officers and junior enlisteds who have been to advanced training, forced to think broadly about war and been to multiple real world deployments--but these folks are not allowed to teach classes because its "NCO business"!!! As time goes on is it a wonder officers end up being ever more unrealistic, aloof and out of touch; this narrow mindedness prevents BMOTP Greatest Common Denominator (GCD) results and creates instead an across-the-board Lowest Common Denominator (LCD) mediocrity.

Fortunately in this self-enlightened "information age", every unit has talented individuals, or Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) on key military areas [REGARDLESS OF WHAT THEIR RANK IS OR IS NOT] The SMEs of every unit should decide/run training events and have GOALS; enduring agendas to improve unit capabilities over time, once a week they have entire company at their disposal. Ownership of the unit by the Soldiers who make up the unit is then facilitated. The following is an example drawn from my experience.

SAMPLE WEEKLY TEMPLATE

Monday Vehicle SME Team
Tuesday Weapons SME Team*
Wednesday Airborne SME Team
Thursday MOS Equipment SME Team
Friday Tactics SME

Daily Combat PT SME Team:

M Jog
T Walk (ruck)
W Sprint
T Run/Weights
F Close Combatives

CAPABILITIES-TO-GAIN AGENDA

Vehicle SME TEAM

Writes unit SOPs

1. Fix vehicles: repair parts ULLESG
2. Mark vehicles
3. BII stored on vehicles; rear seat hasps/locks, rear padlock on pioneer tools
4. Proper camouflage: paint tan
5. Safety/environment: chocks/drip pans
6. MG M197 mounts www.oocities.org/equipmentshop/hmmwv.htm
7. Armoring; practice sandbagging
8. Power inverters to recharge batteries

www.oocities.org/equipmentshop/batterychargesolution.htm

9. Convoy Immediate Action (IA) Drills
10. Practice recovering damaged vehicles
11. Urban tactical driving
12. Rural tactical driving

Weapons SME Team

Writes unit SOPs

1. NVG night firing/BZO
2. Day BZO
3. Weak shooters one-on-one instruction
4.Shooting weapons from and after dismounting from vehicles (in conjunction with vehicle team)

Airborne SME Team

Writes unit SOPs

1. Airland vehicles capability FTX
2. Load plans
3. Air movement certification/practice
4. Airdrop FTX

MOS Equipment SME Team

Writes unit SOPs

SAMPLE FOR A COMBAT CAMERA UNIT:

1. Make compelling how to fight documentary on DVDs
2. Determine optimal TA-50/Camera equipment interface
3. Gain satellite send back gear and video/stillll document how to use it

Tactics SME

Writes unit SOPs

1. TA-50 Soldier's load mobility solutions
2. Know thy enemy updates
3. Mounted battledrills (with vehicle team)
4. PME: monthly book reading program
5. Sand table war games
6. TEWTs
7. IA drills
8. Combat-8s and Combat-72 hour FTXs

If unit is on lawn care building maintenance duty, then the entire unit and the training day should be spent on this time distracter so it gets done as fast as possible and then attention focused back on combat training and missions.

What is the task, condition, standard and METL number for COMMON SENSE?

The unit SMEs will have they do their jobs at the "cutting edge", be training techniques that are valid and relevant to the actual battlefield threats facing them. However, we must wake up to the fact that it takes at least 2 years and $100,000 to write a new Army Field Manual with tasks, conditions, standards and "approved" reference numbers. If we become so narrow minded that we cannot train Soldiers on the necessary tactics, techniques and procedures to stay alive because we have to wait for a TRADOC approved FM and task number we will continue to be out-thought and out-fought by the enemy. By the way, what is task condition standard for lawn mowing?

If we can mow lawns without ARTEPs and METLS then we can train on adaptive TTP without waiting on the bureaucracy to bless off on it. The way it should work is that the unit SOP is the resting place for the new TTP, the SMEs within the unit as much as possible cross-reference the SOPs to be professionally sound and safe but not be so anal that something new and improved cannot be added. We must be able to IMPROVE on what we do not just be forced to abide by a mediocre low standard. This should be "common sense". The unit commander will have to respond to everything his unit does or fails to do anyway, to include the unit SOP. Unit SOPs should be sent to respective TRADOC offices to ENLIGHTEN THEM not the other way around.

Part 4: Battlefield Reality Check Needed: HQDA must put money into relevant training events shared by all Soldiers

One-week Battle Reality Laboratory solves NKSS

The Army needs tough, realistic, smart, tactically sound COMBAT training for its young leaders so they can all be able to do a "Hal Moore" if called upon and win a basic dismounted small unit infantry fight. TO BUILD TEAMS of Soldiers, not peer-evaluation back-stabbers like a "Survivor" reality TV show, but TEAMWORK. Let's do something special during basic training that can only be done when all the new Soldiers are together. Let's have them receive a physical "reality check" of what the modern battlefield is like and how the Combined Arms, not just Infantry branch, work together to prevail on that battlefield, wherever it may appear. We need warrior instruction, not another "harassment package" done by Infantry School cadre beating new Soldiers over their heads that "they ain't Infantry". They already know that. They need to know the "U.S. Army" on their uniform means they are branch immaterial warriors who kick the enemy's butt wherever they meet. Lets call the program "Objective Warfighting Laboratory" or "OWL" as in to make one wise like an owl.

The Army should immediately give every deploying unit at least 1 week of OWL training, and then every other unit as soon as possible to give them the reality check they need.

Make the Training Count

OWL should be the place where every U.S. Army Soldier gets a real, no nonsense, "reality check" of what modern combat is like PHYSICALLY. OWL should give him/her a bedrock, independent understanding of the battlefield that will follow them for the rest of their careers, not a Hollywood or computer simulation fantasy. This means students need to shoot every small arms weapon in the Army arsenal, blow things up, drive wheeled and tracked vehicles to find out where they can go and not go (to prevent mistakes like the LAV-III armored car from being bought in the future). They need to understand how to load aircraft and ships. They need to do TASKS that stand on their own merit and have their own intrinsic validity and worth, so when graduates go to their units, they can say: "I've done that". Today's Army Soldier is often completely out of touch with basic battlefield reality. Ask many of them how much a 5-ton truck weighs, and most will answer "5 tons," when the reality is the truck weighs 22,000 pounds and 5-tons is its CARGO CAPACITY. Many Army Soldiers are clueless about the modern battlefield, because they were never taught the true, basic physical reality of everything at any time in their careers. The Army itself does not encourage thinking to get an accurate understanding of the battlefield. When does the Army Soldier ever study the battlefield and become a professional? Army Soldiers need an intense laboratory where no one is breathing down their necks to get the instruction, mentoring and actual hands-on training needed, so they can fully get a grip on what modern land combat is all about. They need to get their "heads into the game" early, and start the lifetime of study and preparation that a TRUE WARRIOR does to be a true, not make-believe, professional.

Why is a PHYSICAL warfighting "reality check" vital?

Let's not kid ourselves.

We live in an American society today that exalts the mental via computers over the physical; hence this nagging paranoia that we are not "tough enough" that creates the endless harassment packages. Instead of trying to pour physicality down everyone's throats, why don't we figure out WHY American Soldiers are not physically oriented and create a way they get physically connected to reality. Then Soldiers will derive understanding and motivation from their own internal self-direction, not under useless harassment sessions? It's fairly obvious that Soldiers in the past understood mechanical advantage better in the 50s/60s than they do today. This is why computers are added to inferior mobility platforms (LAV-III Stryker rubber-tired armored cars). It's a sickness of today that people ignore physical reality. A Vietnam-blooded combat officer writes:

"We grew up in an age of nuts and bolts (at least, speaking for myself). Hobbies for us were building model airplanes, ships and tanks out of plastic that had to be glued, painted and arranged in dioramas.

