Effects of Personal Equipment on Psycho-Physiological Capabilities: A New Approach to Performance Diagnostics in Armament Projects.

摘要

Despite new and efficient technologies individual physical and mental abilities are still essential and often the limiting factors for many military tasks. For that reason some recent innovations led to unexpected new problems: Instead of enhancing they might reduce performance. For example dismounted infantry in particular have to carry more and more equipment in order to improve their survivability and capabilities. However, current combat loads, combined with environmental conditions and mission requirements hinder mobility and affect endurance in combat operations. These demands will quickly exhaust even physically fit soldiers. Therefore future programmes must pay more attention to human factors: New equipment should support and not impair the human potential of the soldier in his fundamental functions to see, to hear, to communicate, to move, to fire and to survive. In order to prevent time and money wasting abortive developments it is essential to review the different development stages - particularly concerning the human factors - from the beginning to the end of the project. Currently no standardized performance tests are available that simultaneously quantify the effects of personal equipment on both physical and mental capabilities during characteristic military mission stresses. Therefore the aim of our study was to develop a lab- based performance test battery that meets these requirements. For this purpose our approach includes the following steps: 1. Collection and analysis of reference data in field tests in realistic combat missions (e. g. MOUT), subsequent identification and definition of critical task demands. 2. Development of a specific laboratory test reflecting the physical requirements of characteristic mission tasks (e. g. patrol, attack, etc.) based on the obtained results of the field tests. 3. Integration of various psychological test procedures demanding different mental qualities (perception, cognition, short-term memory).