Lack of Awareness

By Senior Chief Naval Aircrewman (Helicopter) Aaron Hutchinson

While operating in dynamic environments, aircrews and maintenance personnel are often placed in dangerous situations due to the nature of the job. Some critical elements to safe and successful operations link back to planning, briefing and communication, supported by a strong sense of situational awareness and an effective debrief. Failure to recognize a situation and understand what is happening around you can impact the ability of Sailors and Marines to predict the possible results of their actions. Aircrew and maintenance personnel need to understand the entire picture of their environment. This awareness will help mitigate the development of tunnel vision, ensure there are no conflicts with existing tasks and that they fully understand the procedures needed to complete a task.

To better maintain an accurate image of reality, personnel should detect and comment on deviations, provide information in advance, identify potential problems, demonstrate awareness of task performance of self and others, state a course of action, and demonstrate an ongoing awareness of the mission or evolution status.

Factors that can reduce situational awareness can include, but are not limited to insufficient communication, fatigue or stress, task overload, task underload, group mindset, “press on regardless” or “make it work” philosophy and degraded operating conditions.

Common methods to maintain or recover situational awareness are to start with a comprehensive brief, acknowledge potential problems, communicate, use all information sources, maintain a good scan, critically update and revise perception of evolution and be alert to implications of info received.

Conducting a post-mission review provides an opportunity to evaluate how your tasking was performed and identify mission effectiveness, crew performance, individually, collectively, coordination, and areas for future improvement.

For mishaps across various classes in fiscal year 2019 through FY 2022, a lack of situational awareness accounted for about 20% of the factors linked to the incidents. This statistic shows the grave reality being seen every day in the fleet. The impact on the Navy and Marine Corps extends beyond monetary value to the health and well-being of our most precious resource, our Sailors and Marines, as well as the readiness of our fleet. Identified by the Navy and Marine Corp Crew Resource Management Program COMNAVAIRFORINST 1542.7B, situational awareness is defined as “The degree of accuracy by which one’s perception of the current environment mirrors reality. Maintaining a high level of situational awareness will better prepare crews to respond to unexpected situations.”

Situational awareness requires you to know who is responsible for specific activities, what is happening, when are events supposed to occur and where you are operating within a threedimensional space.

Effective debriefs are critical in the self-assessment and selfcorrection process, and every squadron in the fleet should be conducting them. This means debriefs should be interactive, valuable, selectively reviewed and timely.

While it can be fair to say everyone makes mistakes – it’s just human nature, the reality Sailors and Marines face daily is that the naval aviation enterprise is unforgiving of human error. Even a slight mistake can cause a fatal accident, so we must put safety first and minimize the risk to the best of our ability. While command leadership is traditionally responsible for establishing and incorporating safety policies and risk management processes into squadron operations, it falls on all hands to remain vigilant and hold themselves accountable to the safety standards on and off duty. From commanding officers down to the most junior service members, everyone needs to be able to recognize the warning signs, and most importantly, learn how to avoid the impacts that can result from a lack of awareness in the unique operating environments we encounter every day.