Overview

Adequate sleep is critical to mission success. In training and on the battlefield, inadequate sleep impairs many mission-critical abilities such as reaction time, the ability to detect and engage the enemy, and squad tactic coordination – to name but a few. When interviewed about the connections between sleep and mission readiness, Soldiers and military leaders consistently attribute accidents, poor morale, and impaired judgment to sleep loss. However, despite mission-relevant performance degradation resulting from sleepiness, a culture of suboptimal sleep and a perception that lack of sleep is "the Army way" prevails in the force.