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Jan Walker, the spokesman for the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, which conceived "stealth" technology, confirmed the Pentagon was "working out ways to resist the effects of sleep deprivation. If our fighters can do that, we can fundamentally change the order of battle".
One of the agency's plans for keeping warriors awake is to "zap" their brains with electromagnetic energy. Much of the research is being conducted at Columbia University in New York, in the laboratories of the neurological science department.
Researchers have identified a small area of the brain above the left ear that they would zap either before or during missions. "When he needed it, the pilot could just be zapped during operations," said one leading research scientist.
The first research contracts for the program were handed out at the beginning of last year.
Other projects include work at the University of Wisconsin, where researchers are probing the brains of the white-crowned sparrow, a tiny song bird that migrates between Alaska and California.
Even when the birds are kept in cages, they become restless and will not sleep for a week during the migration season. The researchers are comparing their brains with those of a close avian cousin which does not migrate.
Meanwhile, biologists at the US Navy's Marine Mammals Program, which once trained dolphins to place mines against the hulls of enemy ships, is now studying how the animals keep part of their brains awake so that even when submerged and asleep they still surface to breathe.
Mothers and newborn dolphins have also been found to stay awake continuously for several days after birth.
The idea now is to identify the gene that allows this. Genetic codes could then be modified to create soldiers who run and run.
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