Fatigue Management

The Perils of Sustained Operations. Sleep need should be a component of
the operational planning process, featuring in time and mission analyses.
Typically, however, once an operation begins, sleep plans, job rotation and rest
periods are neglected or appear impossible to implement. In SusOps,
commanders are often faced with the dilemma of choosing between
exhausting the unit in attempting to accomplish the mission, or allowing less
than peak performance, for extended periods, by ensuring minimum sleep
needs are met. There is no right or wrong answer to this dilemma, but
decisions must be made with an accurate awareness of human performance
capabilities and tendencies in extended operations, including sleep inertia
effects, accidents and decreased risk management, lowered morale and
mounting grievances, and the increasing need for rest breaks and associated
problems of ‘getting the troops going again'. Some analysts believe the
increasing proportion of ‘friendly fire' casualties among coalition forces in the
closing stages of Desert Storm (a 100 hour SusOp) were largely due to fatigue.
Commanders must balance such costs against the mission and presumed
benefits of sustained operations.
The battalion crossed the steep Wadi Daqoun in fading
light and in the darkness the pace became slower and
slower. At each halt men would fall asleep, and it took
much time to make sure they were all awake when the
march had to be resumed.
Gavin Long
Greece, Crete and Syria, 1953
A painstaking investigation revealed that at least 35 out of
148 American fighting men and women killed and 72 out
of 467 Americans wounded in the Gulf War were the result
of 28 friendly fire incidents.
Colonel David Hackworth
‘Friendly Fire' Casualties
Marine Corps Gazette, March 1992
Fatigue: A Deceptive Enemy. One of the most important points in this
guide is that the debilitating effects of fatigue described may not be apparent
to the sleep-deprived, especially during the latter stages of exhaustion. Each
soldier will have a unique pattern of symptoms to chronic fatigue. The
symptoms usually appear gradually and there tends to be an overestimation
of task performance by the individual. Sometimes the first indication of severe
fatigue is waking up after falling asleep. This lack of awareness is one of the
most dangerous aspects of sleep loss. It is particularly common in
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