BENNIES AND THE JET PILOTS NOTHING NEW

The Internet is constantly punching new holes in what people used to call
"national security."

Pay a visit to Globalsecurity.org, run by a Washington defence think-tank,
and you can look over fresh private-sector satellite photos of an American
military buildup at a "secret" Qatar airbase - warplanes, bunkers, everything.

But the pending U.S. attack on Iraq is old news, even if it hasn't yet
happened. What really ought to cause a fuss is the site's link to a U.S.
Navy Surgeon General document called a "Performance Maintenance Manual." It
outlines military protocol on giving stimulant drugs to pilots to keep them
awake and alert on long missions.

The U.S. Air Force and Navy air units have been giving uppers (or
"go-pills, to use the forces" slang) to their pilots since Vietnam.

The drug of choice for American combat pilots these days is Dexedrine, an
amphetamine with a shopping list of side effects, including (but not
limited to) nervousness, addiction and paranoia.

Why should we care? Recently, the USAF acknowledged it has been treating
mission pilots in Afghanistan with Dexedrine to keep them from passing out
at the stick on long missions, which can stretch to nine hours or more
airborne.

"We manage maintenance, fuel and weapons; we can also manage fatigue," says
the prologue to the manual.

"Managing" fatigue, according to the manual, sometimes involves a ricochet
regimen of amphetamines to keep the pilots awake while on the job, and
sedatives ("no-go pills") to bring them down and help them sleep after the
job is done.

"The military was using stimulants for pilots during the Second World War,"
said a spokesman for the USAF Surgeon General's Office. "This is not news."

Naturally, people have been asking whether this frequent use of
sleep-management drugs has had any effect on the pilots' ability to
concentrate. U.S. pilots have been responsible for a reported 10 friendly
fire mishaps in Afghanistan - including the cockup that killed four
Canadian soldiers back in April, and that ghastly air attack on an Afghan
wedding party that may have killed dozens of civilians.

"Here's an analogy," said Tim Brown, senior analyst with
Globalsecurity.com. "If it was truckers routinely using drugs this way, the
hue and cry from the public would be unreal."

Could the drugs being used to "manage" fatigue be making jet pilots
trigger-happy? One sleep specialist said that, unless the cycle of
stimulants and sedatives is being controlled very precisely, it could be
depressing the pilots' ability to pay attention to what's going on around them.

"With almost every one of these drugs, the withdrawal symptoms are the
reverse of the drug's own effect," said Dr. Alistair MacLean, a professor
of psychology at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont. He studies sleep
deprivation.

"The concern would be that if someone is on the 'upper' and it begins to
wear off and go into the withdrawal state, that's going to affect that
person's ability to concentrate. Staying alert might become more and more
difficult. The actual effect would depend a lot on the dosage."

The USAF reports it offers "voluntary" Dexedrine doses of 10 mg to its
pilots in Afghanistan - double the dose given to American pilots during the
Gulf War.

"At low dosages amphetamines primarily increase alertness, with significant
side effects only beginning as the doses are increased," says the manual.
"This is consistent with reports from USAF pilots during Desert Storm, who
stated that 5 mgs of (Dexedrine) helped maintain alertness without causing
other changes in mood or perception."

Setting aside the risk of addiction, the most obvious worry for medics
giving Dexedrine to pilots is its potential to spark feelings of irrational
suspicion and paranoia - not good feelings for someone with a thumb on a
bomb trigger to have.

MacLean, however, said the risk of irrational Dexedrine-fuelled aggression
is secondary to the risk of the see-saw drug regimen causing dangerous
lapses in concentration.

That concentration is more vital than ever, because combat flying has
become more demanding than ever. British aviation consultant Nick Cook said
the vast amount of electronic data available to modern fighter pilots puts
them at constant risk of becoming disoriented through "information
overload," unless their reflexes are at their peak.

"That's why the reality of combat in the future will be unmanned aircraft,
because of this realization that pilots are the weak link."