Measuring What Matters: Readiness in the Field - DTNSB Special  ## Metadata - Author: [[Daily Tech News Show]] - Full Title: Measuring What Matters: Readiness in the Field - DTNSB Special - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/0ebbe3f8-3417-4d50-979b-ae19abdbd6b7 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Mike LeNeave's Aviation Career** - Mike LeNeave shared his extensive Army aviation experience, including deployments to Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Djibouti. - He described flying OH-58 Deltas and MH-47 Chinook helicopters, highlighting the diversity and challenges of military aviation. Transcript: Mike LeNeave Yes, sir. Thanks, Amos, for having me on. I really appreciate it. I am a retired chief warrant officer from the United States Army. I retired out of Army Special Operations Command. I was the director of aviation safety at the Army Special Operations Aviation Command. And with that position, I came along with 22 plus years of flying experience, flew OH-58 Deltas and MH-47G Chinook helicopters. And yeah, I love talking aviation. I love talking safety and I love talking maintenance. So let's get to it. Amos Well, you say maintenance. To remind the audience, those of you who might not know, I served in the Air Force for 24 years. I was aircraft maintenance the entire time in different roles between managerial and actually turn the wrenches on the flight line, working F-16s, F-15s, C-130s, C-17s, C-141s, C-5s, basically everything in the Air Force inventory in some Army, Navy, and British aircraft as well during deployments. Because when you're deployed, it's all hands on deck. You just get the job done, put the planes back in the air. Mike LeNeave It's funny that you say that because we used to do that in Bagram. We'd run across the airfield and grab tools and parts from anybody and everybody. It's like a swap meet over there, man. Yeah. Amos Because if the aircraft are on the ground, I've got to stop saying airplanes one day. It's better than just saying, calling everything a jet, I guess. If the aircraft are on the ground, they're not doing anybody any good. So the whole mission is to get them in the air, whether you're flying them or you're maintaining them. The job is to get them in the air and get them functional. So where all have you been deployed to, if you can tell me other than, you know. Yeah, sure. Mike LeNeave So my journey started way back when, 2001, before September 11th. So I joined the Army in June of 2001. I went through basic training and everything at Fort Benning, went to walk school or warrant officer candidate school at Fort, then Fort Rucker, now Fort Novosel, Alabama. Got out of flight school and went to Korea. So I did my first 15 months, basically an overseas environment. Korea wasn't necessarily a deployment, but it wasn't exactly. It was a non-accompany tour, if that made any sense to anybody out there. No family, none of the things like that. Went from Korea to Hawaii, and then I got into my first actual combat deployment, went to Iraq, 2006 through 2007, 15 consecutive months, the surge, right? So that was a really kinetic, highly active deployment. That was flying attack reconnaissance helicopters, the OH-58s. Came back to Hawaii, did another deployment with the 25th Infantry Division. So another 12 months to Iraq in 09. Assessed for the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. Went to the 160th in 1011-ish, got down to 3rd Battalion, 160th and Savannah, Georgia. And then that started the unique special operations deployment cycles of anywhere from 30 days to 60 days to 90 days, depending on what the mission was. And that was Afghanistan primarily because the heavy assault MH-47s really earned their money in a place like Afghanistan. But we also did Iraq, and we also did other places. I'll just say Djibouti, and then I'll leave it at that. So, yeah, I've done a lot of different activities over water, over mountains, over desert, over other places. ([Time 0:03:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/11295463-8ea8-4e5a-9351-ab23583c13eb)) - **Improvising Tech in Combat** - Mike described low-tech solutions in combat like using Gatorade bottles with chem lights to mark targets. - He contrasted this with the advanced sensing equipment of other units, showing resourcefulness despite limited tech. Transcript: Mike LeNeave So, you know, it's funny. Flying the OH-58 in the mid-80s, when they kind of rolled out that platform with the... For people who don't understand what it is, it's a little helicopter. It looks like a news helicopter with a ball on top. And the ball was a big sighting system, thermal imaging system. And it had laser range finders and all this other stuff. The cool thing was it had two multifunction displays. So it was a glass cockpit. Big deal. So that was a big deal in 2001, 2003. Amos For the record, it's still a big deal when they convert C-5s to glass cockpits. There you go. The 141 conversion to glass cockpits, and we're like, oh, my gosh. Mike LeNeave That's right. I mean, the Army just recently moved away from Alpha Model 60s. I mean, there's still some floating