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Study: Troops don't get enough sleep

Feeling tired? You’re not alone: A new study says many service members aren’t getting adequate sleep each night. A recent Rand Corp. study found that one-third of service members said they average five hours or less of sleep — an amount linked to an increased risk of mental and physical health problems. The survey of…

Feeling tired? You’re not alone: A new study says many service members aren’t getting adequate sleep each night.

A recent Rand Corp. study found that one-third of service members said they average five hours or less of sleep — an amount linked to an increased risk of mental and physical health problems.

The survey of nearly 2,000 troops across all services found that only 37 percent get the recommended seven to eight hours of shuteye per night, and nearly half the sample “had clinically significant poor sleep quality.” Another third said they sleep an average of six hours per night.

via Study: Troops don’t get enough sleep.

:0 <— This is my shocked face.

Between going to the field, and trying to sleep in a noisy barracks, sleep was always at a premium. Heck, most Saturdays, I became the Mantress, half man, half mattress, and snoozed during the day to catch up on sleep.

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  1. M1A1TrkTrror

    Crack reporting, that.

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  2. Quartermaster

    One of the QM gang on Courtney missed ship’s movement and we ended up port and starboard. Too boot, I got the flu and the QMC ended up standing part of one of my watches to give me an extra 4 hours to get some of my strength back. At the end of that 30 days I was exhausted. After we dropped the hook my duty section was free for two days, and it was late Friday. I took a shower and spent most the next 2 days in my rack asleep.

    Lack of adequate sleep is, quite often, simply part of the territory. You simply gotta suck it up and continue to march.

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  3. Esli

    In garrison, I get nowhere near enough sleep. In the field, however, I have found that by empowering my subordinates and establishing wake-up criteria, it’s easy to get more sleep than most of my peers. Not sufficient, mind you, but more than others that feel the need to personally do/be/watch/control everything.

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  4. Pave Low John

    How does that old infantry joke go?

    If you have time to stand, you have time to sit down
    If you have time to sit down, you have time to lay down
    If you have time to lay down, you have time to catch a nap

    True story about sleeping in the military. When I was a brand-new Pave Low copilot on my first deployment, I was on the controls, flying back across the Adriatic to San Vito Air Base after spending about 10 hours flying back and forth across Bosnia (this was early 1997, if I recall). It was about 2 AM and because of a low ceiling, we were flying at around 200 feet above the waves. It was dark as a (insert your favorite idiom) and I was pretty beat. About half-way across, I look over and the aircraft commander is asleep. Right between us, the flight engineer is asleep as well, totally racked out. I keyed the mike and asked “Hey, anyone awake in the back?” Nothing, I was the only person on that helo that was awake. After about 10 more minutes of that, I finally nudged the flight engineer awake and told him to tell me a joke or something, I was really starting to flag. We made it back with no problems, but I always wondered what would have happened if I had fallen asleep. MH-53J didn’t have an autopilot, so we probably would have gradually descended and hit the Adriatic at full speed with no one conscious at the controls. I guess it would have been one of those mystery crashes chalked up to mechanical failure or something other than crew fatigue…

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  5. SFC Dunlap (Ret.) 173d RVN

    Almost a laughable box in the risk assessment. Everybody knew that nobody got enough sleep. The main focus other than vehicular movement, was actually the least likely…parachute malfunction (static line deployed). Amazing also was the ability to sleep most anywhere in most any position. Maybe that’s why my spinal column is AFU’d.

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  6. timactual

    Sleep? That’s one of those civilian things you leave behind when you join the military.

    Like SFC says, you learn to sleep anywhere in any position; like a bat if need be. When I was in AIT I contracted some sort of URI (not to be confused with UTI) and got about two hours of sleep per night. I slept at parade rest, and one night while walking guard I woke up a block away in the middle of the street, still walking at right shoulder arms.

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  7. Quartermaster

    Or the Army’s favorite, Pilot Error. Army Aviation got it from the AAF, and as I recall, the USAF continued the tradition.

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