Electro-optical field performance validation in the presence of turbulence

When new and unique task difficulties are requested to be determined, it is important to use methodologies that are consistent with previous research. Unfortunately, some new tasks break the paradigm of past research and require new techniques in order to properly determine their difficulty. This paper describes the process of determining the difficulty for tasks that are unique in that they have a null case (where no object or motion is present) and because these tasks have been requested to be quantified in environments that potentially contain high amounts of atmospheric turbulence. Because each of the calculated V50's was based upon an assumption, a secondary field collection was necessary in order to validate which model assumptions correlated properly to field performance data.