Intelligent Fighter Pilot Support for Distributed Unmanned and Manned Decision Making

Background

In the early days of aviation keeping the aircraft in the air was hard enough. The aviators were fully occupied by piloting. However, after some years of progress within the domain the aircraft could be better controlled in the air and there was also time to regard other activities. The pilots found time not only to aviate but also to navigate. In the military domain pilots could communicate what they had observed on the ground after they had landed, which could provide important reconnaissance information. Later, the history of military aviation is full of various types of aircraft performing very different missions in numerous scenarios. Fighter pilots of today make use of a flight control system or an “autopilot” or other functions to aid the piloting of the aircraft. Also, modern fighters are equipped with advanced sensor suits, high tech weapon systems, electronic warfare systems and many other subsystems that a modern fighter pilot has to manage. If you were ever given the opportunity to look at the instrumentation of a modern fighter aircraft performing a tactical mission you would probably see that instrumentation and displays to a great deal is used for tactical considerations and not only for flight instrumentation. The role of a fighter pilot has been transformed over time; from pilot to tactical decision maker.

This long term trend has led to current situations where a fighter pilot has to manage several tactical subsystems simultaneously and, at the same time, assess on going parallel tactical situations on the ground and/or in the air and make fast and important decisions to provide influence of the situations. Many situations are very applicable to naturalistic decision making as it were characterised by Klein, Orasanu, Calderwood, and Zsambok (1993). Situations are often complex, uncertain and dynamic characterised by high stakes, potentially risking both own and others life under extreme time pressure, calling for naturalistic decision making. Also, demanding situations may appear suddenly when performing almost any military mission, either it is an air-to-air mission, an air-to-surface mission or a reconnaissance mission. Also civil aviation can at times also be very demanding and dynamic at times, even though the military component of foes influencing the situation adds an extra need for specific decision making and corresponding decision support.