Towards an Analysis of Situational Awareness and Moral Judgement in Weaponized Manned-Unmanned Teaming Missions

Automation accelerates decision-making in modern military operations, but meaningful human control remains essential when lethal force is applied. This study examines moral decision-making, attention allocation, and cognitive challenges faced by military helicopter pilots operating in dynamic and complex mission scenarios within a high-fidelity cockpit and mission simulation. Gaze-tracking and interaction data reveal how pilots distributed their attention between situational analysis and system interaction throughout the mission. Intuitive, time-pressured in-mission decisions were contrasted with more deliberate and reflective reasoning revealed during post-mission debriefings. These observations highlight the importance of automation designs that enhance decision-making while preserving situational awareness and ethical judgment. The study further emphasizes the cognitive demands of time pressure and spatial task separation in Manned-Unmanned Teaming operations and provides practical insights for future system and interface design.