Red Flag
operates as your "Flag Man". It moves ahead of
the potential hazard to awaken alertness.
The term Red Flag is meant
to break into – forcefully interrupt – the "chain
of causation" leading to an accident. (Think speed bump.)
A crew member (or solo operator) says out loud … "This
is a Red Flag situation"
… and follows the Red Flag
Checklist.
So that's where the name came from. The origin of the underlying concepts is far more important.
A Proven Safety Factor
The first part of the story is told in my book Fit
to Fly.
In essence, an Air Force pilot disabled his fighter jet while practising a display manoeuvre. He'd briefly lost control and wound up down amongst the tops of pine trees. The plane flew free - but the engine had quit - as they do when the air intakes are stuffed full of pine foliage. This happened some 4 to 5 seconds before the crash. During that 4 to 5 seconds he could have ejected, but he didn't.
This was a mystery that could not be resolved by the investigors. The jet was doomed. Why not at least try to get out? They wondered, but had to move on. Many years later, the question finally did get an answer ... and therein lies the basis of design for Red
Flag training exercises and derivative programs. The more recently acquired evidence suggests that the pilot did not pull the ejection handle because he'd experienced cognitive collapse. He was thereby rendered incapable of making a decision. That's what cognitive overload will do to you. It's task demand beyond the peak. Or, being pushed over the edge.
Fighter pilots are trained to cope with task saturation. However, they all know there's a limit. And they know from first hand (hot, sweaty, panicky) experience that an excursion beyond that edge drops you, instantly, into a black hole of confusion. Helplessness accompanies the stress. Climbing out of the crisis/chasm requires steely steadfastness ... and may not be possible at all, especially if the reason for the stress factor has not disappeared. (Engine's still dead, ground's close.) So experience tells you don't go there!
Precipices can be terrifying places - try the Grand Canyon! - but they can also be beguiling. (This issue is discussed at length in Fit to Fly.) More important, they are different things to different people. And, metaphorically speaking, they are located in different places. What for one person is an intolerable stress load is shrugged off by another. Even more intriguing, the cognitive edge is the threshold between peak performance and abject incompetence - from mastery of a complex dynamic situation to a black pit of helplessness. In an instant you've gone from virtuoso performer to new-born baby. Pathetic.
So this was the line of thinking prompted by the failure-to-eject accident (and others like it). A question raised was how to determine where the threshold lay, in an individual, compared to some sort of "norm". What is a reasonable expectation?
The propensity to encounter cognitive overload and immobilisation was clearly a symptomatic marker for the The Edge. But how to check out where it lies in people? Seven years after the accident, I became Air Force Director of Training and got the Air Force to commission trials of measures that might identify The Syndrome - ie, a low threshold of cognitive collapse in a person. One outcome of this research was a change in recruitment policy. You could spot the type, and they were no longer selected. That change took place in the early 80s. And as you'd expect, it took a while for any effect to to show.
It does now. In spades! As at the time of writing - July 2007 - it's 15 years since the last Air Force jet fighter crash. In the 60s and 70s we lost 2 per year. When the Hornet replaced the Mirage, the planned "attrition rate" was 1 per year. In fact, since 1992 a zero rate has been attained. 4 were lost in the early years of the Hornet (as its numbers increased and the Mirages were progressively pensioned off) . In those days it did seem the one-a-year figure would prevail. But it didn't. The accidents stopped.
Something had been changed in a vital area. Settings in the personnel machinery had been adjusted. The accident-prone type could be identified - and was no longer recruited. Today's fighter squadrons are different from their forebears. They no longer contain a specific type of person who, while in every way indistinguishble from the other Top Guns, is more likely to crash a plane.
These few bland words outline an extraordinary development. It is perhaps the more so for remaining below the public radar. Not in the least remarked upon, it nonetheless saves lives and prevents capital loss. The economic savings have been immense - hundreds of millions of dollars.
And now we know the formula, you've got to wonder the benefits in other domains - such as medical practice - fewer medical accidents! An important note in this regard is that the Air Force quite properly practises discrimination in recruitment, a strategy not as readily used in other walks of life. Training, however, provides innoculation against this particular virus. Anyone can do it. Become less likely ... .
Engaging in a Red
Flag program will get you (individual or corporation) started on that road.
The links below have more on the Program.