Later we (I) graduated to U-control model planes and trying to learn what makes little engines go. In high school, we learned all we could about cars, pretending to understand stuff about high and low ratio rear ends, compression and blowers. We were into fixing stuff with not much help from anybody else; hell, all the adults were busy earning a living, but they would help you if you asked. Besides, we could go and do about anything and not get into too much trouble.

By the time I went through Basic, I knew a lot about engines, but mostly how to make mechanical stuff 'work'. We read stuff about cars and motorcycles and just plain wanted to be cool and drive. In those days you could buy a very used car that still ran for under $100. In fact, I bought a '49 Chevy in 1969 in Ft Worth for $35. I had won $40 in a pistol match and offered it to the owner, but she talked me down.

Anyway, today's kids (my son is a great example) are computer genies. Hell, he scares me because he thinks so fast. Trouble is, he doesn't know mechanicals, at least not much. I derided him about it for a while, so he bought an '86 Chrysler with a broken engine, and another one with running engine, and surprised me by completing the swap. I was duly impressed that it actually ran. So I can't hammer him too much, but he still is better with electrons.

Consider Star Trek.

None of those people work with real tools. It's a fact. They have metal stuff, but you never see it being formed. They have glass and steel, rubber and plastic, but all you see is electronic "readers" that analyze. Even the phasers don't seem to have any working parts. I love Alfred Hitchcock's comment: 'Why do we need to worry about death rays when bullets are so efficient?' Who does the 'real' work in space? Where are the welders and riveters? Does a machine make the liquid metal into a space ship without human help? What is the interface between electrons and physics?

AND where are all the 'dumb' people? You know, brick layers, pipefitters, tree trimmers, truck drivers, the ones liberals ignore until their car breaks, or their septic tank backs up? The future is full of 'brilliant' officers and no workers or drones.

Well, how do our modern Gen Xers work? From the seat of their pants. 'Butt time' is the common expression for work these days.

Don't get me wrong, I am not throwing a blanket over the whole crowd of this Generation 'X', but when I go to hot rod or motor cycle rallies, I don't see a lot of the younger bunch there. There are some, but not as many kids grow up now getting their jollies building engines and busting their knuckles.

They are more likely to have matured blowing speakers, getting RSI from playing Gameboys, and putting 200 watt amps in their cars than chopping, channeling, boring and porting.

Are they dumb? Hell, no. Are they lazy? No, but they sure are misguided in the amount of work it takes to accomplish something physically like digging a foxhole, filling in a latrine, or even making a box out of wood. Most of them have never taken shop; it's not a 'needed course'.

What these guys need is some motivation to accomplish in mechanical areas, and some guidance on how. They also need educators to stop looking down on people who know how to work with their hands. In fact, they need to praise these folks, for without them we'd be finished.

When I was working on my masters in history, someone in the class complained about the work load. I made a smart remark back about how much easier this was than when I had been an undergrad in Wofford (where?). I was now at Rollins, and it's supposed to have a big reputation. I told them I was working as a mechanic on Saturdays, coaching swimming in the morning and teaching summer school between classes. They acted like I was a freak. That was in 1971. It might as well have been in 1917. I look at the curriculum of today and it's about tenth grade work from 1965".

War is a life or death physical activity. To be good at it, we have to "turn back the clock" culturally and mentally, regardless of what civilian society is doing, and create a physical and smart warrior ethos in the U.S. Army that will endure because it's internalized by every U.S. Army Soldier, not just officers. To do this, we have to change people positively, forever, and to do this for real, we need to CONVINCE them to internally change from the inside. Convincing means showing, teaching and proving what you say is true, not yelling at them to "shut up and do what you are told, because I am over you and you must obey". The former is a WWII desperation draftee culture mentality that results in not being able to trust men with live ammo because you have made them resentful robots, easily outsmarted by thinking humans who blow up marine barracks in Lebanon, and cripple a USS Cole in Yemen, not a professional warrior ethos. Convincing means you must show Soldiers WHY they need to do certain things, which requires more effort and resources than simply running Soldiers around yelling at them during PT and do walks in the woods with rucks, which doesn't take much. Anyone can put on a ruck and self-harass themselves any time they want, or go work out in a gym. We can and should do this on our own. Big deal. This doesn't create smart warriors, who are going to know what to do against deadly and cunning enemies, like in the mountains of Afghanistan. It's feel-good sports PT nonsense. Knowing WHAT TO DO means reading books like "The Bear Trap" and "Street Without Joy" to get your head in the game. It means doing physical Army tasks that have RELEVENCE to the modern battlefield, like ruck marching with actual live ammunition loads, actual weapons (AT4s, LAWs, Grenades) up and down mountains and hills, then dropping rucksacks and doing a live-fire exercise. Discovering that a rucksack in training should not be filled with troop comfort gear when it's going to carry ammo in combat. Then having a REAL critique, not the current politically correct AAR (where problems and solutions are not ironed-out and then acted upon). After the AAR is done, use video footage from both your friendly force and OPFOR's view point, then go back to the "drawing board" after realizing we were moving way too slow, then determining ways to lighten rucks, or moving them, or cacheing them so we do better.

A THINKING Warrior Ethos.

A Warrior Ethos that is "on the ball", ALERT, "rolls up its sleeves" (not RHIP) and actually tries to win and finds ways to win using EVERYBODY'S INPUTS, not make spin for higher headquarters and politicians. At company-level, there should be a "No Excuses Zone," where unvarnished physical and mental realities are faced and overcome by everyone. Just like it's done all across America in every full-contact high school football team trying to WIN and not get paralyzed from the neck down. These teams employ more "plays" and "battle drills" and individual participant inter-action than the modern U.S. Army does, which is a disgrace that must stop.

Soldiers need to see WHY they need to sandbag vehicles, WHY they must use overhead cover. They need to see actual combat footage of gunshot and burn wounds. They need to see the problems and their solutions.

Why?

Because they have not been shot at in actual war, and it's too late to learn once they are. We need to show them everything we can about the modern battlefield safely. And we can't do this if we are wasting time with nonsensical harassment package games re-creating OCS/ROTC/West Point to make them submit to their inferior social place in the Army's "pecking order" of rank, badges and ego. And after we give them a "reality check," we need to let them think and have an opinion about what they have seen and done, not this self-defeating groupthink where we try to make everyone think like the commander thinks. Achieving the Commander's intent is NOT demanding that everyone be a clone of his personality and requires a multitude of thinking types so plans/actions are "what iffed" so problems can be anticipated and countered. Our goal for the young warriors should be the end result, not the school approved means. The question should be: was the mission accomplished? AARs are used to point out better ways to accomplish the mission, then let the students practice them. The OWL objective is THINKING LEADERS who have the tools to observe, analyze, decide and act in stressful situations.

What to change?

I realize that some at Infantry School may want a (BOLC) "Bowl Lick" harassment package to conduct an as easy as possible 7-week diploma mill to run 3,000 or so 2LTs through each year to gain money, power and prestige for Fort Benning. Fine, I like Ft. Benning, too. But Ft. Benning should be a first-class place of INNOVATION and excellence as it was when George C. Marshall was running the place and getting the U.S. Army ready for WWII. Ft. Benning should not be a harassment package to perpetuate Army-style political correctness. Frankly, from what I see of the BOLC curriculum, we should throw it all out and start over with creative and combat-oriented instruction. We understand that drawing up 7 weeks of challenging reality with lots of pyro, weapons firing and combat tasks will cost more $ but that's life at the pointed end of the bayonet. This should be about making the U.S. ARMY more combat capable, not soaking up more money for Ft. Benning as it runs a cheapo-harassment package. If all we are going to do is waste $$ recreating ROTC Phase II, rather than make it a combat reality check, we should cancel the whole BOLC thing.

