Hey Woff and Wolf
Just to add a little more knowledge to the subject here, the problem isn't finding a way to conduct operations without using some type of drug. The problem is trying to overcome the limits of the human body and evolution. Man has evolved as a diurnal creature. Trying to sustain combat operations at night goes against how our bodies operate. Sure, we can shift our circadian rythm to adapt to a night schedule, but we can never fully adapt, even if we sustain a night schedule for years. The fact is, our best performance at night will never be as good as our best performance during the daytime due to many factors involved in how our bodies operate. If one is forced to live a life that has a crazy schedule that interupts our natural circadian rythm then we get into a state called circadian desynchrinosis. At this point a person has no true circadian rythm and perfomance drops considerably. Some doctors theorize that this is why airline pilots have such terrible longetivity compared to other groups.
The drugs that doctors give aircrew are meant to try and overcome the effects of fatigue. They were developed because some aircrew have to deploy great distances and perform long flights in single seat aircraft that exceed the performance capabilities of the human body. For instance, deploying from the states to southwest Asia can involve a flight of more than ten or twelve hours, with multiple in-flight refuelings. When you can't get up and move around, sitting this long and not falling asleep can become a real challenge. In some airplanes missions can be over twenty hours. For bomber aircraft, a combat mission can involve a five or six hour flight with two refuelings just to get to the combat zone. Add four or five hours on station and then a return flight home with more refuelings and you can see the challenge for aircrew, especially when the cockpit is not big enough to add extra aircrew.
There are a myriad of situations where it may be helpful to give aircrew some type of stimulant to help them get through a long, tough, demanding mission. In a perfect world, we would not require our pilots to perform these missions, but this is not a perfect world.
Fogeo