It was after midnight when the guided-missile destroyer USS Oscar Austin eased into a narrow channel leading toward the Baltic Sea. Three other destroyers followed behind.
The commander, John Cordle, an accomplished and experienced Navy captain, had gone 36 hours with no real sleep. Now, as the ship started its passage on a routine training mission, he swayed on his feet, gripping an overhead cable to keep himself upright and awake. The lights were dim, the ship silent.
He snapped awake. The navigator was saying they had lost their position. In the haze of fatigue and confusion, Cordle ordered the ship to slow—forgetting the three other destroyers coming up fast behind him. A crewmember had to remind him to warn them off.
He tells the story now to junior officers as a warning—a warning backed by years of research that has shown, again and again, the staggering toll that poor sleep takes on our society. Researchers at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND research organization have found that chronic sleep deprivation impacts everything from the quality of our work to the health and well-being of our children—even the basic readiness of our military.
Click here to read the rest of this post from RAND Review magazine.