The military puts its new recruits through weeks and weeks of torturous training in order to improve their endurance. But the Pentagon is looking at other, quick-fix ways to stretch the limits of troop performance -- part of an array of programs meant to make them stronger, smarter, and more resilient than ever before. "Sleep, nutrition, activity level... they all increase the possibility of a kid getting killed on the battlefield," says one former official at Darpa, the Pentagon's blue-sky research arm. "We tried to figure out how to make those not be rate-limiting factors."
The idea isn't "to create Supermen," he adds. It's "so these kids could perform at their peak, stay at their peak, and come home to their families."
The investigations in this "Peak Soldier Performance" suite of projects, conducted over the last several years, have often begun far from the battlefield, with the most elementary research steps. At University of California, Berkeley, geneticist Jasper Rine investigates how "genetic variation" might affect troops' "peak and sustainable performance levels." Oklahoma State veterinarian Michael Davis spent a long time examines how the Iditarod sled dogs of Alaska managed to run for 1200 miles straight, and wonders whether people could be granted the same endurance. (Not yet, unfortunately.)
Oxford University biochemists look for ways to take mitochondria -- the body's powerhouses, which ordinarily turn sugars into energy -- and put them on the equivalent of the Atkins diet, instead. The goal is to get the organelles to work off of energy-dense, fat-based ketones -- without all the nasty side-effects of a constant cheeseburger binge. If the scientists are successful, small rations of the ketone cuisine could boost a soldier's stamina, and maybe even keep him nourished for days at a time. So far, so good: In early lab tests, rats now able to run several times longer than normal.
Lan Bo Chen, a pathologist at the Dan Farber Cancer Institute in Cambridge, MA, searched for something that would boost the overall production of mitochondria, regardless of what the powerhouses consumed. Eventually, he blended a green tea extract with a B-vitamin cocktail; it sent mitochondria production skyrocketing in lab rats, tripling the animals' endurance. Then, the drink was given to high-performance cyclists in a series of trials at Pepperdine University. The results weren't nearly as dramatic – just an average three percent improvement in a 30 kilometer ride. But considering these athletes' races are often decided by tenths of a second, the study was considered a major breakthrough. The Army is now testing the drink out in its Natick, MA Soldier Systems Center. Maybe, some day, it'll become required drinking for buck privates.
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