On measures to improve the level of safety in military service.

The activities performed by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation are inextricably related with operation and maintenance of armaments, defense technology and military equipment. It frequently happens that military people and armed forces employees have to exercise their functions in adverse climatic, ecological or sanitary-and-hygienic conditions which may be harmful to their health. Besides, one should keep in mind that military activities are notable for their mass character and dynamism (combat and guard duties, military training exercises, operation and maintenance of military equipment etc.).

It is widely known that troops' readiness primarily depends on combat and operational capabilities of armaments and a high professional level of military experts maintaining and operating them.

At this point, operational capabilities of armaments and various methods aimed at maintaining a required level of their reliability and readiness have undergone comprehensive and in-depth investigation.

However, when it comes to studying military personnel's activities in the process of operation and maintenance of armaments, defense technology and military equipment, and investigating the issues dealing with the development of methods ensuring an adequate level of their combat readiness, we see that this still requires some additional research effort.

While analyzing the incidents occurring in the process of operation and maintenance of armaments and military equipment, it has been established that one of the basic reasons of their occurrence is the so-called human factor. In particular, it has been revealed that different incidents and accidents tend to occur in the situations when servicemen have failed to properly apply their professional abilities and qualities, when the feeling of danger has not been duly taken into consideration and when the commanders have got insufficient skills in organizing, managing and supervising the operations with armaments and military equipment. Therefore, both the practical activities performed by the armies and accident statistics prove that the personnel training system should be enhanced and that servicemen should be adequately taught and trained as to how to apply safe methods while handling and operating armaments and military equipment. (1)

It should be emphasized here that theoretical knowledge and practical skills can be obtained and improved only in the process of vocational training and during practical occupational activities.

Indeed, the extensive knowledge, abilities and skills, and the degree of their mastering are the factors which determine and influence the level of practical preparation and training of a military man.

The military personnel training system is the system which is based on a comprehensive program of measures and actions duly arranged and performed by all sorts of commanders responsible for the formation and maintenance of theoretical education and practical training of servicemen.

And the military training system based on armament safety operation requirements is an integral component of the general army personnel education system.

The quality of the training process (which is a comprehensive and a dynamically controlled procedure) is based on the following principal factors:

* First: Initial qualities of military personnel. In other words, this means the required professional qualities that should be generated in the process of training. And the basic characteristic features proving suitability of this or that individual for training can be the following: the initial (elementary) level of training; learning capability which is notable for the presence of required psychological and physiological qualities necessary for a specific kind of activity and providing this or that degree of success of mastering the knowledge and skills in the process of education and training. (2)

Identification and revelation of the above qualities at the military personnel and formation of educational groups proceeding from the results received on the basis of their initial learning capabilities is one of the most crucial tasks the professional selection system is currently facing.

* Second. The instructors' and teachers' team quality which is based on teacher's readiness and preparedness for professional pedagogical activities. This quality is characterized by the following factors: pedagogical culture; the level of pedagogical abilities, skills and techniques; the level of pedagogical thinking and pedagogical tact; the level of methodical skills; the ability to utilize pedagogical designing and the capability to introduce and apply advanced pedagogical experience and practice. (3)

* Third. Quality of educational resources and material reserves. The basic characteristic features influencing the quality of the educational resources and material reserves applied at different stages of the military training process include the following: availability, simplicity, quality and convenience of educational literature and manuals (textbooks, albums, posters, schemes etc.); preparation and arrangement of different training tech-niques and facilities (testing areas, power proving grounds, educational and training complexes, stands, breadboard models, simulators, specialized educational classes etc.).

* Fourth. Quality of the training process control system. The basic characteristic features affecting the quality of the training process control system include: the degree of reasonableness and relevance of the requirements presented to the system of training taking the account of the norms assigned, and to the level of theoretical and practical preparation of military personnel (i.e. what the trainees should know and what they should be able to do); the safety requirements of the training system as established in normative documents; evaluation of the experts trained with the use of the training system chosen in compliance with theoretical and practical preparation norms.

The military personnel training system requirements should be developed and substantiated along with the development and substantiation of theoretical and practical educational regulations which should ensure safety of all kinds of works to be performed by experts based on their safety requirements.

