Model-Based Situation Awareness Metric for Air Superiority Scenarios

The Phase I effort will assess the feasibility of developing a model-based metric for evaluating subsystem effectiveness in enhancing pilot situation awareness (SA) in air-to-air combat. The focus will be on subsystem contribution to pilot SA in the critical beyond-visual-range (BVR) to within-visual range (WVR) merge, and the goal will be to develop a quantitative computable metric which can be embedded in a large-scale engagement level model, such as the Man-in-the-Loop Air-to-Air System Performance Evaluation Model (MIL-AASPEM). The proposed approach combines an integrated crew/system-model of pilot SA, with a pilot-centered metric that measures the disparity between the actual situation and the model-generated one. The crew/system model formalizes the SA process and builds upon our earlier work in modeling pilot SA during the BVR phase. It will make use of object-oriented software to facilitate later incorporation in MIL-AASPEM. We propose a three task effort: (1) develop a prototype of the crew/system model and metric; (2) develop and demonstrate a scenario focusing on the BVR/WVR merge; and (3) specify requirements for full-scale development and validation.