Service members still aren't getting enough sleep, in large part because there's no coherent Pentagon effort to remedy the problem, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office released this week.
The GAO found that fatigue among service members “appeared to be more the rule than the exception,” with active-duty troops sleeping less than seven hours nightly twice as often as civilians. That lack of sleep has contributed to safety mishaps, near-misses and numerous deaths.
“There's recognition of this [problem] within the military,” GAO report author and military readiness expert Diana Maurer told Military.com in a phone interview. “The problem is no one owns it.”
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Health experts recommend seven to nine hours of sleep for adults. It's not just quantity: Sleep quality is important too, making it hard for troops with uncomfortable mattresses or pilots dealing with noise and light to get meaningful shut-eye.
Pilots, missileers, aircraft maintainers and vehicle operators all noted in the report how fatigue has led to near-misses at work.
“Sometimes when I'm driving, I find myself falling asleep and I have to catch myself,” one vehicle operator said in the report. “I could kill someone on accident because I'm not getting the right sleep.”
Despite the military undertaking almost 130 fatigue-related research projects since 2017,…
