“models they can use” In response to a fact-checking email, Burian expanded upon her comments and said that her comments should be read in the light of “shifting focus from what was wrong/malfunctioning/not available to what was working/functioning/available was a turning point. I spoke of how this happened for him in this specific situation but generalized to how this shift in mindset has been found to be quite helpful to pilots, particularly when faced with multiple failure conditions….Modern aircraft are highly technically advanced and their system designs are tightly coupled and fairly opaque. This can make it quite difficult for pilots to understand the whys and wherefores of some malfunctions and how multiple malfunctions might be associated with each other. Instead of trying to sort through a myriad of malfunctions and think about how they are connected and the implications they have, shifting focus to an aircraft’s capabilities simplifies the cognitive demands and can facilitate deciding how to do what is needing to be done….Once a critical event has occurred, really good pilots do several things—they try to determine what is most critical to be dealt with first (narrowing of attention) but also pull back from time to time (broadening of attention) to do two things: 1) make sure they are not missing cues/information that might contradict or alter their understanding of their situation and 2) track the overall situation as part of their assessment of the most critical things to be attending to. For example, consider a catastrophic emergency (requiring an emergency landing/ditching) that occurs at cruise altitude. The crew will have some time to deal with the condition, but at some point, their attention should shift from dealing directly with the malfunction/condition to preparing for and executing a ditching/landing. Good pilots are constantly assessing the actions being taken, their efficacy, and needed actions relative to the overall status of the aircraft and phase of flight. Of course, good pilots also fully enlist the help of others in doing all this (i.e., good CRM). Good pilots also do a lot of ‘what if’ exercises before any event occurs, mentally running through a variety of scenarios to think about what they might do, how the situation might unfold, circumstances that would alter the way(s) in which they would respond, etc. General aviation pilots are taught to do something similar during flight when they say to themselves at various points along their route ‘If I were to lose my (only) engine right now (i.e., engine dies), where would I land?’?”
“land the plane” In response to a fact-checking email, de Crespigny expanded upon his comments: “Dave used [an onboard computer] program to check the landing distance. His first pass resulted in NO SOLUTION because there were too many failures for the program to come up with a landing solution. Dave then simplified the entries for the failures. The LDPA program [the landing distance performance application] then displayed a landing distance margin of just 100 metres. Whilst Dave and the others were calculating the performance (that turned out to be incorrect anyways because of errors in the LDPA program and more extensive aircraft (brakes) damage than what was reported), I kept a broad situation awareness of the entire operation: aircraft, fuel, critical paths, pilot duties, cabin crew, passengers, air traffic control, emergency services….Simplifying the A380 (with 4,000 parts) down to a Cessna (the flying version of the 1938 Ariel Red Hunter motorcycle) kept things very simple for me, removing the complexity, making each system simple to understand from a mechanical (not mechatronic perspective), simplifying my mental model of the aircraft’s systems, freeing up mind-space to manage the entire event. It [is] vital in an emergency that there is a structured hierarchy of responsibility and authority. It’s even more important that pilots understand the roles, tasks, and teamwork required in an autonomous team of just two pilots (more in our case on board QF32), isolated from help but in charge of 469 lives.”
fail every time In response to a fact-checking email, de Crespigny explained that it is impossible to get a simulator to re-create the conditions of QF32, because the problems with the plane were so extreme.
CHAPTER FOUR: GOAL SETTING
about to attack For my understanding of the events leading up to the Yom Kippur War, I am indebted to Professor Uri Bar-Joseph, who was kind enough to provide extensive written comments, as well as the following sources: Abraham Rabinovich, The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East (New York: Schocken, 2007); Uri Bar-Joseph, The Watchman Fell Asleep: The Surprise of Yom Kippur and Its Sources (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012); Uri Bar-Joseph, “Israel’s 1973 Intelligence Failure,” Israel Affairs 6, no. 1 (1999): 11–35; Uri Bar-Joseph and Arie W. Kruglanski, “Intelligence Failure and Need for Cognitive Closure: On the Psychology of the Yom Kippur Surprise,” Political Psychology 24, no. 1 (2003): 75–99; Yosef Kuperwaser, Lessons from Israel’s Intelligence Reforms (Washington, D.C.: Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, 2007); Uri Bar-Joseph and Jack S. Levy, “Conscious Action and Intelligence Failure,” Political Science Quarterly 124, no. 3 (2009): 461–88; Uri Bar-Joseph and Rose McDermott, “Personal Functioning Under Stress Accountability and Social Support of Israeli Leaders in the Yom Kippur War,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 52, no. 1 (2008): 144–70; Uri Bar-Joseph, “?‘The Special Means of Collection’: The Missing Link in the Surprise of the Yom Kippur War,” The Middle East Journal 67, no. 4 (2013): 531–46; Yaakov Lapin, “Declassified Yom Kippur War Papers Reveal Failures,” The Jerusalem Post, September 20, 2012; Hamid Hussain, “Opinion: The Fourth Round—A Critical Review of 1973 Arab-Israeli War,” Defence Journal, November 2002, http://www.defencejournal.com/2002/nov/4th-round.htm; P. R. Kumaraswamy, Revisiting the Yom Kippur War (London: Frank Cass, 2000); Charles Liebman, “The Myth of Defeat: The Memory of the Yom Kippur War in Israeli Society,” Middle Eastern Studies 29, no. 3 (1993): 411; Simon Dunstan, The Yom Kippur War: The Arab-Israeli War of 1973 (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2007); Asaf Siniver, The Yom Kippur War: Politics, Legacy, Diplomacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
“sharp as possible” Bar-Joseph, Watchman Fell Asleep.
