To get an idea of how critical your vestibular system is to your vision, hold up one finger in front of you at arm’s length, then look at it as you rotate your head back and forth. Fine, no problem: your finger is nice and clear. Your vestibular system tracked the turning of your head and gave your eyes the information to stay on target. Now hold your head still and move your finger back and forth while following it with your eyes. Now there is no vestibular input because your head is stationary, so your finger becomes blurry. Motion sickness arises from a mismatch between vision and vestibular perception and is a major component of spatial D.
Iraqi Nightlife
Gosden survived his mission by virtue of using his aircraft’s forward-looking infrared (FLIR) optical array, which gave him the ability, in tandem with skill and luck, to notice a line of infrared lights marking a column of American light armored vehicles (LAVs) on the ground. He could not see the ground, but the LAVs gave him just enough information about the landscape to allow him to land “safely”—that is, behind enemy lines in the middle of the desert surrounded by a high-speed battle.
“I knew that the ground behind those LAVs must be flat, meaning we could land there. We knew our position was behind enemy lines. But we didn’t care—we had completed our flying for the evening. The other pilot on my helicopter, Captain Rodney ‘Dino’ Dean, was suffering from vertigo, which had the opposite result to what was happening to me [the leans]. It was a miracle we got down,” Gosden said. “After landing, we got our weapons and set up a perimeter around the aircraft. When the sun came up, we could see well enough to fly out.”
Training to Survive
Night-vision devices such as personal goggles or the FLIR viewing system that Gosden used can ameliorate spatial D at night, but their performance is highly dependent on illumination, terrain contrast and particulates in the air. For instance, these devices offer little help during brownout conditions, where dust can severely degrade visibility. The main defense that pilots have against the dangerous misperceptions and illusions reviewed here is simply the awareness that they can happen.
Back at the Miramar station, the architecture of the training facility is vintage 1950s U.S. military, the lobby festooned with uniformed mannequins in ejection seats. The lecture hall decor is exactly what you would find on the Boat (navy lingo for an aircraft carrier): overengineered steel recliner-size seats bolted to the floor, padded generously with genuine Naugahyde coverings. Flight suits abound.
“When naval aviation was young, we were crashing two planes a day,” Gayles says, “mostly caused by inevitable equipment failures. Now we crash 20 planes a year or so, and every crash is a very big deal, covered by the press, and reported throughout the military. Most crashes are no longer the result of maintenance or equipment failures. Those problems have been reduced to the point that the main issue is human error. Pilots sometimes fly perfectly good aircraft into the ground.”
Why does that happen among the most highly trained pilots in the world? The answer: every sensory and cognitive system is highly taxed when flying military aircraft. Visual illusions alone accounted for about 20 crashes from 1990 to 2008, making the combined contribution of illusions of all types twice as high as the next biggest crash cause: fatigue.
This challenge is why Gosden and this group of aviators are here today, to receive their once-every-four-years refresher in situational awareness, aviation physiology and crash-survival training. They are lectured, questioned and then dunked unceremoniously into a huge, cold saltwater pool inside a crash simulator while wearing a blindfold. It’s scary, and the only people having fun are the two of us (Martinez-Conde and Macknik) on the side of the pool looking in.
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Add CommentYeah!: this is true, I'm aware of an F-86 Sabre pilot that completely convinced the fuel gauge indication of a partly loaded fuel tanks was wrong, and fearing to run out of fuel while still in flight, made an emergency landing in a plowed field just to see the fuel tanks broken and releasing a lot remaining fuel at bellying. It may have burn!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have never read an account of the Italian incident that describes anything but joyriding. He violated air space rules, and then engaged in a coverup. I just started reading this journal and now have questions about the editors.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGreat article, well explained! I flew in Navy P3's during the Cold War and it was easy to become somewhat disoriented flying *between* cloud layers that seem horizontal but arent always actually horizontal; they form along pressure gradients rather than just altitude.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot only that, but the relatively slow moving P3 sometimes feels like it is flying *backward* after a great many hours of cruising and not only does one get visual effects, but auditory effects as one's ears try to make sense of the constant droning of engines and avionics. Sometimes I heard classical music; not like a replay in my mind, but I could actually hear it amid the droning of the engines. Knowing it was an illusion did not make it go away.
Then you must drop down to 500 feet above the oft-stormy sea to inspect a ship. You depend almost entirely on radar altimeter and attitude indicator because there is no horizon and you have absolutely no idea whether you are too close to little waves or adequately high above really big waves -- it all looks the same. Then you finally see the ship and realize the waves are REALLY big, twice the distance crest-to-crest as a supertanker is long.
I should point out that I wasn't the pilot of a P3, nor even strictly speaking crew -- rather, I accompanied P3's from time to time. I did get to sit in the right seat a couple of times and the P3 (Lockheed Orion, beefed up somewhat from the civilian version) was perhaps the best airplane ever made for operating in Alaska.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell this article makes unmanned aircraft all the more
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisattractive. Of what use is a control operator that is
less capable than the machine itself or subject to the
vagaries of being human.
Drones are the future. After all it is just a game and
an example of mans failure to agree sans war.
Right now America is the best armed second world power,
where just a few years back we had it all.
kienhua68, I do wish you would make up your mind.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs it "After all it is just a game" in which case this nation ought not to bother with a military at all, or "America is the best armed second world power,
where just a few years back we had it all."
What is different? Just a few years back men flew airplanes, not drones.
So you see, you open the door by your own bad logic to more bad logic.
As I think on my own military career, I contemplate whether drones could have done any part of the military mission. The answer is obviously "yes" since drones ARE fulfilling part of the military mission.
But American P3 aircraft performed far more Search and Rescue operations (many) than destroying Russian submarines (zero). So, while one might imagine a drone capable of attacking a submarine, it is not easy to imagine a drone in a meaningful search and rescue operation. But let us consider that drone capable of attacking a submarine. What is the risk that it might be coopted, falling into operational hands of your enemy? There you are with a rogue and armed drone no longer in your control.
The white house still stands because human people onboard a human-piloted jet airliner chose to die in the hinterlands of Pennsylvania rather than allow that aircraft to be used as an agent of destruction.
Furthermore, I have doubts about the viability of drones in electromagnetically unfriendly environments such as was often the case around Iceland during aurora borealis outbreaks.
Back on the search and rescue aspect -- if you were floating on a raft out at sea, would you prefer to see above you a Navy P3 knowing it was crewed by human beings that now know where you are, and are about to toss out survival supplies until a rescue ship arrives, or would you rather see a small Boeing drone buzzing around, knowing that someone in Seattle knows where you are, thank you very much, and might care or might not. He's going home to supper and video games in a hour. No "skin in the game".
What you say may all be true even if it is based on press reports but the article is talking about something else. The article is describing why the pilot hit the cables even though visibilty was perfect.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhether he should have been flying in that area or what his motive was for being there is the subject of a different article. The issue is why did he fly into something he could clearly see and could easily have avoided.