FWIW, there is a new military drug out there, and it does keep people awake. Currently I’m taking it for chronic fatigue but I no longer need over 6 hours of sleep, previously i slept for 10 hours. My father tried taking one of these when he had to stay up all night, and he was up for 2 days with no sign of slowing down, he slept normally the next night. If anyone is interested you should google for Provigil.
I can go for about 2-3 weeks at a time with only 3-4 hours of sleep a night - no naps or anything during the day. Then I revert to about a week of approximately 8-9 hours a day/night. I can then go back to the 3-4 or not.
I’ve done this cycle for several years, but I’m pretty sure that I couldn’t manage to keep up the 3-4 hours a night for much longer than a couple of weeks.
If we’re talking about medications, I recently read an interesting article about modafinil. Sounds a little freaky, but could be useful in controlled situations.