around out there, but the Active Duty Army moved away and that those were not glass cockpits, all steam gauges. Anyway, so the technologies, when we got into theater and we started doing kinetic, you know, things, one of the issues was it quickly, you quickly realized in a single pilot helicopter With two pilots flying, but you only need one technically to operate the machine. So you had another guy kind of working the payload. You realize that everything in the helicopter was designed to kill you. So everything was designed to bring your attention inside. Everything was designed to make your life harder. There was nothing that was really, there was no autopilot, no, you know, no things that were just going to, you couldn't just fix the site on something and keep it. It would hit stops and go crazy on you. And you had to boresight it all the time and do all sorts of other stuff. So it was just challenging, this 80s technology in a 2000 fight. And we started developing our own stuff. So put your head in this space. Here we are flying a $5 million helicopter in combat, launching a $60,000 missile off the side that rides a laser beam, right? But the way we would mark targets is we would take a Gatorade bottle, MRE heater and IR chemlights, throw them in the Gatorade bottle and kick them out so we could have a signature that Showed up on the thermal imaging and you could see under your goggles. Because otherwise you could never potentially overlay those two things. You just couldn't find it. Like it's like, I wish my goggles looked and saw the same thing my sight saw. It's not the same. So you had to, yeah, it's challenging, right? Amos Oh yeah. Mike LeNeave So here, here we were with literally we had Gatorade bottles, duct tape with a water canister next to it, uh, two chem lights. You'd snap those chem lights, throw the, the, the MRE heater had already been in the bottom. You drop some water in it, kick it out. And then you could see it come out. Like you would watch your sister ship fly over the target area. They'd see the thing fall out. You'd see it. And then you, you would start talking on from there. So we'd say, okay, from the marking device, head north 300 meters. Okay. You see the village? Yeah. Okay. Or you see the shed? Yeah, I got the shed. Okay. Left side of the shed. Okay. You see, there he is. Those are the guys. Like, holy crap, man. Just not like the video games, right? Like, not like any of that. Meanwhile, our friends down the road, uh, in the 82nd airborne, um, that were flying the latest and greatest versions of the Apache at that time. So it was a Delta model Apache, but they had a, uh, a new imaging system. And I can't remember exactly what that imaging system is called right now, but man, they could, they could read a stop sign through ([Time 0:09:06](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f94df5c1-fc6c-4ec4-bce8-2a6bb05b01f8)) - **Oversight in Aviation Safety** - Mike realized most aviation monitoring focuses on machines but ignores the pilot, who is the root cause in 80% of accidents. - This highlights a critical gap in safety by not objectively measuring human factors like fatigue or cognitive state. Transcript: Mike LeNeave When I became the director of safety, it started to become apparent to me that, you know, we're kind of overlooking human performance in the aviation sphere. So if you think about it, like you're familiar with airplanes and maintenance, there is a bazillion different monitoring devices on the machine. I mean, it can measure and tell you to a tenth of a percentage point or a tenth of a degree of what the engine's operating at or the fluids are changing at and all these other things. Nothing on the pilot. But the pilot is 80% of the accident problem. So 80% of the accident problem is human error. 100% of the monitoring systems are on the machine. We've got almost to the point where the machine doesn't fail you, right? Like the machine is precisely tuned. It's going to give you the heads up, the warning, the timing to where you can get away from a potential catastrophic failure. We had a bad accident and I had my own in 2016 where we knocked down some trees, coming off a C-17, went right to a mission in a fatigued state. But at that moment in time, like it just wasn't something we'd think about. It was never a card you'd throw down. It was never in your sphere of even consideration. After the accident, we were like, man, I don't know if we were right. Like, should we have done that mission? It wasn't a critically important mission to what was going to happen in Afghanistan. So it wasn't that. ([Time 0:13:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e5f1e0fa-3097-40c9-9399-cbc075be800d)) - **Near Crash From Tech and Fatigue** - Mike recounted a near-accident in Djibouti due to improperly wired air data computers causing false instrument readings at night. - He reflected on how fatigue and rushed maintenance may have contributed, emphasizing human limitations in high-tech environments. Transcript: Mike LeNeave Forward, we go to Djibouti. We're about to take off and go over water and it's nighttime. It's dark out there, right? You've