Mission Performance Aid for Aerial Combat

This paper addresses the concepts, methods, apparatus, and tools used to establish the operational requirements and system architecture for an advanced mission performance aid (the smart cockpit) that targets aerial combat operations. As the complexity of our modern avionic systems increase, it is important to define operational requirements and crew station display features early in the design cycle. Many observers insist higher quality front-end work be performed to reduce the growing number of back-end mistakes and cost overruns. This paper provides a top-down orientation that treats platform, avionics, weapons, and flight crew as an integrated system. This facilitates the analysis of system-wide functional attributes that represent key design drivers. Topics include mission decomposition, critical task analysis, information requirements, function allocation, and crew station display features. This material is intended for managers, engineers, human factor professionals, and test and evaluation flight crews improving mission performance in an increasingly complex environment.