Crew of Futuristic Carrier USS Ford Will Wear Electronic Fatigue Trackers

The crew of the futuristic carrier USS Gerald R. Ford are about to test out an equally futuristic personnel-monitoring device. On their next deployment, members of the crew will have an Oura Ring personal health tracker - a small titanium ring that contains sensors for heart rate, body temperature, blood oxygen level and acceleration. Among other things, this data allows Oura to assess sleep quality and fatigue, which are the main targets of a new Navy study. 

Fatigue is a constant theme in maritime casualty reports, and the U.S. Navy's two biggest losses of the past decade both had lack of sleep as a contributing factor. In the early hours of June 17, 2017, the destroyer USS Fitzgerald collided with the container ship ACX Crystal, tearing a hole measuring about 12 feet by 17 feet in Fitzgerald's hull. Seven sailors were killed, and the survivors saved their ship only through heroic efforts at damage control. Barely more than two months later, destroyer USS John S. McCain struck the tanker Alnic MC near Singapore, killing 10 of McCain's sailors. 

Investigators found that the crews of McCain and Fitzgerald had had too little time for rest. Aboard Fitzgerald, the watch officers had "little to no sleep" before the night of the casualty because of in-port events, an after-action report found. On McCain, records showed that the 14 crewmembers on the bridge during the collision had an average of less than 5 hours of sleep in the previous 24 hours, and one relevant individual had had no sleep at all. 

Eight years later, Navy researchers are still working to develop better tools to help commands address fatigue. The health-data study aboard USS Gerald R. Ford is an attempt to gather more information on how a long deployment affects the crew, researchers told Navy Times.

Operational security informed the Navy's selection of hardware and software: after the Strava fiasco of 2018, in which a cloud-based personal fitness app disclosed the GPS locations of military personnel around the world, the Navy selected a product that would be more discreet. Oura Ring lacks a long-distance RF signature, researchers told Navy Times. 

The ultimate objective is to give crewmembers a way to watch their own readiness, and at the same time, to give commanding officers detailed data on how their subordinates are affected by fatigue. “[We're] helping leadership on these ships understand how the mission is impacting the sleep and the recovery of their sailors, especially as they go on these deployments that involve a lot of stress,” Dr. Rachel Markwald of the Naval Health Research Center told Navy Times.

Participating crewmembers will get to keep their own Oura Ring if they wear it during more than three-quarters of the deployment.