ABSTRACT
This chapter presents preliminary findings from an attempt to identify situation assessment and decision making processes that account for differences in observed mission performance among skilled fighter pilots. The impetus for the study came directly from the U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff. In 1991, he posed a number of questions concerning situation awareness (SA) for the F-15 fighter world. First, what is SA? Can it be objectively measured? Is SA learned, or does it represent a basic ability? In response to the question, "What is it?," a working group at the Air Staff produced the following operator's definition of SA: "a pilot's continuous perception of self and aircraft in relation to the dynamic environment of flight, threats, and mission, and the ability to forecast, then execute tasks based on that perception" (Carroll, 1992). Although definitions of SA in the research literature focus primarily on processes underlying the assessment and resulting knowledge of the situation (Endsley, 1988), our working definition also included forecasting, decision making, and task execution. From a naturalistic, as well as an operational Air Force perspective, SA is more than simply knowledge and understanding of the environment.
