Drugs to stay awake - alert
Suspect I might get my head bitten off... or provoke some sick jokes, but this is a genuine question. I should add, I recognise military flying sometimes calls for procedures, manouveres, practises, that in the civillian world would never be deemed safe.
A while back I read in a nameless newspaper that, due to the high intensity of sorties, and the long time in the air on each, US fast jet pilots flying off carriers during GW2 were being prescribed - how shall we put it - certain medications to keep them awake and alert... i.e. amphetemines.
I know that with ground troops in WW2, Vietnam etc... there were many experiments with giving troops such substances to promote alertness, overcome fear etc.
But initially the thought of flying a multi-million dollar fast jet off a carrier, at night, with full tanks and loaded to the max with live weapons while having such substances in your bloodstream seemed too scary to be true.
Then I considered I was probably just being a little naive, and that maybe this was one of those realities about military operations that those in uniform don't talk about... and that crashing said jet due to tiredness would be more frightening than flying a little `wired' and wide awake. Do the military know in detail exactly the degree that aviators reflexes etc. are affected by such drugs? Is it true... or just another case of sensationalist, over imaginative and inaccurate non-specialist media getting it wrong?