SATWorking memory

Situational Awareness Test

CBAT-style practice test · Working memory

Holding a rich tactical picture from one brief exposure: each unit’s type, allegiance, heading and position, plus each controller’s waypoint, altitude and comms channel.

Skill area: Working memory
Length: 32 questions
Format: Timed questions
Cost: Free version, or Premium

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What this test involves

Eleven pictures, around ten minutes in all. There is no clock cutting you off, the run ends when the eleventh is answered. Turn your sound on: each picture is a spoken briefing you have to memorise.
Contacts are called out one at a time: as each is spoken it appears on the grid, then the previous one clears. Nothing is ever all on screen at once.
The grid runs rows A–I, columns 1–9. Units are yellow friendly, red hostile or white unknown, each with a type glyph, heading arrow and callsign.
Controller aircraft (“Cp”) each carry a side panel that fills over two calls: next waypoint and the time due there, then altitude and comms channel.
It starts easy, 2 units and 1 controller, and builds to 5 units and 2 controllers by the ninth picture, so the later ones are much heavier and take longer.
There is a pause after every contact before the next appears, and its length changes each time, so you cannot predict when the next one is coming.
When the briefing ends the picture clears and one fact is asked. You will not know which, so hold as much as you can. Press 1–4 or click.

How to prepare for the Situational Awareness Test

Sweep the grid the same way every time and read each controller panel top to bottom, so recall has a fixed order to follow.
Tie each fact to its callsign as a short phrase, “BRAVO hostile armour north”, rather than memorising columns of attributes.
The controller panels are often asked and easy to neglect; give them the same attention as the grid.
The gaps between calls are deliberate. Use each one to fix the contact you just heard before the next arrives.

▸What has changed in this test (2)· last on 19 Oct 2026

New19 October 2026

You can now practise just the question type you keep getting wrong

The breakdown after a run has always told you which kind of question cost you the marks — "Fuel: 1 correct, 4 wrong" — and then left you to sit the whole test again to work on it, which means doing the three kinds you are already good at as well.

That row now has a button. Press it and you get a practice run of nothing but that kind of question: same generator, same difficulty, same worked answers, just the one you are losing marks on.

It shows on Airborne Numerical, Spatial Integration and the Situational Awareness Test, which are the tests that label their question types clearly enough for it to mean something. It appears only on a row where you actually dropped marks, because a button on a row you got right is only in the way.

Changed23 September 2026

Situational Awareness is now the Situational Awareness Test, SAT

That is what candidates call it, and it is the name the Canadian Forces use in their own published subtest list. Nothing about the test changed and no scores moved.

Every change to every test is at what has changed. If this test does something the real one does not, tell us.

Other working memory tests

DIGIT

Digit Recognition

A string of digits flashes up. How many were there?

TRAC2

Trace Test 2

Watch aircraft fly a scene, then recall what happened.

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