Range and persistence: the keys to global strike

Air & Space Power Journal, Spring, 2008 by Phillip S. Meilinger

Persistence and Crew Fatigue

Persistence has endured varying fortunes. In one sense, the desire to remove the transitory nature of airpower--one of its traditional criticisms--has always been strong. Air refueling solved one problem but did little to alleviate the physical limitations inherent with crew members on small aircraft. The issue of crew fatigue induced by long flights, combined with excessive stress and frequent deployments, has been well studied. Basically, the human body and mind get tired when immobilized, cramped, or bored--they need sleep. Flight surgeons sought to discover how sleep could be deferred or stolen in small increments to enable a short-term boost in performance.

The usual response to these problems--diet, exercise, physical fitness, and a stable routine--is usually ineffective. Alternatively, personnel in multicrew aircraft take short naps in flight. Pilots of single-seat fighters, however, do not have this option, so medication becomes the next step. Since the early 1960s, the Air Force has employed "go/no-go" pills to regulate the sleep cycles of aircrews--to make them sleep before a flight and keep them awake during it. No-go pills have had mixed success. Aircrews often do not want to take them, or, because of nervousness or other distractions, the pills simply don't work.

Go pills--amphetamines--are designed to keep pilots awake. During Desert Storm, 57 percent of fighter pilots in single-seat aircraft reported using them. (35) Reputedly fairly benign drugs, they may nonetheless produce such side effects as cardiovascular disturbances, psychiatric problems, addiction, drug tolerance, and disruptions in sleep recovery--certainly not minor reactions. (36) In April 2002, an F-16 pilot bombedwhat he believed were enemy troops near Kandahar in Afghanistan. In fact the attack killed four Canadians. The pilot claimed that he had taken go pills, and his defense attorney at the subsequent court martial used as amitigating circumstance the fact that a flight surgeon had prescribed them--despite their known deleterious side effects. (37)

In sum, absent the possibility of getting up, moving about, stretching, or using the latrine, a pilot can go no more than 10 hours strapped into a single-seat fighter. Even then, ground crews often have to help the exhausted Airman from the cockpit upon landing. All of this means that acquiring long-range strike assets will become an imperative, given the possibility of fighting a future enemy on a large continental landmass such as China. (38)

To illustrate the problem, fighter aircraft traversing the 2,000 miles separating the Asian continent from Guam, the nearest air base on US territory, would require at least four tanker hookups. This would still take a heavy toll on the aircrews. A round-trip mission from Guam to the Asian coast at normal airspeeds would take nearly 10 hours--certainly a grueling assignment. (39) In bombers, crew members can get up and move about, perhaps even nap during long flights. (40) During the vietnam War, the B-52s based on Guam flew thousands of such combat sorties. In Kosovo, B-2s flew missions lasting more than 30 hours from their base in Missouri with no degradation in performance. (41)