been to the desert, you know, you know, the deal when the sun goes down and there's no, no moon up, man, it's really dark. Amos Yeah. It's great for astrophotography. If you happen to have a decent camera and night off. Mike LeNeave That's right. So we're, we're about to depart. The airplane just got built up. Our mechanics that built the airplane, unfortunately, they didn't get the same rest cycle we got, right? Like aviators or flying crew are under a crew rest policy. Not that maintenance people aren't, but at that moment in time, that wasn't the focus. The focus was a timeline, get that airplane up so we can go do this mission. And we took off and the air data computer was not correctly wired to the aircraft. So all of our instrumentation, we basically went to a 30 degrees nose down, inverted look, lost airspeed. Now we're looking out at the ocean. Okay. Black night ocean, no horizon, no visible horizon. So you're trusting your instruments. And that was probably one of the few times that I've been in a helicopter that I literally felt like I was upside down. Like my whole head proprioceptive system went crazy. Wow. You jerked on the controls kind of thing. And what what ends up happening is we turn back, catch the lights and realize, OK, all of our instruments are wrong. So we turn around, come back, land, air data computers improperly assembled or hooked up. And ([Time 0:15:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/36123c9f-3666-4155-af36-a361ea05aefb)) - **Integrate PYSON for Fatigue Testing** - Use PYSON technology for pre- and post-work cognitive tests to baseline and identify fatigue risk. - Conduct quick reaction time tests at start and end of shifts to inform safer task assignments and risk management. Transcript: Mike LeNeave Yeah, sure. So let's talk about the roadmap a little bit, right? So right now today, what, what can PYSON do for aviation safety right now? Right now I can absolutely baseline and quantify, uh, risk associated to each individual involved in the aviation system. So the way that we would do that is essentially conduct a pre-work evaluation, right? So you show up to work, you're doing your paperwork, you're checking out your tools, bam, you take our test. It's a quick on the body cognitive test. It's the PVT. It's a three-minute test. You're sitting there, you're doing reaction to the light, boom, you're done, take your watch off, walk away. That essentially is your reading at the start of the day. And ideally, we would take one at the end of the day. So as you turned in your tools, take another test so that commanders and decision makers can see what kind of degradation we're having across the duty date. Now, that's not something you would need holistically every day for the rest of your work life. That is to start to build that picture and have a better understanding of what the metrics are telling you. The ([Time 0:28:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/41402024-bf8d-4bad-8f69-4a67b8fa9875)) - **Mind and Body Metrics Unite** - Combining reaction time testing with precise sleep and heart rate variability metrics provides a holistic view of cognitive readiness. - This integration creates a powerful tool for assessing both mind and body states in operational settings. Transcript: Mike LeNeave We have heart rate variability. We have all of the things, physiology metrics that most people are accustomed to seeing. And now you're going to lay body metrics with mind metrics. So imagine how much more powerful a reaction time test or some form of assessment, cognitive state assessment is when the same device is also measuring your sleep. So it's determining that you're getting restorative sleep or not getting restorative sleep because there's an attachment to what your mind is doing. So the peripheral nervous system feeds our sleep metric and that sleep metric becomes more powerful. That's ([Time 0:29:12](https://share.snipd.com/snip/22bd28cb-c515-48d4-99fc-556ad4864bb9)) - **Use Data to Predict and Prevent Risks** - PYSON can provide predictive analytics for human performance, aiding accident investigation and mission planning. - Use historical cognitive data to assess fatigue’s role in incidents and adjust scheduling to enhance safety. Transcript: Amos Are at the time? Mike LeNeave Sure. So something to think about is we're real accustomed in military aviation and aviation in general, we're very accustomed to lagging indicators, right? We have historical trends. We know the maintenance of the aircraft. We know how many hours were available on it. We know how many hours were available on this specific part. We know when a pilot was due for their flight physical and that kind of stuff. What we don't have is we don't have a whole lot of predictive analytics. What we can do with our testing metrics, right? And with our testing capability is we can start to predict out. So you can see what you're going to look like in the next 24 to 48 hours based on your individual test scores and your individual metrics. Now you take that to an accident sequence. If I was as an accident investigator were to pull the data sets for two pilots involved in