Suggested POI for OWL

I suggest the following ideas for course content. They are neither all-encompassing nor carved in stone. It's a starting place for professionals of all ranks/branches to consider what junior leaders need to know about protecting their troops in serious social encounters of the guerilla kind. We suggest probably using platoon-sized classes to do some instruction, with bleacher/ auditorium time for general information on a subject. The entire OWL POI should be online for Soldiers to come ready to do it for real; an example is this National Guard EIB web site:

www.oocities.org/eib2010

Week 1: Grasp of The Modern Battlefield

Watch excerpts from Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down, and We Were Soldiers, focusing on the combat actions and the planning before the actions, range firing of all U.S./Soviet infantry weapons at targets with Soldiers checking their targets to see effects of fire and countermeasures. Indirect fire, C4 demolitions, field fortifications, engineering wire, basic dismounted infantry formations, RTO procedures, moving in patrol formations, U.S. weapons familiarization (assembly/disassembly, cleaning, immediate action drills). Load helicopters. Each officer selects a tactical military professional book to read and do a book report and oral presentation at the end of the course:

HYPERLINK http://www.oocities.org/equipmentshop/probooks.htm
www.oocities.org/equipmentshop/probooks.htm

Encourage OWL Soldiers to talk to each other to share ideas and get a better feel for life at the dirt level. Use a buddy system to help the more mechanically and/or firearms challenged get a better understanding of reality.

Proposed Objective Warfighting Laboratory (OWL)

Week 1

Walk-in access, indoor Shooting RANGE on EVERY Army Post

To sustain the OWL battlefield reality check, Soldiers must shoot at the least EVERY MONTH if not every week. The current weapons ranges on Army posts are too complicated to get since you have to fight with every other unit on post to secure them, resulting in the reality that most units shoot only once a year, why are we then surprised that debacles like the Jessica Lynch convoy in Iraq takes place? We also know that vehicle mounted weapons firing don't happen because we know entire Army units are missing their crew-served weapons and the mounts to attavch them to their FMTV and HMMWV trucks. Every unit should have vehicle-mounted weapons and have an annual live-fire qualification of those mounted weapons by the soldiers who will use them in combat.

To solve these problems I propose that we build on every Army post a large indoor range with fixed lanes out to at least 100 meters with targets on an overhead trolley so no one goes forward until the range is closed at the day's end. Ask Congress for construction funds to build these ranges so we can save friendly lives and kill the enemy in combat. This way only a 1-2 person staff would be needed to keep the range accessible. Units can bring ANY of their weapons (except M203 and MK19 40mm grenade launchers with high indirect trajectories) and ammunition to shoot. This is unscheduled, first come, first serve. The Walk-in Range would enable units qualify on pistols and rifles using paper targets using the "B" modified technique. Soldiers with their own weapons would also be able to come in and fire. Its all good.

Its apparent that when units go to the range to qualify that despite the best efforts of shooting SMEs that there are a handful of Soldiers who simply cannot qualify without a major retrain driven by WHAT WAS DISCOVERED DURING THE LIVE-FIRE. The walk-in range would allow unqualified Soldiers to go the very next day for one-on-one coaching to fix their shooting technique problems and qualify.

Camp MacKall FOB set-up for Ft Bragg units to do combat 8s and 72s get away from barracks BS

A veteran Army NCO writes:

"With the current state of the Army (deployments/drawdown Army) there are far fewer troops to do the missions than from what I can remember from the 1980s period. Of course we were not deployed constantly back then but had frequent training missions. Our equipment and Soldiers were flexed and used in rigorous field training exercises at least one to two weeks per month. We came back from these missions confident in our equipment and ourselves. After the training exercises we would enthusiastically clean and PMCS our equipment, then take time off to relax between training events. We were connected to our equipment and our leaders. In 2003 we do not get to train effectively. Soldiers spend time in garrison pulling details and half-way PMCSing their equipment(to properly do this you must use your equipment as in field training exercises). Discontent with Army life, due to lack of interest, is because of the unrealistic simulated training environment.

Sergeants time training is a waste of time. It has become one serious "dog and pony" show. We do outlines, slides, presentations and classroom instruction. Not very realistic. I say, get the Soldiers out of garrison and into the field. Give them time off when they return, then repeat the process. We are mostly just tired of all the Bull Shit. Including the awful daily garrison schedule."

In the 172nd Arctic Brigade every month featured a 3-day war where everyone did a dry run rehearsal of a war. Every Army post should have a training area to tap into for a 3-day war FTX--a "Combat-72" to practice what we preach and put everything we have into operation. This training area should be a mock Forward Operating Base (FOB) complete with airfield and fighting positions so Soldiers can act like they've just deployed to a hostile area. For at least 3 days the men will then fight force-on-force against a local OPFOR, staying away from the "flag pole" where senior NCOs/officers/staffs tend to bore the hell out of them with garrison and micro-managing BS details centered around buildings and outward appearances. At Fort Bragg, I suggest turning nearby Camp MacKall into the mini-JRTC maneuver training center for the XVIII Airborne Corps units. Support units would do "Combat-144s" to back up two combat arms unit combat-72 rotations to get enough "action" for them to gain the edge they need.

Summary/Conclusion

What we need is the following:

1. An 0800 to 1600 standard work day to restore 6-10 hours sleep for every Soldier
2. Combat physical training (PT) at day's end in BDUs not sports attire
3. PT test should be 6 mile ruck march in BDUs for time not current sports test
4. Everyone pitches in and finishes lawn care/barracks details in one day
5. Training schedules/events created by BEST MINDS in unit per subject matter
6. Battlefield "reality check" of weapons effects, vehicle capabilities given to every Soldier in Army
7. Walk-in, use-without-complications, indoor ranges and plentiful ammo supply on every Army post for Soldiers to shoot constantly to gain higher skill levels
8. "How to Fight" DVDs from Center for Army Lessons Learned given and shown regularly to every Soldier in Army
9. A Simulated FOB training area on every Army post to conduct mini-CTC FTXs
10. Army values upgraded to L-E-A-D-E-R-S-H-I-P to instil ENTHUSIASM, ALERTNESS, HUMILITY and INITIATIVE/INNOVATION as cultural values.

I anticipate a bunch of ill-intentioned feedback to these articles from those who do not want to change things for the better and/or who are guilty parties to the current LCD brain-dead status quo. America's needs an effective Army capable of geostrategic decisive maneuver, that can out-think and outfight the enemy...we can't do this at the basic daily Soldier level if our Army is run by power hungry, snobby, inflexible tyrannical dumb-asses. Col. Gregory Belenky, lead sleep researcher at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Washington, D.C. says warfighters who deprive themselves of sleep can cause missions to fail. "Historically, battles are won and lost at the small unit level, squads and platoons, and because of the interaction between individuals within squads and between squads...You can have a brilliant plan, but unless you have intelligent execution at the lowest level, it won't work," The Army must change its culture to a virtuous egalitarian thinking organization where such petty careerist tyrants (think Sobel in Band of Brothers; Massengale in Once an Eagle) are not allowed to gain control of daily events. If we cannot control daily reality to make it good, how can we control the weeks, months, years and the future?

APPENDIX

Background data on Sleep Deprivation

1. www.mcu.usmc.mil/TbsNew/Pages/Officer%20Courses/Infantry%20Officer%20Course/Human%20Factors/Pages/page4.htm
Sleep and Sleep Deprivationby C. DiGiovanni, M.D.
(N.B.: The author is indebted to Col Gregory Belenky, MC, USA, of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, for much of the following material and for the figures that accompany this article.)Sleep deprivation produces fatigue of the mind and contributes to a sense of fear in the person who faces uncertainty or danger. To paraphrase Clausewitz, sleep deprivation increases friction in mental operations.

