Book Review: Flying Fast Jets: Human Factors and Performance Limitations

David Newman provides an overview of the complex intersection of human and machine in the tactical aviation application. Although Newman’s objective is straightforward – to give readers an appreciation for a world he knows well – it is difficult to discern his intended audience. This is an ambitious attempt to cover much ground in relatively few pages. Without doubt, Newman offers a firsthand look at the tasks, technologies, challenges, and extremes that make up the fast-jet workplace.

Tactical aviation is arguably among the most complex human factors problem spaces known to the human factors/ergonomics (HF/E) discipline. The environment is hostile to supporting human life within which a mesh of competing requirements need to be properly balanced, such as the reward of meeting the mission objective versus the risk of endeavoring to perform it. Nested within this overarching requirement is the proper mix of lethality with survivability, stability and maneuverability, programmed automation and flexible control, and interface trades, such as information requirements and overload. These are the considerations of affording an effective weapon system wherein at the heart of the system integration is a human operator who is simultaneously the greatest performance enabler and the weakest link. Readers of this book will appreciate that operators (pilots) in this environment are both the essential component of the tool and a limitation of its successful employment.

Perhaps the book’s most significant contribution is how it attempts to look in all directions from the perspective of an operator of what it takes to make a highly technical aviation system work: the aptitude of the pilot applicant and selection processes, the training, the technology, the life support, the interface design, and the constant striving for greater performance in the face of relatively static human limitations. This book allows readers to poke their noses into this world and, one hopes, realize that although there is plenty of complexity here, there is a professional discipline like HF/E dedicated to removing the mystery surrounding it – if one is willing to look deep enough.

Pilots are not superheroes, but the confluence of science, engineering, and even art can produce superhero-like human–machine systems. One should get the feeling from how far we have come that there is still plenty to the journey left ahead. Fighter pilots are humans who do a difficult job in an environment that is extremely unforgiving of error, and they are an integral component of a system.

Fighter pilots are not the only humans working under these extreme conditions, but the development of technology that makes their job doable is the birthplace of HF/E as a scientific and engineering discipline. Reading about this subject matter offers something appreciable for many designers and researchers from a historical perspective and supplies knowledge applicable to a wide variety of human–system interfaces.

Specific topics within the book are sometimes lightly touched, whereas others are covered extensively. The size of this volume (158 pages) is constrained compared with the breadth of the subject matter. Many of the chapter titles have constituted entire books in their own right. And then, the book ends abruptly, as if to say, “To be continued” – an invitation to inspire?

Indeed, this book may serve as inspiration for new scientists and engineers. They should realize that there is still plenty to contribute to extending human functionality into future generations of tactical aviation and other systems. Those new to this subject should get a glimpse into what is so interesting about HF/E: the complex intersection of difficult-to-define concepts in which the human component of the equation is the hardest to figure out. It is a natural and endless source of fascination.