Price: 0 uah
Checkout
William Saletan
The stressors of war are something the average citizen will likely never fully comprehend. It’s the classic scenario of the phrase “you had to be there,” because the experiences can be so extreme that even the use of prescribed medications is necessary to help these men and women function in near-inhuman conditions. One such example is the use of modafinil, which has become notable for its cognitive-enhancing properties. Banyan Veterans Addiction Treatment Centers explore the use of modafinil for military purposes and what this might mean broadly.
Yes, modafinil is a stimulant that acts on the central nervous system. Due to its wakefulness-promoting properties, it is commonly used in patients with conditions that cause excessive daytime fatigue, including:
It works by inhibiting dopamine reuptake. Modafinil, also known by the brand name Provigil.
It’s not uncommon for soldiers and other military personnel to stay awake for days at a time. Unfortunately, these troops are limited by one inconvenient fact: they are only human. According to Jonathan Moreno, a professor of biomedical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania,
“The human is the weakest instrument of warfare, [soldiers] must eat, sleep, distinguish friend from foe, and heal when wounded... The first nation to build better fighters will make a huge leap in the arms race.”
Throughout history, the use of “go-pills” has been a controversial topic among medical professionals and military personnel. Before modafinil was used for military purposes, more dangerous amphetamines like Adderall were employed as popular stay-awake pills during extended missions. However, the U.S. Air Force no longer approves the use of amphetamines due to side effects and incidents related to the drug’s use.
Modafinil was introduced as an effective supplement to stay awake without the debilitating side effects. Soldiers participating in Air Force missions have used it to remain alert for 40 hours straight without feeling “wrecked” afterward.
Around the world, scientists are experimenting with soldiers to keep them awake beyond normal endurance limits. Researchers are developing, and militaries are deploying, chemically enhanced troops. Of all the superpowers we’ve imagined, the most attainable—so attainable that we’re already using it—is the ability to function without sleep.
In publicly reported studies, modafinil has been tested, in particular, on Black Hawk helicopter pilots, F-117 fighter pilots, French paratroopers, and Canadian reservists. They simulated A-6 Intruder bombings, AWACS flights, and French Navy patrols. In nearly every study, modafinil extended the ability to function without sleep. And we’re already using it in the field. The United States provided modafinil to Air Force personnel after the 2003 Iraq invasion. By 2004, the U.K. Ministry of Defence had purchased 24,000 tablets. By 2007, France was regularly supplying it to fighter pilots.
Because the nearest goal is modestly defined, clearly achievable, and easily measurable in experiments. We don’t have to keep you awake forever. We just have to partially and temporarily offset the cognitive impairments caused by your sleep deprivation. In a sense, we’re not enhancing your performance. We’re just raising it to a normal level—the level at which you function when not sleep-deprived. Published experimental reports propose to “sustain,” “maintain,” or “restore” what they call “baseline” or “pre-deprivation” performance. They aim to “attenuate,” “mitigate,” or “reverse” the “deficits,” “declines,” and “degradation” caused by sleep deprivation. They describe modafinil as “counteracting” the “adverse consequences” of extended shifts.
Because they feel the greatest urgency. For an airline or freight company, missing a flight means financial losses. For air forces, it means casualties. In civilian life, you can plan for reliable nighttime rest or daytime naps. In war, you can’t. You might be alone in the cockpit. You might be on a 12-hour mission requiring constant vigilance. There’s no one around to take the next shift. Even if there were, how are you supposed to sleep in the chaos of combat?
The British downed tea. The Prussians tried cocaine. Nearly every army relied on coffee or tobacco. In World War II, both sides took amphetamines. The U.S. military formally approved amphetamines in 1960. Since then, we’ve employed them in Vietnam, Panama, Libya, and during the first Gulf War. Today, all four branches of the U.S. armed forces permit the use of dextroamphetamine under certain conditions. The Army rations caffeine chewing gum, and every survey shows that most U.S. aircrews, when operational, use stimulants.
Against this backdrop, modafinil represents a refinement, not an escalation. In 1989, at a defense conference in Europe, a French scientist suggested it for military use. Researchers from the U.S. Air Force’s Human Systems Division took note and recommended further experiments, based not on the drug’s potency but on its precision. Compared to amphetamines and caffeine, modafinil showed less addiction potential, less cardiovascular stimulation, and less interference with scheduled sleep. Military-sponsored studies focused less on demonstrating modafinil’s effectiveness and more on narrowing the effective dose and preventing side effects.
In their papers, these researchers never talk about superhuman warriors. They emphasize a mundane goal: saving lives. They point to fatal accidents and mission failures, including friendly fire incidents, caused by sleep deprivation. Exhaustion kills.
What used to be normal—needing eight hours of sleep each night—is now seen as a fatal flaw. An Israeli report, “Psychostimulants and Military Operations,” examines this “conflict between man and machine” and laments: “While an aircraft can mechanically function efficiently for long hours, pilots cannot.” Canadian defense scientists also highlight this “mismatch between human needs and technological capabilities.” A U.S. Air Force paper warns of catastrophic “sleep attacks”—exhausted personnel failing to perform. We are the defect. We must be fixed.
The fix began with stimulants. Then it expanded to combinations: sedatives to induce sufficient sleep before a mission (currently approved and used by all U.S. armed forces branches), then stimulants to switch you back on. The initial idea was to keep you from falling asleep for a few extra hours. But experiments grew more ambitious, testing drugs for 40, 60, or even 90 hours without sleep. In journal articles, scientists suggested that with modafinil, troops could function for weeks, sleeping just four hours a day.
“Even in situations where soldiers are rested,” says a 2010 report from the U.S. Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory, “they are unable to maintain adequate levels of alertness during extended nighttime duties without some assistance.”
According to the Army lab, this drug treatment can be justified as therapeutic because combat is inherently an “abnormal environment” that creates “extreme conditions” that “degrade optimal performance of duties” and “increase risk to soldiers.” The report notes that
“the military has long promoted (indeed, mandated) pharmaceutical interventions such as immunization and prophylaxis for healthy soldiers where the threat is clearly defined, the risk is unacceptable, the science is sound, the drugs are safe, and the fighting force must be protected and sustained. In the case of cognitive enhancement, for example, the threat can be characterized as an internal force such as fatigue from necessary sustained combat operations.”
Once we go down this road, there’s no turning back. As multiple nations investigate modafinil for military use, alertness becomes an arms race. A report from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory explains why:
“Forcing our enemies to operate continually without sufficient daily sleep is a highly effective weapon.”
To win this war of attrition, we must “manage fatigue among ourselves.” We must dope our troops to outlast yours. You, in turn, must dope your troops to keep up. On the battlefield of the future, there is no sleep—only death.
-192x200.jpg "HAB Pharma Modvigil 200 - 10 tab")