Decision-making may be aided by a growing variety of electronic information-processing technology, but it is ultimately a human brain that makes a decision. The more sleep-deprived that brain is, the more likely any decision it makes will be bad, perhaps disastrously bad. Because we all rely on our brains, each of us needs to know how much sleep we need, ways to increase sleep during periods of continuous operations, and what happens when we don't get enough sleep.The process of sleeping progresses in stages, from stage one (very light sleep) to stage four (the deepest sleep stage). A typical sleep cycle consists of several minutes spent in passing through stages one and two, a lengthier period at stages three and four, and then a few minutes of dream (or rapid eye movement [REM]) sleep. Each cycle lasts 60-90 minutes and repeats itself throughout the course of time spent sleeping. Over a typical eight-hour period of sleep, the amount of time spent in stages three and four progressively diminishes, and the amount of dream sleep progressively increases.All sleep, regardless of stage, is good and contributes to our daily sleep requirement. (The daily sleep requirement is the amount of sleep we need in each 24-hour period. It can be met through one lengthy period of sleep at night or by shorter periods of sleep, including napping, when the opportunity presents itself.) Stages three and four of the sleep cycle are the times of least stimulation to the brain and, thus, are the stages of deepest sleep. The brain emits a different electrical signal at each stage of the cycle, and it is this signal that defines the characteristics of each stage. Figure 1 shows the electrical signals at each sleep stage, as recorded by an electroencephalogram (EEG). You will note the markedly different pattern of stages three and four of sleep.Another factor that influences sleep is Circadian rhythm, which is the biological clock that we all have that regulates the release of hormones in our bodies throughout each 24-25 hour period. One of the results of this biological clock is that our level of alertness varies throughout the 24-hour day. Most of us, who prefer to sleep at night and work during the day, are at our lowest levels of alertness and intellectual ability between the hours of 0200 and 0600. Our level of alertness then begins to increase until noon, when it dips a bit, then resumes rising until around 2000, when it begins its final decline of the day. Planning raids to begin between 0200 and 0600 gives the attackers an advantage because the enemy is least alert. The amount of sleep we need in each 24-hour period may differ from person to person, but not by much. The average time is between seven and eight hours, and most of us will fall somewhere in the six to ten hour range. Just as you know the number of miles you can travel in your car on a gallon of gas, you should also know how much sleep you need in each 24-hour period. Without that knowledge, you will not know in advance what your limits are. You can determine the amount of sleep you need by going to bed at night under normal circumstances (not already sleep deprived, and not inebriated), and allowing yourself to wake up naturally (without an alarm clock) the following morning. If you do that for a few nights and take the average of the amount of time you slept, you will have a good idea of your daily sleep requirement. Knowing that requirement will enable you to know when you are beginning to acquire a sleep debt. You cannot condition yourself to get by with significantly less sleep, and the more sleep debt you acquire, the worse will be your performance. Sleep debt, however, does not produce deterioration in all activities. For example, in static and repetitive tasks, accuracy is generally maintained, but the time it takes to perform those tasks progressively lengthens. Also, many forms of physical activity are not affected, at least initially, by sleep debt. What is affected by sleep debt is the ability of the brain to perform its higher functions, such as learning new information, recalling previously learned information, reacting to information, and analyzing information and making decisions. This deterioration in higher brain functioning has been documented numerous times through neuropsychological testing and from specialized studies of brain metabolism in sleep-deprived persons; their brains show altered metabolism in those very parts of the brain that are responsible for these higher brain functions.Figure 2 shows the results of 72 hours of sleep deprivation on the ability of a group of volunteers to perform a task that requires sustained attention. For each 24 hours of sleep deprivation, their performance deteriorated by 25%. Figure 3 illustrates a point made earlier, namely, that in repetitive tasks, it is efficiency, not accuracy, that is hurt by sleep deprivation. In this study, the number of rounds loaded and fired by an artillery battery markedly fell as sleep debt increased.As a leader of marines who face danger, you have an obligation to make the best decisions you can. You cannot make that quality of decision if your brain is fatigued. Furthermore, you also have an obligation to set a good example for those you lead. If you ignore your own sleep requirements, those whom you lead may ignore theirs. Unfortunately, studies, (figure 4) have shown that those who have the greatest leadership and decision-making responsibilities during military exercises are the ones who get the least amount of sleep.Obviously, in the real world of warfighting and continuous operations, loss of sleep is a fact of life. What tactics can one employ to compensate for this reduced opportunity for sleep? One is to begin a period of continuous operations already well rested. You cannot store sleep, but if you begin an operation well rested, even though your performance will deteriorate with increasing sleep debt, your performance at each point along that time-line will be better than if you were sleep-deprived at the outset. A second ploy is to consume caffeine, in the form of beverage, tablet, or caffeineated chewing gum. If you normally drink several cups of coffee daily, another cup will not do you much good, but if you are not much of a coffee drinker, a cup's worth of caffeine will give you a boost in alertness and performance.Probably the best tactic to use, however, is to nap. Even one 30-minute nap in each 24-hour period of otherwise sleep deprivation can result in significant improvement in your ability to use your brain (see figures 5 and 6). Although not ideal, napping can get you through a period of continuous operations, where opportunities for sleep are greatly reduced and fragmented. But if you plan to survive on naps, pay attention to the quality of your naps. Take them under conditions that will allow your brain not to be stimulated by ambient noise, light, or other disturbances. And plan your nap to be of sufficient length to do you some good; the "15 minute power nap" will work, but 30 minutes would be better. Remember, the closer you can get to achieving your normal sleep requirement, whether through naps or a single long sleep period, the better you will perform.Sleeping medications, acquired by prescription or over the counter, may help promote sleep and improve sleep efficiency. If you take them, however, make sure that you will be able to sleep for an adequate length of time to allow the effects of the drug to wear off. If not, you may be worse off because you will be both sleep-deprived and under the influence of a sleep medication. Check with medical personnel before you take such medication. If in doubt, don't take it.If you deploy to an area that has a significant time-zone shift from your home base, remember that major Circadian rhythm shifts require 3-5 days to occur. You can help this adjustment process by immediately scheduling your new work, sleep, and off-duty activities by the new local time. Also, if shift work is required, make its hours and personnel rosters consistent from day to day; do not assign someone to work from 0600 to 1400 hours one day, and from 1400 to 2200 the next day.Finally, when you work with people who are sleep deprived, remember that they will have deficits in their understanding of what you tell them and in their ability to think, learn, recall, and react. Therefore, speak in simple sentences, limit to a minimum anything unusually complex, don't expect them to remember everything you tell them, repeat often the essential items, have them repeat back to you these essential items to make sure they have registered, and check their performance after the briefing to ensure they are doing what you told them.

2. www.armymedicine.army.mil/news/releases/sleepresearch.htm

Even Warriors Need Their Sleep

News & Media - News Releases
by Karen Fleming-Michael
Fort Detrick, Md., Standard Staff Writer

Though military operations take place at all hours and for long hours, there's no getting around it: warfighters need their sleep. "There's nothing heroic about staying up," said Col. Gregory Belenky, lead sleep researcher at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Washington, D.C. In fact, he said warfighters who deprive themselves of sleep can cause missions to fail "Historically, battles are won and lost at the small unit level, squads and platoons, and because of the interaction between individuals within squads and between squads," said Belenky, a psychiatrist who has studied sleep for the Army since 1984. "If you're sleep deprived, you're not going to make good decisions." The military studies sleep in two types of operations, sustained and continuous. During sustained operations, warfighters get less than four hours sleep each night, which is considered severe sleep restriction or deprivation. Sustained operations can go on for days. During continuous operations, warfighters get four or more but less than seven hours sleep each night, which is considered mild to moderate sleep restriction. Continuous operations can go on for weeks or months; typically they are punctuated by periods of sustained operations. It appears that warfighters recover faster from sustained operations than continuous ones, Belenky said. "Recovery from continuous operations is not rapid," he said. "What complicates deprivation is that sustained operations can be interposed on continuous operations, so already-sleep-deprived Soldiers are getting even more off track with their sleep."Going off sleep's beaten path can have serious consequences for warfighters trying to make decisions, process information and judge situations because the regions of the brain best able to perform these actions are most affected by lack of sleep. Degraded activity in the brain's front (prefrontal cortex), sides (parietal cortex) and thalamus can cause problems.Warfighters, he said, encounter a lot of information and need to be able to process it at their level to make decisions. "You can have a brilliant plan, but unless you have intelligent execution at the lowest level, it won't work," Belenky said. Sleep-deprived warfighters, he said, because their higher order thinking is impaired, can cause accidents and "not-so-clever decisions."

