Military looks to drugs for battle readiness
excerpted from an article by Brad Knickerbocker,
To initiate a war of aggression...is not only an international crime, it is
the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in
that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
The International Court
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"Speed" is the well-known nickname for amphetamines, the controversial and
potentially harmful drug some American pilots are taking in order to
enhance their performance. Despite the possibility of addiction and
potential side effects that include hypertension and depression, such drugs
are needed, military officials believe, in order for pilots to stay alert
and focused " especially on long-range bombing missions. Such flights can
mean nine hours or more alone in expensive, high-performance aircraft. Their
lethal weapons are aimed at an elusive enemy that can be (and has been)
confused with civilians or friendly troops.
According to military sources, the use of such drugs (commonly Dexedrine) is
part of a cycle that includes the amphetamines to fight fatigue, and then
sedatives to induce sleep between missions. Pilots call them "go pills" and
"no-go pills." For most Air Force pilots in the Gulf War (and nearly all
pilots in some squadrons), this was the pattern as well.
The drugs are legal, and pilots are not required to take them - although
their careers may suffer if they refuse. The ability to keep fighting for
days at a time without normal periods of rest, to perform in ways that may
seem almost superhuman is seen by military officials as the key to success
in future conflicts.
Knickerbocker quotes a document from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA): "In short, the capability to operate
effectively, without sleep, is no less than a 21st Century revolution in
military affairs that results in operational dominance across the whole
range of potential U.S. military employments." What's called for, according
to DARPA, is a "radical approach" to achieve "continuous assisted
performance" for up to seven days. This would actually involve much more
than the "linear, incremental and ... limited" approaches of stimulants like
caffeine and amphetamines.
"Futurists say that if anything's going to happen in the way of leaps in
technology, it'll be in the field of medicine," says retired Rear Adm.
Stephen Baker, the Navy's former chief of operational testing and
evaluation, who is now at the Center for Defense Information in Washington.
"This better warrior through chemistry' field is being looked at very
closely," says Admiral Baker, whose career includes more than 1,000
aircraft-carrier landings as a naval aviator. "It's part of the research
going on that is very aggressive and wide open." For the most part, the
issue of prescribed drug use by US pilots has gone unreported in the United
States. But in England and Canada, it has been raised recently - especially
in a possible connection with errant bombings. In April, four Canadian
soldiers were killed and another eight injured when an American F-16 pilot
on a long-range mission, thinking he was under attack, dropped a 500-pound
laser-guided bomb on an allied military exercise. "The initial version of
the Canadian incident portrayed the pilot as behaving with inexplicable
aggression tinged with paranoia, and my first thought was that the poor guy
had been eating too much speed," says Mr. Pike of GlobalSecurity.org.
Officials are still investigating that accident, and the pilot has been
questioned, among other things, about the possibility of drug use. More
recently, concerns have been raised about aggression and violence among
soldiers returning from Afghanistan. In three of four cases in which men
killed their wives, the accused husbands were in special-forces units based
at Fort Bragg, N.C. "It is quite obvious that someone needs to pose this
question in the context of the business at Fort Bragg," says Pike.
As the US moves into an era in which national security is likely to mean
wars fought from the air - using attack aircraft and small,
specially-trained units flown long distances to the battlefield - the issue
of performance-enhancing drug use by US military personnel is likely to
escalate.
"The real story here is the ever-extending reach of air power, "says Daniel
Goure, a military specialist at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va.
"We were flying F-15s out of Lakeheath [a Royal Air Force base] in the
United Kingdom during Kosovo. Why? Because we had used up the available
landing space everywhere else." "As asymmetric threats such as ballistic
missiles become more available to our adversaries, we are going to stand
even farther back," adds Dr. Goure. "That means that this problem [i.e.,
the need to combat pilot fatigue] can only grow."
Back to Peace Talk Index, Autumn, 2002