Naval Air Defense Threat Assessment: Cognitive Factors and Model

This paper reports the results of an investigation into the cognitive aspects of threat assessment. Threat assessment is the process of evaluating aircraft that are flying in the vicinity of one’s ship and determining how much of a threat they represent to one’s own ship and to the larger battle group. Data were collected from experienced U.S. Navy air defense officers as they interacted with a realistic scenario. Participants assigned threat and priority levels to selected aircraft, and described the factors and rationale that they used to arrive at their decisions. Twenty-two factors (e.g., Altitude, Speed, IFF) were identified. Participants consistently used different, but overlapping, subsets of factors, called profil s: A schema that lists the factors to be considered for a particular type of track, and the expected range of values that any given factor can take on. The participants appeared to sequentially evaluate the factors, and set threat levels that were inversely related to the fit between data and expectations. Aircraft that matched expectations were assigned lower threat levels than aircraft that did not match expectations. Threat Levels were biased by the Geopolitical Situation. A m del was proposed that embodied the major findings in the data