No rest for the weary: Lack of sleep threatens safety and readiness

I've been out for 23 years so it's hard to judge how much worse things are than when I was in. Though in talking to my son who's on active duty it seems he has more downtime than I ever had. Of course it's a bit of an apples to oranges comparison because I was a snipe on a CG and DD and he's in Combat Systems on a CVN.

It's sadly the same old story

The aviation community has understood this for decades. This is why we have crew rest rules. Studies have shown that once you are past the 17-19 hour mark you are mentally impaired on the same level as someone who has had enough beers to blow a 0.05 BAC. Go much past that any you are up to 0.1 BAC. If you do that night after night the amount of time you are awake before you become impaired decreases significantly. So for instance after 5 days of only getting 5 hours of sleep you could be considered drunk at the 10 to 12 hour mark right when you are supposed to be on watch. Now combine that with 10 or so other watch standers plus leadership that is getting even less sleep and you have a extremely dangerous situation.

https://hbr.org/2006/10/sleep-deficit-the-performance-killer