Cognitive load during training facilitates expert skilled performance in a complex spatiotemporal domain

This paper focuses on expert skilled performance of military pilots in the complex spatiotemporal domain of air combat. Fighter pilots operate fast jet aircraft capable of cruising speeds in excess of 1500 km/hr, and often fly in formations separated by less than the width of the aircraft. While operating at these very high speeds, they perform complex and coordinated aerobatic manoeuvres to achieve tactical advantage over enemy aircraft and to provide air supremacy in support of other force element groups (FEGs). It costs millions of dollars to train fighter pilots (e.g., see Doyle, 2003), and their operational aircraft cost orders of magnitude more that amount (e.g., Kopp, 2007), so there is a clear financial motivation for research interest into effective and efficient fighter pilot training. Fighter pilots are often portrayed as the elite of pilots (for a popular culture example, consider Tom Cruise's role in the 1986 movie 'Top Gun'). It is undeniable that fighter pilots need elite psychomotor and cognitive skills to succeed in their air combat training, specifically in the spatiotemporal domain of interest for this paper. It is more open to question as to whether some of the specific skills and training required for air combat are counterproductive for flying in crewed environments, on long-haul routine flights, or on lower performance aircraft (e.g., see Ganesh & Joseph, 2005, for a review of aircrew personality traits). Suffice to say that across the aviation domain, there are many flying roles all of which require a high degree of flying proficiency (in the form of expert skilled performance), and the highest degree of compression and complexity occurs within the spatiotemporal flying and decision-making domain of the air combat environment.