To quell some of the effects of sleep deprivation during operations, a team of 15 researchers, including physicians, physiologists and experimental psychologists, study sleep at WRAIR for the Department of Defense. Findings are included in peer-reviewed literature as well as Army field manuals, like U.S. Army Field Manual 6-22.5 Combat Stress and FM 22-51 Leader's Manual for Combat Stress Control. Because restricted sleep is a reality for warfighters, researchers base their lab studies on that condition. For example, in experiments done at WRAIR's sleep lab, it was evident that people who lived on three, five and seven hours of sleep for more than a week took longer than three days to recover. "We don't know how long it takes them to recover," Belenky said. "The brain adapts. Like adaptations to exercise, starvation and altitude, [sleep adaptations] take a while to put in place. They also take a while to undo." To help commanders in the field determine the toll that less sleep takes on troops, WRAIR researchers developed a sleep watch that measures arm movement to determine if someone is awake or asleep and records how much sleep he or she got. The sleep watch also has a performance prediction model that tells how well the individual is performing and will perform in the future. When researchers developed the watch, they took a logistician's approach of treating sleep as a consumable that can be restocked. "You wouldn't ask a battalion commander to manage fuel ... unless the commander knew how much he had on hand, what his fuel use would be in an operation and what would be available for resupply," Belenky said. "The sleep watch gives the commander what he needs to look at for how much sleep his troops have been getting and what the performance consequences are with that amount of sleep." The commander then can look at factors, like fuel, ammunition, food and sleep, to make an educated decision about whether the unit is ready for a mission. Because people's need for sleep varies as much as their personalities, Army researchers are exploring ways to alter the watch's current one-size-fits-all presentation.

Army researchers have also looked at stimulants to see if they are effective in keeping Soldiers awake and able to make sound decisions. "Stimulants have their place and are very effective ... but there's no standard right now for who should take a stimulant," Belenky said. He added that he would like to see stimulant use and dose targeted toward individuals, not populations, so a person gets just what they need to perform, no more and no less. When looking at different stimulants, studies have shown the long-time friend of the Soldier, caffeine, is an effective aid. For caffeine to be most effective though, regular users need to minimize its use so when they need it, caffeine will give them a boost, Belenky said. In upcoming studies, WRAIR researchers will test caffeine, d-amphetamine and modafinil to see which of those three stimulants produces the best results. The bottom line with stimulants, Belenky said, is they are "short-term fixes at best. The real answer is to get adequate amounts of sleep and efficiently managed sleep."Though all researchers agree natural sleep is best, military operational requirements at times makes getting sufficient, productive sleep impossible. For this reason, Army researchers also study sleep-inducing compounds to help circumvent the body's circadian rhythm, the internal clock that makes humans most sleepy between 3 and 5 a.m. and in the middle of the afternoon. Though highly addictive, drugs called hypnotics do increase sleep length. However, if the user is awakened an hour or two after some drugs' peak effects, his or her judgment is impaired. If the user is a Soldier, that means readiness is impaired.

The Army's aviation community at the U.S. Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory began testing zaleplon, a new sleep-inducing compound Feb. 23 to see if its hangover effect is less than previously tested hypnotics. "Aviators, like the instructor pilots we have at Fort Rucker, can fly all days then 'poof' they're asked to switch to night flights, and they have real trouble staying awake and sleeping when they need to," said researcher Dr. Pat Le Duc of USAARL. "Finding a safe hypnotic is one way we can mitigate some of the effects of the circadian mechanism."She along with the team at the lab hopes the dozen aviators in the eight-day, seven-night study will answer whether a 10 milligram dose taken before an early bedtime will allow subjects to fall asleep faster and get better sleep. The team also hopes to learn if an increase in sleep length will increase alertness, lessen fatigue and offset the common declines in performance that typically occur when work begins early in the morning, which runs counter to the circadian clock. The aviators will complete cognitive tests, fly the lab's simulator, undergo sleepiness and electrophysiological evaluations and complete questionnaires on their mood. Showing aviators the results of their tests is often an eye-opener, Le Duc said. "When they're sleep deprived, there's a real decrease in their performance that they don't notice. Most of them think they're not affected by losing sleep, but when they see the results on paper, they realize how poorly they performed," she said.While waiting for answers on the best stimulant or hypnotic for warfighters, Belenky's advice on catching Zs is clear cut. "Take the opportunity to sleep. Naps are wonderful," he said. He advises commanders to organize their areas so sleep can occur. "I've tried to sleep in a big tent where every 20 minutes someone shook me awake, asking me if I was 'Smith.' It got so bad, we ended up sleeping with big signs that had our names on them so we'd be left alone," he said.

3. http://abcnews.go.com/sections/2020/2020/2020_010330_sleep.html

Risks of Short Sleeping
Recent Studies Expose Dangers in Chronic Sleep Deprivation

March 30

Tens of millions of Americans suffer from a condition that until recently, most health professionals did not take seriously. It can accelerate the aging process, lead to obesity and increase the risk of some diseases. It's garden-variety sleep deprivation and it might be more of a problem than you think.

For the first time, scientists are looking seriously at what happens to our bodies when we live on five, six or seven hours of sleep a night and what they're finding is shocking.

Upsets Blood Sugar

Dr. Eve Van Cauter is a sleep science trailblazer whose research team at the University of Chicago recently published the first study to specifically examine the physical health impact of ordinary sleep deprivation. She calls the impact of sleep debt on the body, "astonishing." After four hours of sleep for six consecutive nights, healthy young men had blood test results that nearly matched those of diabetics. Their ability to process blood sugar was reduced by 30 percent, they had a huge drop in their insulin response, and they had elevated levels of a stress hormone called cortisol, which can lead to hypertension and memory impairment. "We had results that were more compatible with individuals 60-years-old than with young, fit men in their early '20s," Van Cauter explains. Perhaps equally incredible is that until Van Cauter's study, most scientists believed that sleep debt did not cause any significant physical problems. "The concept that sleep is for the mind not the body prevailed and so no one was really looking at the possibility that sleep loss has an impact on health,"Van Cauter says. Though subjects in the study slept only four hours a night, Van Cauter says sleeping six or seven hours might be just as dangerous. "Six hours instead of four hours, would have a similar impact but would just take a longer period of time," she says. After the experiment, the six men could make up for their sleep debt. It is unclear, however, how sleep debt affects the body over long periods of time. Van Cauter's early findings suggest that chronic short sleepers have a hard time keeping their blood sugars stable, which makes them prone to insulin resistance and obesity. Experts are now speculating that lack of sleep could be the missing link in understanding America's obesity epidemic.

Slows the Mind

The military's leading sleep expert, Colonel Gregory Belenky has long been concerned about the effect of sleep deprivation on America's hi-tech warriors. Now he is looking beyond safety and performance to uncover the biological damage that might result from sleep deprivation. His research shows that "brain function is degraded by prolonged waking." Belenky's high-tech brain images show that sleep debt decreases the entire brain's ability to function most significantly impairing the areas of the brain responsible for attention, complex planning, complex mental operations, and judgement. What most surprised Belenky, however, is the difficulty with which the brain recovers from sleep deprivation. Even after four eight-hour recovery nights of sleep, Belenky's subjects were still making more errors than when they started.