Along with training level identification, it is imperative that the system of measures aimed at meeting the assigned norms should also be substantiated. This latter task could in fact be subdivided into a number of stages, such as: assessment of the training systems applicable for the formation of assigned learning parameters and their maintenance at an appropriate level; choice of the criteria to be used for the substantiation of the system of measures aimed at reaching the assigned education level; optimization of the training system's basic parameters which primarily include periodicity and duration of educational courses, and various methods and forms of their implementation.

During the in-service educational training process, there is always an objective necessity in controlling the degree of training results conformity to the established requirements.

While assessing the factors affecting the quality and possibilities of the process involving military personnel training system management with respect to its safety requirements, it is also necessary that the basic features and objective laws of the educational process should be taken into consideration.

Personnel safety training represents the second (after occupational selection) group of measures aimed at preventing accident risk and traumatism while operating armaments and military equipment due to a more comprehensive implication of the so-called human factor. In psycho-physiological sense, its purpose consists in changing military personnel's behavior in emergency situations. To put it differently, this involves the development of new or the improvement of available reflexes to emergency situations connected with the occurrence of incident preconditions.

In emergency situations, emotional condition of a person is characterized by increased constraint (stress) combined with lower serviceability, movement coordination disorder and psychological instability. A person's behavior in emergency situations is normally subjected to certain phase patterns which emerge in the following sequence: (4)

Hypermobilization. When a person encounters a certain danger, all his powers get mobilized, and all his sense organs appear to be in a constrained state. In this case however, the accuracy of movements tends to reduce, which may entail errors or incorrect reactions.

Loss of orientation means incorrect assessment of the information, control process distortion and wrongful evaluation of the real causes of errors.

Distortion of a ratio between primary and secondary actions. To quit an emergency situation, a person should undertake clear and well-defined actions aimed at reducing or eliminating the major danger; however, when a person encounters certain difficulties, he tends to pay les attention to the main problems in the given situation, and he starts to focus on trifles.

Disintegration of the operations structure means strengthening of errors of the previous phase since practically all the technological processes or operations tend to have a certain algorithm. In this case disintegration of the sequence of operations, concentration of operator's attention on a separate operation never contributes to searching a way out of the emergency situation.

Aggravation of defensive reactions and repudiation. When difficulties and failures get accumulated, a person starts to pay more attention to searching for artificial justifications and excuses tending to find faults with other participants. When a person is engaged in a long, tedious or intensive process trying to overcome the existing difficulties, and if he is performing a hard and tedious work, he may ultimately be overwhelmed with repudiation, i.e. when force mobilization is replaced by apathy.

In real conditions, the above regularities cannot be easily traced due to time deficiency reasons.

Prevention of emergency situations and correct (in terms of risk reduction) expert's actions are normally achieved by forecasting the emergency situations, as well as by predicting their possible consequences and necessary actions to be taken by a person. Another important condition is that a person should train himself to adequately work and perform his functions in an emergency-related environment. However, one should know that this condition is difficult to accomplish within a long time interval, since an expert is unable to work for a long time at the breaking point of his psycho-physiological abilities.

A military person's readiness to successfully act in emergency situations depends on his personal qualities, training level, completeness of the information about what has happened, availability of time and resources to eliminate the emergency situation, possession of the information regarding the measures to be taken and their efficiency. The analysis of servicemen's behavior in emergency situations shows that information incompleteness is the key stimulus resulting in erroneous actions. Therefore it is highly required that a military man should possess both preliminary preparedness and sufficiently high psychological capabilities which would enable him to make up for the information deficiency. This requires a lot of training in order to develop the speed of thinking and to suggest--how one should make use of his or her former experience to ensure successful actions in the conditions when the information available is incomplete. In fact, these are the tools which help a person to learn how he could switch from one task to another, and to acquire both forecasting and anticipation abilities. Such trainings are aimed at increasing the volume and range of attention, and they are used to teach a military man to perceive only the most essential and necessary life safety elements in emergency situations, but not all of them.

