Reading some documents about the creation of a new image of the army, the principles of unification and dismemberment of units and formations, including scientific institutions, you involuntarily feel the cool attitude of the reformers to science in general and to military aviation medicine (VAM) in particular, the specificity of which is that the subject of her research is not "disease" but "activity." As you know, aviation medicine includes physiology, psychology, hygiene, ergonomics, ecology, pedagogy, and computer science. But all these scientific disciplines are associated with aviation medicine in relation to the activities and health of a completely healthy person.
FLYING MAN
Aviation specialists (pilot, navigator, engineer, etc.) are considered as subjects of military labor, the purpose of which is to achieve the highest professionalism in military affairs. Hence the following tasks for YOU follow:
- to investigate all risk factors that threaten combat readiness, combat effectiveness and health safety;
- to develop means of protection, rescue and ergonomic conditions of flight work, taking into account the psychophysiological capabilities of a person;
- to create a system for the restoration of professional health in order to maintain performance and extend flight longevity;
- to introduce knowledge about a person, mental and physical reserves of the body into the design and creation of aerospace technology and weapons;
- to create methods of training and education of increased mental and physical reserves in order to ensure the reliability of the "pilot-plane-environment" system;
- to create a risk cadastre, and on their basis to develop and implement hardware advisory systems that contribute to the formation of criteria and standards for normalizing flight loads in the process of combat training.
This short list shows that military aviation medicine as a science and as a component of combat training of troops is actively included in the system of ensuring the effectiveness of the human factor. As for its connection with clinical aviation medicine, this is expressed in cooperation with medical-flight expertise, in whose interests new factors of flight safety are investigated, the reasons for the decrease in efficiency, an increase in the likelihood of erroneous actions that reduce mental, physiological resistance to flight factors and general the adaptability of the organism to the unearthly habitat.
Thus, VAM specialists develop methods and equipment for monitoring health status and the level of professionally important qualities. Ultimately, aviation medicine is organically included not in the logistical support of the activity, but directly in the very activity of the aviation of the Armed Forces. For example, more than 30 centers, laboratories and institutes are actively working in the US Air Force. It seems that when reorganizing scientific departments, one should nevertheless take into account these features of the science of flying man.
There is another side to aviation medicine. This is its fundamental nature as a science, the knowledge of which is necessarily introduced into practice together with engineers and designers. From a socio-psychological point of view, the combat readiness and combat effectiveness of troops is a state of mind and psychophysical health that realizes a person's ability to use his knowledge and skills, moral incentives to fulfill his duty - to defend the Fatherland.
In the professional dimension, combat readiness fully uses the data of military science, including aviation medicine. Aviation medicine has proven that the fighting qualities of flight crews, especially their long-term stability, are determined by professional, mental and somatic health. The practice of life has confirmed that in 85% of cases the top professionals of 30–35 years old do not leave, but are deprived of their profession due to the loss of flight health. It is aviation and space medicine that nourishes the medical service of the troops with scientific knowledge, with the help of which flight longevity is maintained as a combat resource.
HEALTH THEORY AND PRACTICE
Extending flight longevity by 4-5 years for 100 class 1 pilots brings savings of $ 300 million (provided that they fly for combat use). That is why, both for the military leadership and for the science of military aviation medicine, a practical vision of the source of achieving a combat result is concentrated around the problems of the human factor. The departure of more than 20 class 1 pilots from a combat regiment within a year reduces its combat readiness by 45–55%. The study of the problems of the human factor as a carrier of the result of activity begins with a worldview understanding of the psychophysiological laws of the functioning of the "man-man" system, and then only "man-weapons".
In aviation, the methodological foundations of research on personality psychology, body physiology, psychophysiology of activity, and studies of the ecology of the environment were determined by two main factors:
- extraterrestrial conditions of human life, contradicting the nature of the evolutionary foundations of adaptation;
- a flying man, whose psychophysiological inclinations, mental mechanisms of reflection of flight situations, the laws of integrative coherence of analyzer systems and psyche, by themselves, do not provide the necessary safety and efficiency of flight work.