Trying to Cheat Nature

The United States is becoming a nation of chronic short sleepers. In 1910, most Americans slept nine hours per night. Now, the average night's sleep is seven and a half hours and the trend shows no signs of flattening. Though millions of Americans routinely get fewer than six hours, the vast majority needs at least 8 hours per night. Dr. David Dinges, chief of the Division of Sleep and Chronobiology at the University of Pennsylvania, estimates that only 10 percent of Americans can consistently sleep fewer than eight hours per night without harmful effects on one's health. Many people, he says, need as many as 10. "If you're a nine or a nine and a half-hour need, and you're sleeping eight, you're developing a sleep debt î there's no way to cheat Mother Nature," says Dingis.

Fighting Fatigue

Though you cannot cheat Mother Nature, many people try by guzzling cup after cup of coffee. Dingis explains that the lift a cup of coffee gives is in fact an extra boost of stress. "When you use caffeine heavily during sleep deprivation, you have an elevated level of stress hormones occurring in the body and that's not particularly good," Dingis says. Other people who suffer from sleep debt blame their environment, saying that their meeting or lecture is too boring to keep them awake. Dinges says this is denial: "If you're bored, you're awake, you're just bored. If you're bored and you fall asleep, you've got a sleep debt."

How Much Is Enough?

So, how do you figure out what's the right amount of sleep for you personally? Dr. Belenky suggests paying attention to how much you sleep while on vacation îwhen you can sleep as long as you want. For the first few days you are likely to sleep a lot, but as you pay off your sleep debt, you will reach a natural equilibrium. At the end of the first week you will probably be sleeping the number of hours you need on a regular basis.

Recovery Sleep

If you do have a sleep debt, sometimes you can pay it off by napping. All stages of sleep are important, but the sleep that helps the body to recover happens quite soon after falling asleep. "You get a terrific return from the first 20 or 30 minutes of sleep relative to any other 20 to 30 minutes of sleep so naps pack a lot of power," says Dinges. Dinges says the best time to take a nap is from noon to 6 p.m. and the peak time is from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. It is also critical that you lie down completely. Finally, it is more efficient to nap in advance of anticipated sleep debt rather than the next day.

4. www.seniors.gov/articles/0303/sleep.htm

Sustained Reduced Sleep Can Have Serious ConsequencesMarch 13, 2003 - In a study on the effects of sleep deprivation, investigators at the University of Pennsylvania found that subjects who slept four to six hours a night for fourteen consecutive nights showed significant deficits in cognitive performance equivalent to going without sleep for up to three days in a row. Yet these subjects reported feeling only slightly sleepy and were unaware of how impaired they were. The research article, "The Cumulative Cost of Additional Wakefulness: Dose-Response Effects on Neurobehavioral Functions and Sleep Physiology From Chronic Sleep Restriction and Total Sleep Deprivation," appears in the March issue of the journal 'SLEEP'.According to Principal Investigator David Dinges, "This is the first systematic study to look at the prolonged cognitive effects of chronic sleep restriction lasting for more than a week. The results provide a clearer picture of possible dangers to people who typically are awake longer on a regular basis," he explained, "including members of the military, medical and surgical residents, and shift workers. Reduced cognitive abilities can occur even with a moderate reduction in sleep."Cognitive performance deficits included reduced ability to pay attention and react to a stimulus, such as when driving, or monitoring at airports. Other deficits involved impairment of the ability to think quickly and not make mistakes, and a reduced ability to multi-task -- to hold thoughts in the brain in some order while doing something else.Dr. Patricia A. Grady, Director of the National Institute of Nursing Research, NIH, which provided primary funding for the study, said, "These findings show that while young adults may believe they can adapt to less than a full night's sleep over time, chronic sleep deprivation may seriously affect their performance while they are awake, and they may not even realize it."Investigators also found that to prevent neurobehavioral defects from accumulating, the average person needs 8.16 hours of sleep during a 24-hour day, although there were differences among individuals in their need for sleep.The study included 48 healthy individuals aged 21 to 38 who were divided into four groups -- those who were allowed to sleep up to either 8, 6 or 4 hours per night during a 24- hour period for two weeks, and those who were deprived of sleep for three consecutive 24-hour periods. The experiments were conducted in a lab with constant monitoring. When awake, participants could watch movies, read, and interact with lab staff but could not have caffeine, alcohol, tobacco or medications.In addition to NINR, other NIH funding was provided by the National Center for Research Resources and National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. NIH is part of the Department of Health and Human Services. A grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research supported total sleep deprivation data used in the study.

5. www.musc.edu/pr/darpa.htm

MUSC To Develop Brain Stimulation Device For Military
CHARLESTON, SC -- The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced today that it has awarded the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) a Phase I/II contract to develop a portable brain stimulation device for use by the military to alleviate the effects of sleep deprivation on soldiers' performance. The contract, entitled Creating a Man-portable Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation System (TMS) to Improve War-fighter Performance, was awarded to Mark S. George, M.D., and Daryl E. Bohning, Ph.D., both of MUSC. The project has the potential of revolutionizing warfare and has important other military and non-military applications. The overall goal of the project is to use the unique resources at MUSC's Brain Stimulation Laboratory and Center for Advanced Imaging Research to determine if: 1. non-invasive stimulation of the brain can improve a Soldier's performance, 2. and then design, manufacture and test a prototype of a system that would be capable of delivering this technology in the field. "If we are successful," said Mark George, M.D., contract principal investigator and director of the Brain Stimulation Laboratory at MUSC, "the U.S. military would have the theoretical background of how to use this system to improve soldier performance, and a proven, tested prototype of a system that can be carried to the next level of testing." MUSC researchers will use functional imaging of how the brain solves complex tasks, and then apply non-invasive brain stimulation to determine if one can boost performance, either at baseline or following several days of sleep deprivation. Several recent studies have hinted that this may be possible. The contract is part of a nationwide program conducted by DARPA to improve Soldiers' performance after several days of little to no sleep. If MUSC researchers determine that brain stimulation can temporarily improve performance, then they are charged with designing and then building helmets that could be worn by pilots or Soldiers in combat. "This award is a tribute to the innovative work being conducted by Dr.George and his colleagues," said MUSC president Ray Greenberg, M.D., Ph.D. "When we created the Center for Advanced Imaging Research with Dr. George as director, our goal was to promote this type of cutting edge work. We are delighted to build a collaborative relationship with DARPA and hope that it will grow in the years ahead." "We are very excited about this work, and that we can carry it out here in South Carolina," said George, who is also distinguished professor of psychiatry, radiology and neurology at MUSC. "Although this work -- trying to improve soldiers' performance -- is not directly related to improving health, it has the potential for helping us in our other work in understanding how to use brain stimulation to treat diseases like depression and Parkinson's disease. Also, if we can safely improve the performance of sleepy soldiers, then there are lots of other potential applications in our society where this might be useful." About TMS -- The system will use the principle of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to stimulate regions of the brain affected by sleep deprivation. George has received international recognition for his development of this technique to treat depressive illness. Transcranial magnetic stimulation involves placing an electromagnetic coil on the scalp. High-intensity current is rapidly turned on and off in the coil through the discharge of capacitors. This produces a time-varying magnetic field that lasts for about 100 to 200 microseconds. The magnetic field has a strength of approximately 40,000 times the earth's magnetic field. The proximity of the brain to the time-varying magnetic field makes current flow in neural tissue. The technological advances made in the last 15 years led to the development of magnetic stimulators that produce sufficient current in the brain to result in neuronal depolarization.

