Engineering Commons^™

Assessing Impacts Of Decentralizing Airpower Command And Control, Allen Goodwin Peck

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Centralized control is a fundamental tenet of joint airpower doctrine, yet there are operational situations in which some degree of decentralization may be appropriate. The purpose of this research was to quantitatively assess the impacts of decentralizing the command and control (C2) of airpower under varying operational conditions. The research used the experimental method to test hypotheses regarding decentralization of control. JAEX, a stochastic, attrition-based Blue-versus-Red war gaming model, generated the required data.

The mean difference between JAEX outcomes under centralized control and outcomes under decentralized control constituted the dependent variable for each experiment. The independent variables were the operational …

Safety Culture, Training, Understanding, Aviation Passion: The Impact On Manual Flight And Operational Performance, Karlene Kassner Petitt

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The objective of this study was to understand pilots’ proclivity toward automation usage by identifying the relationship among pilot training, aircraft and systems understanding, safety culture, manual flight behavior, and aviation passion. A survey instrument titled Manual Flight Inventory (MFI) was designed to gather and assess self-reported variables of manual flight behavior, aviation passion, safety culture perception, pilot training, and pilot understanding. Demographic data and automation opinion-based questions were also asked to fully understand pilots’ thoughts on automation, safety culture, policies, procedures, training methodologies and assessment measures, levels of understanding, and study techniques. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was utilized to …