It is these features of human interaction with the universal physical and informational environment in the interests of mastering the profession of a pilot that determined the focus of aviation medicine on a seemingly non-medical object of research, namely, on the physical environment as the leading biosphere around a flying person.
Let me remind you that aviation gained altitude and speed thanks to the efforts of aviation physiologists and doctors. High-altitude, anti-overload and anti-shock equipment in its medical justification kept the pilots health and the required level of performance and safety in flight.
And today, with general education, they forget that it was precisely due to the results of the science of aviation medicine and, above all, thanks to its fundamental research, that flight crews saved from altitude and decompression sickness, injuries and death from loss of consciousness. For these reasons, flight incidents occur no more than 0, 2–0, 5% of all accidents and disasters. Of course, this is largely a technical solution, but let me remind you that the development of the physiological foundations of high-altitude equipment for highly maneuverable aircraft required more than 15 thousand complex experiments with humans and hundreds of thousands with animals.
Extraterrestrial conditions of life gave rise to the need for fundamental research on the study of the limits in the plasticity of adaptation in conditions of chronic overstrain of the adaptive systems of the body. The solution of scientific problems also required high-tech methodological support. Cognition tools were created in the form of mathematical, technical, psychophysiological modeling of all leading factors of the physical environment: hypoxia, acceleration, noise, vibration, radiation and non-radiation nature of radiation, electromagnetic oscillations, decomposition products of chemicals, their effect on performance and reliability in flight.
It was necessary to investigate the objective effect on cells, organs, systems in order to obtain precise characteristics and natural limits of the organism's survival in the proposed living conditions.
As a result, it was possible in practical terms to substantiate technical means of protection, survival and rescue, to standardize environmental conditions, to create training equipment, health control equipment.
But no less important is the fact that a theoretical basis was created for the study of the possibilities to re-form the properties of the organism and personality on the basis of psychophysical, ethical and moral principles that ensure the activity of a person in flight for 20-25 years.
All astronauts pass through the centrifuge in Zvezdnoye. Photo by Reuters
The psychophysiological principle of activity has become the unifying principle of integrating the complex around the "pilot-aircraft-weapons-control" system. It is the activity-based approach of human-machine interaction that became the basis for the creation of a purposeful system, that is, when the goal-setting remains with the person. The development of theories for the reliability of operator activities, the principle of an active operator, the creation of a system of projective ergonomics helped the designers of 4th generation military equipment to reach a parity level in the field of military aviation with the powerful US power.
The principle of an active operator in the creation of protective equipment, weapons, technical training aids, the introduction of the theory of professional intelligence and professionally important qualities in the interests of maintaining flight abilities allowed aviation medicine as a science and practice to become an organic component in all types of combat training, logistic, medical, engineering training. personnel of the aircraft of the Armed Forces.
Scientific aviation medicine, by its definition, "looks beyond the horizon" since the object of its study is a subject in its specific quality: a flying man. A pilot, like a person in the sky, is no longer an earthly person, for he lives in a different space and time, he lives in a different psychological world of values. In particular, a high-speed, highly maneuverable aircraft in his mind is primarily a means of achieving the main result: superiority in duel situations. For a flying person, speed is a maneuver, a tactic that intellect transforms into a successful achievement of a result. The psychology of flight work, based on the theory of personality, motivation, needs, personal meaning, is capable of rising to the level of research into the spiritual component of reliability and combat effectiveness of aviation. I can give only one argument that the spiritual world of a pilot is not an abstraction, but the real firmament of his mindset and actions. Take highly maneuverable, high-speed close combat. The pilot transforms speed and maneuver as a physical reality into a psychological one. Namely, passion. A pilot in dynamic maneuvering combat is afraid not so much of losing consciousness as his prestige, his professional self.
