Evaluation of Air Warrior Baselines in a Longbow Apache Helicopter Crewstation in a MIDAS Simulation

The US Army has initiated the Air Warrior program to develop and integrate an improved Mission Oriented Protective Posture (MOPP) ensemble for helicopter aircrews. The MOPP clothing and equipment worn at present is restrictive, bulky and uncomfortable which can lead to performance degradation and even flight safety issues. The Air Warrior program will address these deficiencies by designing mission-tailorable MOPP with better component integration to improve performance and survivability of the aircrew during adverse battlefield conditions. Simulation is being used extensively to test concepts and crew performance before release of the RFP for system development. The computer simulation reported in this paper was done to establish baseline performance measurements with and without current MOPP equipment. These measurements were performed in MIDAS (Man-machine Integrated Design and Analysis System) an integrated suite of software components for design and analysis of human-machine systems under development by the Army and NASA at Ames research Center. The AH-64D Longbow Apache cockpit was modeled in MIDAS with the human-model representing the co-pilot gunner. The investigation concentrated on pilot ability to access controls and displays during a simulated battlefield scenario and on the task timelines and workload imposed by an air-to-ground attack scenario.