Hence, the system of military personnel safety training should not be based on instinctive actions. On the contrary, it requires intellectual preparation which requires certain inputs of mental energy and time. In usual (regular) conditions, unconscious and automatic actions are OK; however, in case of unfamiliar, unknown situations a person's consciousness gets intellectually programmed so as to determine the purpose of specific actions, to identify their goals, and their implementation techniques.

Further improvement of the military personnel training system on the basis of safety requirements during operation and maintenance of armaments, defense technology and military equipment should be reviewed in consideration of the basic provisions which should be reflected in the educational programs. In other words, such educational programs should contain the information as to how military men need to be trained, what tools and resources should be used for that purpose and what timeframe this program is designed for. Prior to giving substantiated answers to these questions, it is strongly required that practical training experience, real capabilities of the troops as well as the newest job safety research results and study regulation methods are used. (5)

The answer to the first of the above-listed questions can be received through analyzing the incident occurrence process. From the modeling results it follows that military people should be primarily focused on practical perfection of methods used to remove the emergency situations and to eliminate military equipment failures and operator's errors. It should be noted however that during theoretical training, an expert should be advised on how to forecast such situations and what are the basic principles allowing for their prevention.

In addition to optimizing the methods aimed at lowering accident and traumatism rates during operation and maintenance of armaments, defense technology and military equipment, it is required that major risk reduction aspects should be taken into consideration in the military personnel training process. These involve incident occurrence probability reduction and harm decrease. And damage probability degree and the harm from one incident are considered basic activity risk parameters. (6)

A substantiated answer to the second question of the program (regarding rational forms of theoretical and practical training of military men based on safety requirements) should be given in consideration of the following. As compared to other aspects, this system of training is notable for impossibility of natural reproduction of incidents and emergency situations in educational purposes, which excludes direct acquisition of knowledge and skills with respect to their elimination. Therefore, this problem could be solved by adapting traditional studies, through role playing in using simulators and sample units, and in the application of new computer technologies.

While substantiating the answer to the third question regarding the conditions of the final stage of the military training system based on safety requirements in operating armaments, defense technology and military equipment, it would be expedient to choose the parameters on the basis whereof appropriate decision-making rules could be worked out. In particular, one of the conditions for practical training termination could be the situation when training expenses have started to exceed the expected effect which is measured as a learning criterion rate.

As for the fourth task--justification of the forces and means to be involved in the training of experts based on safety requirements,--its solution requires more perfect models. They should contain the parameters taking the account of not only the rates of necessary knowledge and skills acquisition, but also productivity and costs of a respective educational division or any other similar organization.

The most crucial task is that each military man should acknowledge that the occurrence of accidents and traumatism is a consequence of the appearance and development of causal chains of incidents resulted from experts' errors, military equipment and technology failures and negative factor impacts. Therefore, the system of military training based on safety requirements in day-to-day activities of the Armed Forces is an integral part of their professional education in accordance with the authorized list of organization.

NOTES:

1. O.I. Zhilin, B.M. Stepanov, O.B. Tsapurin, Rassledovaniye proishestviy, VA RVSN, Moscow, 2005, p. 76.

2. P.P. Kukin, V.L. Lapin, N.L. Ponomarev, et al., Bezopasnost' zhiznedeyatelnosti. Bezopasnost' tekhnologicheskikh protsessov i proizvodstv. Uchebnoye posobie dlya vuzov, 2nd edition, ispr. i djp., Vysshaya Shkola, Moscow, 2001.

3. V.A. Pestov. Tekhnologiya professionalno-orientirovannogo obucheniya. Uchebnoye posobie, Pyotr Velikiy VA RVSN, Moscow, 2004, p. 315.

4. P.P. Kukin, V.L. Lapin, N.L. Ponomarev, et al., Op. cit.

5. P.G. Belov. Teoreticheskiye osnovy obespecheniya bezopasnosti ekspluatatsii vooruzheniya i voennoi tekhniki, MO, Moscow, 1988, p. 105.

6. B.M. Stepanov. Teoreticheskiye osnovy obespecheniya bezopasnosti zhiznedeyatelnosti, Uchebnoye posobie, VA RVSN, Moscow, 2001, p. 332.

Col. G.I. CHERNYAVSKY

Doctor of Technical Sciences

Lieut. Col. O.B. TSAPURIN