Sleep and Combat Readiness: Narrative Review

Although adequate sleep is an important factor in daily performance and health of all civilians, with regard to nature of their job, military forces are prone to sleep disorders and insomnia and low sleep quality are common problem in military. Combat readiness is a broad concept and is influenced by several factors such as infrastructures and equipment, supporting agents and the quality of the organization, it is believed that human resources are the most valuable assets of the military forces and the factors affecting their performance in individual levels have a significant impact on total readiness of military forces. Due to its vital importance in military performance, beside nutrition and exercise nowadays sleep is identified as one of the pillars of Army Performance Triad (P3), and scientific and military medical boards and organizations provided special recommendations to optimize sleep and performance in military forces. According to the guidelines compliance with the sleep hygiene guidelines and implementing sleep management strategies in military environments by improving sleep quality may reduce the consequences of inadequate sleep and be helpful in optimizing military performance and readiness. However, there is still need for more research to provide practical recommendations for the purpose of managing sleep under unforeseen operational conditions, as well as specific environmental conditions (altitude, very cold and warm environments, etc.) to maintain or enhance combat power of military forces.