The Role of Sleep in the Military

Abstract

This chapter addresses the role of sleep in a variety of military settings, ranging from military education and training regimes and extending to military missions and combat operations. It begins with a broad overview of the scientific literature related to sleep and performance. It then describes a ten-year series of studies conducted at the Naval Postgraduate School that addresses fatigue and sleep restriction in military settings. These studies include a series of efforts examining sleep patterns of sailors aboard U.S. Navy warships and submarines; studies that focus on shifting the timing of sleep during training and educational programs for Navy recruits at Great Lakes, Illinois and Army basic combat trainees at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri; a four-year longitudinal study describing the sleep in cadets at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York; and studies of sleep in operational environments, including surveys of warfighters while deployed and recently returned from combat in Southwest Asia. Many of these studies are reviewed in the chapter, which concludes with recommendations advocating the inclusion of sleep as a factor when calculating military effectiveness.