U.S. PILOTS STAY UP TAKING 'UPPERS'

WASHINGTON - U.S. jet fighter pilots, responsible for at least 10 deadly
"friendly fire" accidents in the Afghanistan war, have regularly been given
amphetamines to fly longer hours.

Then when they return to base, the pilots are given sedatives by air force
doctors to help them sleep, before beginning the whole cycle again on the
next mission, often less than 12 hours later.

The exact drugs pilots are given and how they're taken is outlined in a
24-page document obtained by The Star, produced by the Top Gun fighter
training school and the Naval Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory in
Pensacola, Fla.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Air Force Surgeon-General's Office in
Washington confirmed pilots are given the stimulant Dexedrine, generically
known as dextroamphetamine, to stay alert during combat missions in
Afghanistan.

Pilots refer to Dexedrine as "go-pills." The sleeping pills they are given,
called Ambien (zolpidem) and Restoril (temazepam), are referred to as
"no-go pills."

"When fatigue could be expected to degrade air crew performance, they are
given Dexedrine in 10 mg doses," air force spokeswoman Betty-Anne Mauger
told The Star.

It is not known whether Dexedrine was involved in the friendly fire
incident in which an American fighter jet dropped a 500-pound laser-guided
bomb that killed four Canadian soldiers early on April 18. But the
possibility did come to the mind of one defence analyst.

"Better bombing through chemistry," remarked John Pike, director of
Globalsecurity.org, a Washington-area defence policy think-tank.

"This was certainly one of my first thoughts after the Canadian friendly
fire accident," he said in an interview. "The initial depiction made it
seem as if the pilot was behaving in an unusually aggressive fashion."

Illinois Air National Guard Maj. Harry Schmidt was piloting the F-16
supersonic fighter that dropped the bomb. Maj. William Umbach was flying
with him in another F-16 that night.

"I don't know the answer," Schmidt's lawyer, Charles Gittins, responded
last night about whether Dexedrine was involved. "I never asked my pilot if
he was medicated. But it's quite common. He's on vacation now, so I'll
check with him about it when he gets back."

Pike said there's little controversy among politicians or the American
public about the use of amphetamines by the air force because "I don't
think anybody even knows about it.

"The aviation community and the air force community certainly don't like to
talk about so-called 'performance enhancing' drugs," he said.

There have been reports that Schmidt and his fellow pilots - originally
deployed to patrol the U.S.-enforced no-fly zone over southern Iraq from an
American base in Kuwait - had complained of fatigue since they were also
ordered to fly combat missions over Afghanistan. Gittins said he was not
aware of such complaints.

Schmidt and his fellow pilots had to fly for three hours to arrive at the
combat zone. An F-16 mission to Afghanistan from Kuwait routinely takes
nine hours including three hours over the target area plus the trip back.
Pilots also attend pre-flight briefings and debriefings after they return.

Mauger said Dexedrine is commonly used by pilots on missions of more than
eight hours' duration, or when pilots get less than the recommended 12
hours' rest between missions, as was the case for the pilots on double duty
from the Kuwait air base.

The 24-page Top Gun document, entitled Performance Maintenance During
Continuous Flight Operations, reports that in an anonymous survey among
pilots who flew in Desert Storm, the 1991 Persian Gulf War, 60 per cent
said they used Dexedrine. In units that saw the most frequent combat
missions, usage was as high as 96 per cent.

During that war, Dexedrine was administered in doses of 5 mg each, as
opposed to the 10 mg pills now offered to pilots in Afghanistan.

So far, amphetamine use has not been mentioned in the summaries made public
of either the Canadian or U.S. probes into the accident, which killed
Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry soldiers Sgt. Marc Leger, Pte.
Nathan Smith, Pte. Richard Green and Cpl. Ainsworth Dyer.

But according to a leaked transcript of radio communications, Schmidt -
after reporting that he was being fired at from the ground but being told
by air controllers to "hold fire" - suddenly declared he was "rolling in"
and dropped the bomb.

It was only after Schmidt hit his target that he asked the controllers to
confirm he was being fired at. The dispatcher responded: "You're cleared.
Self-defence."

The U.S. military appears to view pilots as machines. Under the heading
"Basic Principles" in the Top Gun document, it says: "We manage
maintenance, we manage fuel and weapons; we can also manage fatigue."

Pilots are allowed to "self-regulate" the amounts of Dexedrine they take.
They carry the pills in the single-person cockpit of their F-16s and take
them as they wish.

As one unidentified Desert Storm squadron commander said of his pilots in
the document: "You must give them guidelines and then let them
self-regulate. If you can't trust them with the medication then you can't
trust them with a 50 million dollar airplane to try and go kill someone."

Retired Col. Richard Graham of Plano, Texas, who logged 4,600 hours of
flight time in the U.S. Air Force, including 210 combat missions in
Vietnam, said pilots in that war routinely took Dexedrine. The air force
approved its use in 1960.

"We would be tested for uppers and downers and if we tolerated them okay,
we went forward," he said in an interview. As long as nobody is abusing it,
I think it's okay.

"I'm not a big fan of anybody taking medication in the flight business, but
sometimes situations call for it in combat. I never had any bad effects
from it and it served me well."

But medical literature indicates that amphetamines can have severe side
effects. The worst is called "amphetamine psychosis." It causes
hallucinations as well as paranoid delusions.

"Dexedrine also leads a person to build a tolerance level for the drug and
when higher doses are offered, anything at that level develops addictive
tendencies among those who continue to use it regularly," said Dr. Joyce A.
Walsleben, director of the Sleep Disorder Centre at the New York University
School of Medicine. "The threat of abuse and addiction is definitely higher
with Dexedrine."

Pilots, after being tested for drug tolerance, are also asked to sign a
consent form, which was also obtained by The Star.

Entitled "Informed Consent For Operational Use of Dexedrine," it begins by
saying: "It has been explained to me and I understand that the U.S. Food
and Drug Administration has not approved the use of Dexedrine to manage
fatigue ... (and) I further understand that the decision to take this
medication is mine alone."

Air force insiders say the pilots really do not have a choice in taking the
drug. The form states that "should I choose not to take it under
circumstances where its use appears indicated ... my commander, upon advice
of the flight surgeon, may determine whether or not I should be considered
unfit to fly a given mission."