nothing more than words In an email, the historian Uri Bar-Joseph wrote that the concept was “a set of assumptions that were based on documented information that was passed to Israel by Ashraf Marwan, the son-in-law of late president Nasser and a close advisor to Sadat, who since late 1970 worked for the Mossad. The main assumptions were: (1) Egypt cannot occupy the Sinai without neutralizing the Israeli air-superiority. The way to do it is by attacking the bases of the [Israeli Air Force] at the beginning of the war. In order to do it, Egypt needs long-range attack aircraft which she won’t have before 1975; (2) In order to deter Israel from attacking strategic targets in Egypt, Egypt needs Scud missiles that will be able to hit Tel Aviv. Scuds started arriving in Egypt in the summer of 1973 but were not expected to be operational before February 1974. (3) Syria will not go to war without Egypt. Zeira became an ardent believer in these assumptions and turned them into an orthodox conception, which he kept until war started.”
within the next decade Bar-Joseph and Kruglanski, “Intelligence Failure and Need for Cognitive Closure,” 75–99.
need for cognitive closure For more on cognitive closure, please see Steven L. Neuberg and Jason T. Newsom, “Personal Need for Structure: Individual Differences in the Desire for Simpler Structure,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 65, no. 1 (1993): 113; Cynthia T. F. Klein and Donna M. Webster, “Individual Differences in Argument Scrutiny as Motivated by Need for Cognitive Closure,” Basic and Applied Social Psychology 22, no. 2 (2000): 119–29; Carsten K. W. De Dreu, Sander L. Koole, and Frans L. Oldersma, “On the Seizing and Freezing of Negotiator Inferences: Need for Cognitive Closure Moderates the Use of Heuristics in Negotiation,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 25, no. 3 (1999): 348–62; A. Chirumbolo, A. Areni, and G. Sensales, “Need for Cognitive Closure and Politics: Voting, Political Attitudes and Attributional Style,” International Journal of Psychology 39 (2004): 245–53; Arie W. Kruglanski, The Psychology of Closed Mindedness (New York: Psychology Press, 2013); Arie W. Kruglanski et al., “When Similarity Breeds Content: Need for Closure and the Allure of Homogeneous and Self-Resembling Groups,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83, no. 3 (2002): 648; Steven L. Neuberg and Jason T. Newsom, “Personal Need for Structure: Individual Differences in the Desire for Simpler Structure,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 65, no. 1 (1993): 113.
“confusion and ambiguity” Bar-Joseph, Watchman Fell Asleep; Donna M. Webster and Arie W. Kruglanski, “Individual Differences in Need for Cognitive Closure,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 67, no. 6 (1994): 1049.
“need for closure introduces a bias” Bar-Joseph and Kruglanski, “Intelligence Failure and Need for Cognitive Closure,” 75–99.
Donna Webster, wrote in 1996 Arie W. Kruglanski and Donna M. Webster, “Motivated Closing of the Mind: ‘Seizing’ and ‘Freezing,’?” Psychological Review 103, no. 2 (1996): 263.
it has been selected Ibid.; De Dreu, Koole, and Oldersma, “On the Seizing and Freezing of Negotiator Inferences,” 348–62.
we’re making a mistake In an email responding to fact-checking questions, Arie Kruglanski wrote: “People under high need for closure have trouble appreciating others’ perspectives and points of view. People under high need for closure also prefer hierarchical, autocratic, decision making structures in groups because those provide better closure than horizontal or democratic structures that tend to be more chaotic. People under high need for closure are therefore intolerant of diversity, and of dissent in groups and aren’t very creative. Politically, conservatives tend to be higher on need for closure than liberals, but people with high need for closure tend to be more committed to things and values than people low on need for closure.”