This self-sufficiency, and not fear, draws him into a zone of perceived extended risk. In flight, a pilot is able to transform his individuality into a general social interest, capable of accepting the energy of the information-torsion fields of the universe. This is an unsolved mystery. When I talk about aviation medicine as a science that is organically included in the system that ensures the combat effectiveness of troops, I mean, first of all, its advanced nature at the design stage of fifth-generation aircraft. The principle of designing for weapons based on the principle of fitting a person to an aircraft is extremely dangerous. The fact is that highly maneuverable aircraft are characterized by new principles of separate control of angular and trajectory motion, which will lead to the emergence of new forms of disorientation, multidimensional forms of altered consciousness.
Let me give you one historical example. In the 70s, the geopolitical situation required an increase in the combat effectiveness of aircraft at extremely low altitudes and high speeds. However, the small viewing angles, low quality of glazing of the lanterns, the absence of damper, anti-vibration devices, reliable automation led to a decrease in combat effectiveness, an increase in the accident rate. The main problem was spatial orientation in visual flight, since at speeds of more than 900 km / h, at an altitude of 50 meters, a person could not fully orient himself in time and space. Let me remind you that then we had to follow up on the development of psychophysiological methods for identifying objects of observation, to create systems that support the accuracy of piloting, new types of safety alarms, new forms of lanterns, ventilation systems of VKK and much more. These AM developments made it possible to increase the probability of solving the problem from 0, 45–0, 50 to 0, 8. This fitting of the aircraft to a person on the principle of "catch-up" cost the flight crew dearly: reducing flight longevity by 3-4 years, rejuvenating diseases.
RESERVES OF THE ORGANISM
And one more direction. Today, the development of technical systems for protection and life support is impossible without physiological justification and from the standpoint of safety. The introduction of promising technology of the XXI century poses an acute task of searching for exoreserves in the body. By exorezerv, I mean the formation of new properties within biological systems that make it possible for these systems to function against the background of exposure to extreme factors, as in a normal environment. It is necessary to return to the study of the phenomenon of the chronotope of suspended animation in the interests of preserving work activity. We are talking about a change in the required direction of the processes of assimilation and dissimilation, immunity, metabolism. To work towards not only the creation of bioblockers, but also mechanisms of immunity to extreme influences.
In the 21st century, the health of flight personnel on airplanes with a high thrust-to-weight ratio and a variable velocity vector will be exposed to such influences for which a person does not have a safety margin. Investigations of long-term consequences with the involvement of retirement age flight personnel and analysis of diseases that led to death will help to draw attention to this problem.
The humanistic methodology requires us to acutely realize that the means of protection we are developing do not so much preserve health as they provide operational efficiency in extended conditions of occupational hazardousness of labor. The phenomenon of "shagreen skin" obliges us to think about the creation of a medical declaration on the permissible level of exposure that destroys human health and shortens his active life. I am convinced that in the 21st century, the fundamental task of aerospace medicine will be a reorientation from nosological principles of health protection (in the patient's center) to the principle of "health of a healthy person", implemented by the state strategy for the protection and reproduction of a healthy nation, and in military affairs - the reproduction of a healthy combat-ready serviceman.
Aviation medicine is able to achieve this, provided that not only competent targeted support for the implementation of fundamental scientific research. It is equally necessary to understand that the level of introduction of technical civilization into aviation has exceeded economic feasibility and objectively reduces the "cost-effect" indicator of military systems.
In the interests of combat effectiveness, the moment comes to introduce a global methodological principle: control of an aircraft and its weapons. The weapon must be operated by a healthy, intelligent, mentally resilient crew. It is on these sides of combat readiness and combat effectiveness that military aerospace medicine works.
Today's day of history is reforming, building new principles for organizing the army and its institutions and the outgoing generation, which created the scientific school of aviation medicine. I hope that military thought will illuminate leaders of all ranks about the role of the force that prolongs their future. This force is simply called science. It alone is capable of solving the problems of information systems construction based on the principle of pairing the natural and artificial intelligence of a person, a controlled military object in combat conditions. The hopes placed on nanotechnology in technology without taking into account the laws of mental regulation of activity are futile.
The goal, task, method of achieving a combat result is decided not by an instrument, but by a person, for only he is responsible. And knowledge about it is also based on nanotechnology, as well as in technical sciences.
