Cognitive Demands of Warfighter Readiness

This SBIR will identify a set of high-payoff training interventions that can be applied to improve the mission planning skills of USAF fighter pilots. The project will focus on the planning needs of warfighters who are using the Distributed MissionTraining (DMT) testbed at AFRL in Mesa, AZ. Interventions will be identified through a systematic Training Needs Analysis, in which a set of high-payoff mission planning skills are identified, promising interventions extracted through SME interviews andliterature review, and a Delphi approach is used to achieve consensus among a panel of experts concerning those interventions that will have potential to improve effectiveness of mission planning training. Phase I will result in concept designspecifications for the most promising interventions, including a plan for developing, implementing, and evaluating a package of interventions at AFRL's DMT testbed. Possible candidates include: computer-based training of key mission planning skills;embedded training of time-critical planning decisions; focused, intensive (deliberate) practice of error-prone planning tasks; on-call access to a dynamic mission archival library; Web-enabled