an accident, and I had PYSON available to me, I could go back and look historically, what are they Ebbing and flowing as with their circadian rhythm? How often were they in a fully mission capable state, a partially mission capable state or a non-mission capable state, right? Those things matter. And then I could look at, okay, the day of the flight, they looked like this. They were X percentage degraded or not. The week before that, they were in this position. And I could start to build the picture to say, if I was going to do the human factors classification, I could start to look at that and go, your scheduling sequence set the table for these Aviators to be in a degraded state and fatigue was a factor, or I can absolutely rule fatigue out. And that's critical because ([Time 0:30:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3c148387-1461-404f-8a1a-720d9fec7335)) - **Measure Readiness Beyond Substances** - PYSON detects operational impairment regardless of causes like caffeine, nicotine, anxiety, or sleep issues. - Commanders receive actionable alerts to adjust duties or provide support, focusing strictly on operational readiness. Transcript: Mike LeNeave Here's the cool this is what i think is really cool about this device and this is why i think it's primely. Amos You know, the, you know, the military is running caffeine and nicotine. Like that's, that's what fuels the Americans war effort. Mike LeNeave Absolutely. Like I had cases of rippets in the aircraft, right? That's how you lived. Exactly right. Story for another time. So yes, the point is this, the psychomotor vigilance test and reaction time testing and especially the neurophysiology at the wrist with your electrical signals, the precision inside That we can see impairment. But we can see a degradation. And the cool part about this is if you did have someone who was having some kind of substance problem, or you did have someone who was having some kind of anxiety or depression problem, If you did have someone who had some kind of sleep problem, we're not going to be able to see any of that. We're just going to be able to tell the decision maker in real time, you probably want extra set of eyes on this soldier, or you may want to cycle this soldier into a rest cycle, something Else. You may want to do something different. That's it. This is strictly operationally focused. This is strictly an ability for the commander to know they are putting the best team on the battlefield right now today. Go and be confident. Amos Nice. ([Time 0:33:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/135f2784-fbf8-4308-aa3e-296b66b66cfe)) - **Different Sleep Resilience in Troops** - PYSON results showed varying resilience to sleep deprivation among service members. - Some adapt well to low sleep while others need tailored schedules to maintain performance and safety. Transcript: Mike LeNeave No, that's right. And I really like, I love that train of thought because one of the things we've discovered, we've done some things with the military already, and we discovered, started to see resilient Versus non-resilient populations. And what that means is there are people in the United States military that are ready to do their job and willing to do it and they'll never tap out. But some of them are not made for the cycle shifts that they're going to be put through. And those people, it doesn't mean they can't serve. It doesn't mean they're not worthy service people. We need to use them. We need to put them in the schedules that fit them. And then we have another population that's absolutely resilient to all the jerking around and hey, daytime, nighttime, whatever. Well, that's your population to play with to do that. ([Time 0:35:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/38e02900-b2aa-4195-926d-917ab637a699)) - **Partnering for Reliable Wearables** - PYSON partners with Timex to produce reliable wearable tech for precise physiology and reaction time data. - This collaboration aims to deliver rugged, usable devices suitable for military and high-risk user needs. Transcript: Amos You actually have operational, functional devices for sale. Mike LeNeave That's correct. Our devices are for sale there. And as a matter of fact, we've partnered with Timex. And here's the thing. We've got a great partner in Timex that's building hardware for us. We are a sensor and data analytics company. We're a data company, right? A physiology type of company. We're not a watchmaker. Timex is really good at making watches. We've made watches and we have them, but we know going forward, it's our capability and our science embedded in a really good production model watch is what we want. Right. And that's what everybody wants. So we've partnered with Timex and that's who we're talking to the United States military with right now about, hey, what is it precisely you want to measure on the human so that you can Build warrior biometrics? And as you know, that your service people are being taken care of and they're fit to fight right now. That's awesome. ([Time 0:39:04](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0421bb3b-8466-49b0-a427-3b3e41799f76))