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The advancement of aviation drone technology has led to significant developments and improvements in the capabilities of military remotely piloted aircraft (RPAs, also known as drones). The prolific demand for RPA missions has led to an ever-increasing need for RPA pilots and to the development of a U.S. Air Force (USAF) RPA pilot career field.Read more

United States Air Force MQ-1 Predator remotely piloted aircraft pilots are critical assets in a challenging, high-risk, and rapidly evolving aviation career field. However, the Air Force has had difficulties over the past decade recruiting candidates with the “right stuff” and filling Predator pilot vacancies. The purpose of this study was to evaluate computer-based intelligenceRead more

The United States Air Force (USAF) MQ-1 Predator has emerged as a dominant weapons-bearing “drone” aircraft. Predator pilots have become critical assets in a challenging, high-risk, and rapidly evolving career field. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the combination of cognitive and neuropsychological aptitudes (MAB-II and MicroCog), as well as personality traits (NEO-PI-R)Read more

The purpose of this study is to assess the factorial structure regarding a commercially available computer-based intelligence test given to U.S. Air Force (USAF) pilot training candidates (manned as well as unmanned) during medical flight screening. Principal components analysis was conducted on the intelligence test scores from the computer-based Multidimensional Aptitude BatterySecond Edition (MAB-II). ThisRead more

The increasing role of MQ-1 Predator aircraft in support of intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and weapons deployment operations has resulted in the need to increase the number of fully trained pilots. To date, there are no published studies assessing the cognitive functioning of MQ-1 Predator pilots despite the important role these operators have in current unmannedRead more