LONDON: Drugs — at least in some cases. American pilots have long been taking drugs to keep them flying longer. The ground troops who have had to “power on” day and night to Baghdad are thought to be taking a new sleep-busting drug called modafinil (or provigil).

Away from the battlefield, it is used mainly to combat narcolepsy, a condition that makes people feel irresistibly drowsy. The ears of military commanders pricked up when they heard it could keep a healthy person awake for more than three days. The Americans, British and French have all tested it.

A US study found sleep-deprived helicopter pilots given modafinil were more alert, energetic and confident than those who were not. A French researcher, Michel Jouvet, of Claude Bernard University in Lyon, concluded the drug could keep an army fighting for three days and nights.

According to its US manufacturers, Cephalon, the only side effect is a headache, which wears off when the user gets used to the drug. Exactly how the drug works is unknown but it is believed to stimulate a part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex, used in planning and problem solving.

Officially, neither the Americans nor the British armed forces sanction the use of modafinil. But a source at Cephalon said he would be “astonished” if troops were not using it.

The need to sleep has held armies back throughout history. Other “fatigue management tools” as the American military puts it, are used with varying degrees of success.

Caffeine is the preferred substance for many but since the second world war, US military pilots have been authorized to pop dextroamphetamine, or “go pills”, which have been under the spotlight since the “friendly fire” killings of four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.

The search for the “no doze soldier” continues: researchers at the US defence advanced research projects agency are looking at how birds and dolphins can survive on little or no sleep. So, soldiers of the future may wonder why the charge through Iraq was so exhausting for their predecessors.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.