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Most U.S. troops aren’t getting enough sleep, report warns of fatigue-related dangers

Most U.S. troops need to get more sleep.

That’s the big-picture takeaway from a sweeping Government Accountability Office study that found a sizable majority of service members get six or fewer hours of sleep each night — less than the minimum of seven hours recommended by the Defense Department.

The consequences could reach far beyond sluggishness or crankiness. 



“When service members don’t get enough sleep, it can affect their performance. Fatigue has led to fatal accidents and hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to ships, vehicles, and aircraft,” reads a part of the study, made public on Tuesday.

One remotely piloted aircraft operator told the GAO that they “almost collided with another aircraft due to mental fatigue.” An aviation maintainer said there is a “greater possibility of mistakes” due to sleep deprivation. And a motor vehicle operator had perhaps the most eye-opening admission.

“I could kill someone … because I’m not getting the right sleep,” the anonymous service member told the GAO. 

The government watchdog examined Defense Department health data from 2005 to 2018, the most recent information available on sleep in the armed forces. It found that only one-third of troops say they sleep seven or eight hours per night. The majority reported they sleep six or fewer, and about one-third of service members said their sleep quality is “fairly bad or very bad.”

The Pentagon and military services have instituted a variety of studies and sleep-related programs, but GAO said more should be done.

“GAO is making nine recommendations, including that DoD conducts an assessment of its fatigue-related oversight structure, assigns DoD leadership, and creates and maintains a list of all fatigue-related research projects, and that the military services assign fatigue-related leadership,” the GAO report said, adding that the Pentagon “generally concurred with the recommendations.

The full list of recommendations, and more details on the study, can be found here.

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