About DARPA -- DARPA is the central research and development organization for the Department of Defense (DoD). It manages and directs selected basic and applied research and development projects for DoD, and pursues research and technology where risk and payoff are both very high and where success may provide dramatic advances for traditional military roles and missions. The DARPA mission is to develop imaginative, innovative and often high-risk ideas offering a significant technological impact that will go well beyond the normal evolutionary developmental approaches; and, to pursue these ideas from the demonstration of technical feasibility through the development of prototype systems. About MUSC -- The Medical University of South Carolina's mission is to preserve and optimize human life in South Carolina and beyond through education, research and health care. Located on the Charleston peninsula, the university educates students from across the state and beyond. It provides primary care services for the local community and serves as a referral center for specialized care for patients from across the state, the nation and the world. 

6. http://pdm.medicine.wisc.edu/nordic/AccidentsandSleepiness.htm Accidents and Sleepiness in a Military Setting by Hesla PE, Medical Section, Sessvoll, NorwayIntroduction: Human error has been identified as the root cause of the majority of accidents in virtually every industry examined. Agencies that compile accident statistics probably underestimate sleepiness and fatigue as contributors to accidents. There is a lack of scientific awareness in the way sleep and circadian rhythms may control alertness and performance. Work regulations that permit prolonged and dangerous schedules in which sleep is sacrificed for expediency and performance, further exacerbate the safety problem. The consequences of human error due to fatigue potentially are more serious now than before. A number of factors may contribute to sleep deprivation, and accumulated sleep deprivation can have serious consequences for performance. Sleep deprivation is characteristic of schedules that involve prolonged wakefulness, either chronic or intermittent, as well as work that is extended for many days without an opportunity for recovery and sleep. Sleepiness has been documented to impair performance, such as in causing the subject to doze off periodically. The ability to be vigilant visually and react quickly degrades as sleepiness increases. Military settings provide the most important knowledge about sleep and safety. Soldiers are subjected to long work hours, and they handle heavy equipment as well as potentially dangerous material. It has been observed that in peacekeeping operations, soldiers work long hours and are under pressure to perform in situations in which safety regulations may be inadequate and result in serious accidents. Methods: Sleepiness was measured with the Multiple Sleep Latency Test (MSLT). Sleep latency in sets of <5 minutes constitute an increased propensity to fall asleep unintentionally. The use of MSLT tests during active peacekeeping service almost are non-existent. However, during the last 20 years, some observations have been made concerning fatigue and accidents in Norwegian soldiers. Annually, about four casualties have been registered of which some were due directly to human error and fatigue resulting from sleep deprivation. Results: Four incidents will be presented, each analysing relationship between sleep 1oss and its consequences. Conclusion: Sleep loss and sleep deprivation during peacekeeping operations resulting in fatigue may jeopardise optimal functioning of military personnel who otherwise are in good health. It is imperative that military planners pay attention to adequate sleep schedules and sleep conditions in order to prevent fatigue. Each Soldier must be aware of the hazards of duty if he is not fully alert and awake. Mechanical devices that monitor sleep/wakefulness are available, and they may be of value for signaling to each individual when he is in danger of falling asleep unintentionally.

7. www.clickondetroit.com/health/2040661/detail.html

'Sleep Debts' Cause Poor Mental Functioning
Study: Six Hours Of Sleep Doesn't Cut ItPOSTED: 10:35 a.m. EST March 14, 2003Sleep: Don't be too sure you're getting enough of it. Those who believe they can function well on six or fewer hours of sleep every night may be accumulating a "sleep debt" that undermines their mental performance during the day, according to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. But those people might be too sleep-deprived to know it, they said. 

The study, published in Saturday's issue of the journal Sleep, found that chronically sleep-deprived volunteers reported feeling "only slightly sleepy" even when their performance was at its worst during standard psychological testing. The results provide insight into the daily challenges that confront military personnel, residents and on-call doctors and surgeons, shift workers, parents of young children, and others who routinely get fewer than six hours of sleep each night, according to lead researcher David Dinges. Researchers studied the effects of four hours of sleep vs. six hours of sleep per night on healthy volunteers ages 21 to 38 over a two-week period. "Routine nightly sleep for fewer than six hours results in cognitive performance deficits, even if we feel we have adapted to it," said Hans Van Dongen, assistant professor of sleep and chronobiology in Penn's Department of Psychiatry. "This work demonstrates the importance of sleep as a necessity for health and well-being," he said. "Even relatively moderate sleep restriction, if it is sustained night after night, can seriously impair our neurobiological functioning." 

8. www.clickondetroit.com/health/2083149/detail.html

Could Sleep Deprivation Sabotage Military?

Instrument Can Track Eye Movements To Test For Fatigue

UPDATED: 12:46 p.m. EST April 2, 2003

You don't have to be a doctor -- or a general -- to realize that an army on the attack has little time for rest. There's the physical demands, and the stress of battle. Then, the Soldiers have to try sleeping in a foxhole, which many believe may not be all that restorative.

"We call them 'stragglers.' Anytime there's a movement marching, they're the ones that are obviously fatigued," said Sgt. Gerrold Johnson of the U.S. Army. "They're in the back of the group." Determination and adrenaline can compensate some, but eventually fatigue has to degrade performance -- and in war, that can get you and your unit killed.

"[Sleep] affects how alert you can be, how attentive you can be, and it affects your decision-making ability, how rapidly you can react, and how accurately you can react," said Dr. Michael Rosenberg of JFK Medical Center in New Jersey. But would a Soldier admit that he or she is tired? "I was a paratrooper (during) the time I was in the Gulf War," Johnson said. "We're tough guys. We stick it out. We suck it up. We drive on." Stimulant medications, including amphetamines, ritalin and provigil are reportedly being used in the war to keep troops sharp. But a commander has to have a better way to tell whether his troops are able to carry out a mission. Researchers have found out that eye movements, such as tracking an object and pupillary reaction time, deteriorate with fatigue. Rosenberg, who is a retired Air Force colonel, says the goal is to correlate those and other measurable things with fatigue and mission impairment. "The goal would be to have a small portable device to test Soldiers, airmen, sailors to quickly test them and use the results to decide whether each individual Soldier be able to complete his mission safely and successfully," he said.

OWL Combat Leader's Guide

Let's offer a POI for the proposed U.S. Army OWL Course run at all the enlisted basic training centers and the basic officer training center at Ft. Benning by the Infantry School. First Principle: KISS. We are not attempting to create Audie Murphys, John Waynes, Xenas or McGyvers. We are trying to teach mostly blue-collar American high school kids and ROTC graduates, many who are female, who did not attend a military school like VMI, Norwich or the Citadel, how to lead a small unit under difficult circumstances. The course is focused on the basics and the basics are printed in a volume somewhat larger than Ranger Handbook size. Pages are laminated, so they won't dissolve when wet, and can be written on by the owner. The book is bound by split rings, so pages can be added at a later date and a dummy cord can be attached immediately. It should fit in a breast pocket of the BDU. But, if it turns out that a second book is needed, or a larger version that fits in the cargo pocket of the BDU trousers is needed, go with it. What do we want in this OWL Handbook? Let's start with the U.S. Army's Combat Leader's Guide and add the following items:

The U.S. Army's Combat Leader's Guide details are here:

/www.oocities.org/equipmentshop/clg.htm

Soldiers Load: *60 pounds is maximum target individual loads = get rucksacks off everyone's back

DROP load planning used: Decide mobility level, Reduce unnecessary gear, Organize other transport means, Police the ranks

Rogers' Standing Orders: Why? Very concise guidelines for light infantry small unit operations.

Patrol Formations: Why? If you have to move any size group of people from point A to point B, this tells you how to form them up, space them, distances between groups, and where to place leaders.

Radio Telephone Procedures: so you can talk on a military radio and not sound like a complete idiot. Also, PICTURES of what various US military radios look like and INSTRUCTIONS on how to operate them, along with basic troubleshooting. Also, have the phonetic alphabet in there.

