For years, Oura has worked alongside defense and government organizations to better understand readiness, recovery, and performance in demanding environments. This includes early infectious disease detection efforts, as well as pilots using Oura health insights to inform operational risk management.
That track record has made Oura a trusted platform for a range of human performance efforts, including work by Soaak Technologies with defense and government partners. In that context, Oura Ring serves as the biometric layer, providing sleep, recovery, and physiological signals that Soaak pairs with its passive, non-invasive sound-based interventions to support performance.
Health Insights, When It Counts
In high-stakes environments, sleep quality, stress load, and cognitive readiness can meaningfully influence performance. Oura Ring gives individuals and teams a clearer picture of those signals through metrics such as sleep, heart rate variability, and resting heart rate, helping make readiness more measurable over time. That visibility matters in operational settings, where traditional approaches to monitoring fatigue and recovery may be limited by time, environment, or workflow constraints.
Proven in the field
Defense organizations have already explored this potential in multiple ways. In 2021, a military flight training innovation office began testing wearable technology with voluntary fighter training pilots to improve operational risk management, with Oura Ring used overnight to help pilots track sleep and overall readiness. In 2024, a military airlift wing launched a human performance effort using Oura as part of a broader program to help personnel better understand fatigue, rest, and mission readiness.
Backed by research
Oura’s role in defense-related work is also supported by a growing body of research. A 2025 peer-reviewed study conducted by researchers at a military medical research institution and The Ohio State University found that Oura Ring Gen3 and Oura Ring 4 showed the strongest agreement for heart rate variability and resting heart rate measurements among the consumer wearables tested. For organizations evaluating wearable technology in demanding real-world settings, that kind of validation matters.
How Soaak Uses Oura
Soaak Technologies is a human performance company focused on personalized sound-based wellness support, with solutions designed to help improve sleep, reduce stress, and support focus and energy. Through work with defense and government partners, Soaak explored how pairing those interventions with wearable biometric data could address a persistent challenge: supporting human performance in secure or operationally constrained environments where traditional solutions may be harder to deploy.
Oura Ring provides the biometric foundation that makes this approach possible, offering visibility into key physiological signals including sleep duration, heart rate variability, and resting heart rate. From there, Soaak analyzes those insights to deliver personalized sound-based interventions intended to support sleep optimization, stress resilience, and cognitive readiness.
In Their Own Words
«Based on my professional evaluation experience, the Soaak App, when paired with Oura Ring, provided a passive, non-invasive means for individuals to both reference physiologic indicators such as sleep, recovery, and autonomic strain, and to support modulation of an upregulated or agitated physiologic state in high-stress contexts. Importantly, this support occurred without interfering with mission execution or operational focus.«*
Tiffany M. Harwood, Maj, USAF, BSC, BCD, LCSW Mental Health Flight Commander | Biomedical Sciences Corps Executive (SGB) 61 MDS, Los Angeles AFB, CA
Looking Ahead
This work reflects a broader shift in how organizations approach human performance, moving from a reactive, injury-focused model to proactive, whole-person optimization. By building on continuous, real-time insights from wearables like Oura, solutions like Soaak open new possibilities to enhance readiness and support the people engaged in the mission.
As organizations across government and defense continue to think more proactively about readiness, the opportunity is not simply to collect more data. It is to turn meaningful data into better support. Oura is proud to play a central role in that future and collaborate with Soaak Technologies.
LEARN MORE: Oura for Government & Defense
*These observations reflect personal professional experience and assessment and do not imply endorsement or adoption by the Department of the Air Force.