I spent two days this week with the Army’s Brain Health Consortium. We meet a few times a year, different people show up, and it’s a very informal event. Among other things, this means we never quite know what we’ll focus as the conversation takes shape.

This month, it turned out to be sleep, and the importance thereof.

At the same time, GEN Milley spoke at AUSA’s Institute of Land Warfare, where he said that the Army’s plan from now through 2020 is to simply catch up technologically, and will make modest improvements in 2020 to 2025, with no new leap-ahead technologies available to the Army until after 2025.

And while I’m sure that’s true from a materiel standpoint, we could make some major leaps in readiness by focusing on brain health (NOT just brain illness, e.g., PTSD, depression, and TBI), starting with sleep. Based on our knowledge of brain health and sleep, two minor changes could increase readiness dramatically:

• Switch boot camp hours: Changing “lights out” time to 2300 with wake-up at 0700, instead of the current 2100 and 0500, respectively, would allow young soldiers to take advantage of their circadian rhythms (young adults tend to naturally be more nocturnal), resulting in much better sleep. Better sleep = more well rested = learn more, and reduce injury rates = higher completion rates (on the first time through).
• Switch PT hours: rather than having PT (and formation) early in the morning, have it in middle of the day or afternoon. Allowing soldiers to sleep later in the morning will result in reduced injury rates and increased PT scores. The few installations that have tried this have, uniformly, found this to be the case.

Of course, the Army prides itself on doing more by 9 AM than most people do all day – even if that slogan isn’t in use any more. And too many leaders brag about their lack of sleep. This would require a major cultural shift.

Materiel solutions are definitely easier to achieve. Even if they take a decade.