Another point I forgot to make was not acting out of pure emotion. Many of us jump quickly after feeling a strong emotion. When you do that, your reaction doesn’t come from a place of logic. And that can be very dangerous!!

This is an excellent definition. In order to free up your senses to perceive what is happening in your external flying environment, you have to be the master of yourself and your airplane. That means working hard to be knowledgeable about your procedures (how to execute flying tasks) and your airplane’s systems, ops limits, etc.

To be situational aware means your eyes are outside scanning for other traffic or listening on the radio so you can get an idea of where other aircraft are and where they are headed – especially useful in the traffic pattern. In a fighter, using the radar and talking to AWACS comes into play … again, knowing your aircraft and procedures well, frees up your mental CPU to handle the situational awareness tasks. Our brains are single core processors, not the fancy new dual cores in smartphones.

The “How to Become a Fighter Pilot” program would probably give your some added situational awareness in your quest to become a fighter pilot!