When it comes to current changes in the character of warfare, it is almost impossible to discuss the topic without discussing drones. Drones have changed how the military thinks about warfare at the tactical, operational and strategic levels.

However, when looking at the nature of warfare, there is a concept that U.S. Army Rangers often call “droning” that has been a fundamental part of war throughout world history. Researcher Janna Mantua and colleagues at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research explored ways Rangers describe droning’s impact on operations in an article published in the February 2023 issue of the journal Sleep Medicine. Simply stated, one can think of droning as the way a soldier continues to function while not truly awake or aware of their actions.

While the Army is world-renowned for “owning the night,” the scientific community has clearly documented the costs of chronic sleep deprivation that commonly occurs during sustained operations.

Three common problems associated with droning can be described as: continuing to operate without being aware of your actions or thoughts, memory loss and possible hallucinations. In the sleep medicine world, these are called “unusual sleep-related behaviors.”

Mantua and colleagues interviewed 42 soldiers after the soldiers completed the 62-day U.S. Army Ranger School. Often, these soldiers used the word “droning” to describe functioning without awareness. Some of their comments included: “When you drone, you walk around without any awareness or thoughts about what’s around you,” “The light’s on, but nobody’s home,” “Body is on autopilot, brain is not engaged,” or, “Your body leaves your body.”

High IMPACT          

The impaired mental and cognitive functions associated with droning will be problematic in multidomain operations when success is defined by a leader’s ability to assimilate multiple sources of information to maintain decision dominance over the enemy.

Additionally, these Rangers described droning by describing both memory loss and hallucinations.

These comments included:

“When you check your watch and it’s 9 p.m., then you close your eyes for a second, and it’s 2 a.m., and you’ve moved 10 miles with no recollection,” “Almost like blacking out after having too many adult beverages. You cannot remember clearly what you did, but know you were doing something,” and “Seeing things that don’t actually exist.”

Researchers at the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine have quantified the impact of sleep deprivation on soldier performance. In a 2005 study published in the journal Biological Psychiatry, these researchers reported that a soldier’s ability to identify and shoot at the enemy decreased by 220%, they shot at things that did not exist 164% more often, errors in decision-making went up by 86% and reaction time decreased by 22%.

What’s shocking about these numbers is that these performance decrements were found after only three days of sustained operations.

It should not come as a shock, then, that when looking at company performance at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, no company was evaluated as above average without the unit leadership getting to sleep at least four hours a night, according to Capt. Preston Robinson in a 2016 Center for Army Lessons Learned publication called “Decisive Action Training Environment at the National Training Center, Volume IV.”

Mitigating Risk

Although sleep deprivation historically is part of the nature of warfare, what has changed over the past decade is an increase in knowledge about ways to mitigate risk to the force without degrading risk to the mission. Warfighter fatigue management strategies include sleep mission planning, integrating time zone changes with circadian rhythms, determining sleep priority across a unit and integrating fatigue countermeasures to optimize performance during sustained operations.

Sleep mission planning describes the process of looking at the operational order and troop-leading procedures, and creating a plan to optimize performance during sustained operations while mitigating risk to the force and to the mission. This includes an understanding of circadian rhythms, time zone changes and geography challenges such as weather’s impact on sleep. It also includes concepts such as sleep banking, in which a soldier accumulates additional sleep hours before a mission.

Leaders then need to determine sleep priority across the unit: who has the greatest cognitive demands in the unit, who has the most tedious and sedentary duties (e.g., guard duty), etc. Once that is known, leaders use the knowledge of who is a night owl or who is a natural early riser to optimize shift work, dawn patrol and other requirements.

Optimizing Performance

Realizing that seven to eight hours of continuous sleep is not feasible in most deployed settings, leaders then apply what they have learned to integrate sleep countermeasures to optimize performance during sustained operations. These techniques include tactical naps, proper utilization of caffeine and integration of exercise bouts to boost energy and mindfulness. The Army has created caffeinated gum and the Modular Operational Ration Enhancement to aid performance during sustained operations. MOREs are designed to supplement the standard Meals, Ready-to-Eat by providing additional calories and energy.

From a performance standpoint, leaders often are concerned about the impact of limited sleep on the ability of soldiers to recognize failed solutions, generate novel solutions, anticipate problems, plan and prioritize efforts and solve problems, as well as show vigilance, attention to detail, ability to multitask, concentration, emotional stability and motivation. In addition to degrading performance, sleep deprivation can lead to mission-impacting errors, near-miss incidents, mishaps and accidents.

Also, after sustained operations, it is important for soldiers to pay off their sleep debt. Just like professional athletes focus on recovery after a key sporting event, leaders should encourage soldiers to develop a recovery plan that includes hydration, nutrition, exercise, mindfulness and more sleep.

Health Impacts

At a deeper level, sleep deprivation impacts a soldier’s health and well-being. Lack of sleep increases the risk of musculoskeletal injury, chronic pain, anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. From a long-term perspective, sleep deprivation impacts military readiness across the force.

The science that underpins the importance of sleep mission planning is strong. Yet implementation remains challenging. Leaders may feel conflicted once in combat operations. There can be a feeling of guilt in getting the rest a leader needs when there is always something going on. Although leaders may know they need sleep, when life-or-death decisions occur on a regular basis, some fall back to the “gutting it out—don’t be weak” mindset, and their sleep plan falls apart. 

However, in our experience, it does not take long for leaders to realize they cannot be effective without a proper rest plan. The speed of decisions to attain decision dominance has increased to such a fast pace that one must get the proper rest to be an effective leader.

When working with units on sleep mission planning, one of the Army’s leading experts on sleep, Col. Ingrid Lim, command inspector general at U.S. Army Medical Readiness Command, Pacific, anecdotally has found that it takes about three field training exercises for leaders and units to both fully appreciate the value and understand how to integrate sleep mission planning to be a combat multiplier.

A unit’s first field training exercise is typically used to introduce and practice the concepts of sleep mission planning, Lim said. During the second field exercise, unit leaders adapt principles of sleep mission planning to optimize outcomes. Then, during the third field exercise, leaders and soldiers usually can implement the plan with a level of expertise and experience that helps delay culmination due to fatigue, according to Lim.

Although the discussion of sleep in Maj. Robert Rogers’ Standing Orders of 1759 demonstrated the enduring nature of the impact of sleep deprivation on soldier performance, the changing character of warfare requires a reexamination of how to optimize training to allow soldiers to outthink, outmaneuver and outfight opponents.

It is time to embrace operationalizing warfighter fatigue management by integrating the best sports science into Army culture.

Gen. Bob Brown, U.S. Army retired, president and CEO of the Association of the U.S. Army, contributed to this article.

* * *

Brig. Gen. Deydre Teyhen is director of the Defense Health Network National Capital Region, Bethesda, Maryland, and the 20th chief of the U.S. Army Medical Specialist Corps, Fort Sam Houston, Texas. Previous commands included Brooke Army Medical Center, Texas; Walter Reed Army Institute of Research; Schofield Barracks Health Clinic, Hawaii; and Public Health Command-Region South. She holds a Doctor of Physical Therapy from Baylor University, Texas; a doctorate in biomechanics from the University of Texas; and a master’s in strategic studies from the U.S. Army War College.