Examining the Relationship between Communications and Situation Awareness (SA) in the Tactical Air-to-Air Environment

Abstract

Identifying and measuring behaviors consistently associated with situational awareness (SA) is frequently problematic. Though subtle, a person's SA may be reflected by how he/she communicates with other members of a team. Someone with high SA may not only provide different types of communication than someone with low SA, but also may exhibit different communication patterns (e.g., to whom).In the current study, we examined the communications of F-15 lead pilots who, along with an assigned wingman and ground control intercept, flew 36 simulated combat engagements. Subject matter experts based SA ratings of 40 F-15 lead pilots on (a) 28 explicit critical behaviors identified in a task analysis and (b) implicit behaviors such as communication. Results revealed that high SA pilots (a) communicated more overall, (b) utilized their human resources more by directing more and requesting more information, and (c) were more specific regarding "to whom" they were speaking. Evaluating the communications for high and low overall ranked SA lead pilots provides insight as to how expert raters may have been influenced by observable behaviors. A follow-up study is being conducted to examine (a) if the communication patterns found here remain the same with an independent measure of SA taken from the pilots' squadrons and (b) how the communications within a team change over time. Analysis of the types and patterns of calls made may help identify who does or does not have good tactical air-to-air SA; this analysis may subsequently lead to possible training strategies to improve SA.

Conceptualization of team situation awareness : attributes, measurement approach and underlying factors

“…When the numbers of thought units in each category were transformed into a percentage of the total units communicated (see Table 4-4), the percentage of information request and response were found to significantly correlate to navigation errors, r = .93, p < .01 and r = .95, p < .01, respectively. Previous study by Hollenbeck et al (1995) Contrary to the findings by Hollenbeck et al (1995), Schreiber and colleagues (Schreiber et al, 1998;Schreiber et al, 1996) reported that high SA pilots requested more information. The latter finding is similar to the trend found in the enemy engagement task,…”