Wrong. Sleeping on guard duty in a combat situation has been a captial offense in the US military. Even today Article 113 of the UCMJ—Misbehavior of sentinel or lookout -allows for execution.
By sleeping on guard duty in Afganistan the “victim” could have gotten everyone in his unit killed.
Advances have been made in medical understanding and my understanding is that our military, if not yours, keeps up with those discoveries.
In modern warfare you can and will encounter incredible things never before encountered. It's just a matter of time until sleeping agents show up.
I saw a guy with near 4.0's quarterly evals go to NJP several times in a few months. Today after some life experiences I now realize the poor guy had Manic Depression. The fact his brother had it and had killed himself was my clue. He needed help, he deserved help, the military he served owed him that help the same as if he had gotten his leg shot off. He didn't deserve going from E-4to E-1. He would go into uncontrolled rages at any little thing and all the lifers would do was fill out a report chit and sit and badger him so they could fill out another.
I have no use for dirt bags who on purpose screw up and endanger troops. I also have no use for NCO's and Oficer's who know a man under them needs help and just doesn't give a rats ass because he had s some idiotic prejudice about mental or neurologails illnesses that endangers his men as much as the person with those conditions, Maybe more so because it was his job to get the man out of the unit.
BTW sleep related disorders in some services will get you an honorable medical boot out like sleep walking on a ship. Everyone accepts sleepwalking though.
Narcolepsy sure sounds like the culprit and NCO's and Officers these days should be able to catch it and combat fatigue. Ever see anyone with Narcolepsy? I have the guy could fall asleep talking to you. Wake him up and two minutes later back asleep. BTW the guy was an Army vet Narcolepsy hit him after service.
Our troops thanks too the ongoing gross incompetence in congress and the Oval Office for the past 22 years are on eternal over deployment, being over extended, and under wind down time. Vets of NAM got far better roataions and unless they reenlisted only saw Nam once. Some troops on first enlistment are seeing Iraq and other war zones 4-5 times first enlistment.
IOW some bad stuff related to combat fatigue is very likely to happen even more so than all wars previous because there is no light at the end of the tunnel as far as military goals. The only thing surprising me is there isn't more break downs. There likely are but we likely aren't hearing about it.
I understand what going long periods without sleep does to the mind. I used to drive a rig. I know truckers who have seen kids riding tricycles down interstates from lack of sleep. Do you want someone in that state on guard? Talk about a sitiuation that could take out our own troops. After over 20 something hours with a few breaks along the way I'd pull over to cop some Z's a few minutes and do so in my seat. The second I woke up my right hand went down on the brakes in a cold sweat thinking I had fallen asleep driving.
Why not use you outrage to condemn the ongoing conditions our troop's now face which create these conditions too start with? Those conditions being too few troops are doing too much for too long a time. Look at the current End Troop Strengths and do the Math.