U.S. Weapons Identification Cards: Why? So people know what to look for to distinguish among various US small arms, grenades, mines (especially Claymores and derivatives) and crew served weapons. Again, PICTURES & INSTRUCTIONS to make the Firearms Challenged less of a danger to themselves and others. If there are unusual things like using 60mm and 81mm mortar rounds as big grenades a la Saving Private Ryan, personnel should know about them.

Explosives: Det cord, blasting caps, clackers, C-4 and the joys of making things shatter or break. Some information from the Engineer's Handbook would be valuable to have. An Engineer buddy used to call it the "Junior Woodchuck Manual," after the famous book used by Huey, Dewey and Louie in many of their adventures. They are Donald Duck's nephews, if you didn't know.

Call For Fire: In case you can get indirect fire support, so you won't screw it up too badly. Bursting radius and danger close of rounds from 60mm on up should be listed. Also, it should list the various types of rounds that MAY be available like Smoke, Illum, WP and what those rounds can do for you.

Mortars: basic firing procedures, aiming, computations and use in a direct fire (you can see the rounds landing from your firing point and make adjustments) role.

Map Reading: How to use a compass, basic map reading, terrain features and use of the pace cord attached to one of the split rings and a simple compass attached to the other split ring.

Foreign Weapons Identification Cards: So people know what the limitations and capabilities of potential enemies are, and what YOU can do with these items should you acquire them. Again, PICTURES & INSTRUCTIONS are vital to make life easier for the Firearms and Mechanically Challenged.

Physical Defensive Measures: Probably the most important part of the OWL Handbook, since most course attendees will be reacting to events initiated by the enemy. It should cover the basic things to consider when hardening a site or building to prevent it from being a "soft target." MP/Engineer School personnel should be contacted for input here. It wouldn't hurt to list some ideas on site selection for a military operation to prevent truly obvious mistakes by senior leaders. The major effort for site protection should come from Engineers/MPs, with some subtle wrinkles by devious types from the Vietnam War era, the Ranger Department and the JFK Special Warfare School.

OPSEC: "Loose Lips Sink Ships" could be updated to "Blabbermouths Blast Buildings" or some other catchy phrase. Outsiders, especially the locals, should not be allowed in buildings to clean or see office layouts. Teach all the people not to talk to their new "friends" and/or bed partners about what goes on and where things are in the compound. Mata Harriet and Julian Bond types are still around and are used to get info the easy way. For the technically qualified, it's called enemy HUMINT, or spying.

Cell Phones: In the near future, everybody, including enemies, are going to have these things. U.S. forces at the tactical level may be at a distinct disadvantage because not everyone in a military group will have a radio. Part of the Signal Corps and MI effort will be the locating and jamming of cell phones to disrupt enemy C4I. Cell phones and beepers also make nasty little radio detonators. The MI and Signal folks should have policies in place on the use of cell phones in a combat zone. Our folks will have to be cautioned on the use of THEIR cell phones when calling home, to prevent enemy SIGINT from having a field day.

GPS: How it works and what are the limitations re:

www.oocities.org/pentagon/7963/plugger.html

Night Vision Goggles: BIG help for moving in the dark. And locating enemies who are moving around. Use, limitations and systems used on small arms, should be included. Details:

www.oocities.org/equipmentshop/nightvision.htm

Squad Defensive Principles: If you understand how the defense works at the lowest level, then you can build and elaborate on the principles if you have more resources and personnel.

Sound Ranging and Location: The Army seems to have overlooked a great opportunity to use off-the-shelf technology to reduce enemy advantages by purchasing and using parabolic microphones to help locate foes, or your own folks, in the dark. They are available through many outlets; see the next paragraph.

Trying not to be a shill or unpaid salesmen for various military gear suppliers (Ranger Joe'sÆ or Brigade QuartermasterÆ) whom we have used in the past, but they do sell items like a Platoon Card, Range Card, Patrol Card and Status Card, which seem to be IDEAL to have in the OWL Handbook. They cover many of the above subjects, are laminated and could be purchased in bulk. The Ranger OPORD board devised by LTs Smith and Linn should be OWL SOP:

www.oocities.org/equipmentshop/rangerboard

We should encourage the use of ideas from books like Ranger Rick Tscherne's digests to develop a positive, aggressive, can-do mindset. The 'Net offers a fabulous means to get information to and from the field to the Infantry School. As ideas come in, they are tested and validated, then posted to a web site like our Airborne Equipment Shop: www.oocities.org/equipmentshop. Updates can be downloaded by interested personnel who could print and laminate new pages at their units.

ALL OWL students will be provided the MIL-SPEC buttpack-sized, Eco-Tat Lightweight Sleeping Bag (NSN 8405-01-H77-9567) to enable them, for the rest of their careers, to travel light and move among their units to command them better. Comfort is a luxury to the small unit leader, but little things can make life easier.

www.oocities.org/equipmentshop/combatlight.htm

POSSIBLE EXTENDED OWL TRAINING

Week 2: Light Weapons

Daytime patrolling, in open areas, woods, and urban/suburban environs. Basic Rifle Marksmanship with the M16A2 continued for M203 40mm grenade launcher and M9 9mm pistol. Land navigation continues, use of AN/PSN-11 GPS, map reading.

Week 3: Heavy Weapons

M16A2, M203 and M9 Qualification. M249 LMG, M240 MMG, M2 .50 cal/Mk19 HMG training. Patrolling continues; clearing buildings. Force-on-force exercises with MILES. Patrolling in urban areas. Anti-tank weapons (M136 AT4 and M72A2 LAW) familiarization.

Week 4: Physical security of locations

Situational awareness; protecting personnel/assets from attack. Much of this should be MP/Engineer School instruction. Use of pyrotechnics and explosives. Teach mine warfare and countermeasures. Mortar training (60mm, 81mm). Calling-for-fire on a mortar range.

Week 5: Night operations

Classes starting in the afternoon and running until about 0600. Think of it as a heavy metal all-nighter; it can be very boring or very exciting. Teach people to plan for exciting and hope for boring. NVG practice, patrolling at night, night movement, night land navigation by compass. Use of sound ranging equipment. A long land navigation course (12-15 km) that starts in the afternoon and goes into the night through woods, fields and urban areas. MILES force-on-force scenarios continue. Force-on-force with both sides no NVGs, then OPFOR only NVGs, then OWL students only NVGs, then both sides with NVGs. OWL Soldiers need to see how the physical advantage of numbers and position can be enhanced/overcome by proper use of technology.

Week 6: Day and night movements from point to point. Using wheeled and light tracked vehicles in a guerilla war zone

Basic first aid/first responder actions; playing OPFOR against Infantry School and Infantry NCO classes. Foreign weapons familiarization (AK-47, RPG, etc.). MILES force-on-force continues. Offensive operations to understand the power of the offense. Defensive driving; firing from vehicles (think tank/Bradley tables for M113A3 Gavins and wheels like HMMWVs, FMTVs, etc.). Field expedient measures (sand bagging, layers of materials) for protecting personnel, vehicles and buildings. More force-on-force exercises, both day and night. Written book reports due.

Week 7: Mangudai 4-day War

Running the Gauntlet (evacuating under fire); Defense of the Position (Rorke's Drift or LZ X-Ray). Oral presentations of book reports. Graduation.

We're glad the Army has come to the realization, however faulty, that junior officers of non-Infantry branches need some training and hands-on experience in the Ultimate MOS. EVERY Soldier should be expected to be a RIFLEMAN, and every officer a PLATOON LEADER. When enemies are at the door, you are an 11A or an 11B something until the excitement is over. Get used to the idea, train for it, and you may even survive to regale people at parties and barbecues with your exploits. The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael L. Sparks is a former NCO and officer who co-authored a book to transform the U.S. Army, "Air-Mech-Strike: Asymmetric Maneuver Warfare for the 21st Century". [www.oocities.org/air_mech_strike]

www.oocities.org/equipmentshop/probooks.htm