Visual contrast sensitivity of U.S. Navy jet pilots

Good visual contrast sensitivity (CS) is often described as a visual capability important for success as a military aviator and so has been suggested as a physical standard for personnel selection and retention. To evaluate this idea, we measured the CS of 135 U.S. Navy fighter pilots ranging in age from 24 to 44 years (mean = 30.20, S.D. = 4.06) and compared these to the CS of non-aviators. We obtained the non-aviator data from published studies of other investigators who used similar procedures with the same widely used, commercially available apparatus (Nicolet CST 2000). In addition to this comparison, we correlated the pilots' CS with their air-to-air target detection distances measured during air combat maneuver training and to their night carrier landing performance scores. The major findings were: 1) The mean CS of the aviators and the non-aviators were within +/- 1.0 S.D. of each other in most instances, and those few instances where a greater difference was found were parsimoniously explained by methodological and procedural factors; 2) sensitivities to different spatial frequencies were highly correlated among themselves, indicating much redundancy among the measurements; 3) there was no evidence of a relationship between CS and air-to-air target detection distances or night carrier landing performance.