The process of command and control in air operations

The purpose was to study the command and control process of Air to Air missions in real time. Of special interest were Collaboration, Situational Awareness and Support Officials of six positions in the chain of command and control were observed. The study was carried out during Air Combat Training 2002, which was the first of its kind within the recently reorganized Air Force Staff. Seven missions were studied. All involved officials answered questions on a seven-graded scale. Overlap was of special interest, therefore officials were also requested to rate how they thought that other members of the "decision chain" would rate on the same question. The results indicate that officials within a unit were more overlapped than members from different units (this was especially pronounced on the SA questions). Secondly, received support was rated as more important than delivered support, especially far out in the decision chain. The correlation between rated support and rated mission difficulty were insignificant, as well as the correlation between rated support and rated mission success. The report also, shortly, discusses the results in the light of decision support systems. Conclusions: 1) It is most important to support the exchange of information between physically separated units to guarantee a high level of situational awareness. 2) It is important to support the decision makers´ close to those who carry out the missions. A possible measure would be to develop a computer based support system that gives the same information as face-to-face communication. 3) Situational awareness seems to be the most important feature to optimize. However, to answer the question which aspects of situational awareness are most important, further studies are necessary.