Combat Information Research Articles

Issues with Applying MIL-STD-1472F Standards in the Context of a Large Screen Display Assessment

In general, a human factors design standard must strike the right balance between specificity to prescribe proper design techniques and generality to insure that the standard can be relevant across a variety of system designs. Too specific, and the standard is rigid and minimally applicable. Too general, and the standards become open for user interpretation, which can lead to misapplication and inconsistency in applying the standard, producing results that are not reliable or accurate. The purpose of this paper is to identify potential considerations that should be addressed in the development of human factors standards. These issues are discussed within the context of a MIL-STD-1472F assessment of character heights and widths required for Large Screen Displays within a physical mockup of a U.S. Navy Ship's Combat Information Center. During the course of this assessment, a team of analysts performing character height and width calculations recognized several factors that may contribute to the potential for misapplication and inconsistency of standards. The following discussion identifies several of these factors, and provides recommendations for closing the gap of user interpretation, allowing for more accurate and reliable application of visual display standards.

Robert Kellogg Crane: A scientist remembers

Robert Kellogg Crane: A scientist remembers

Evaluating a Model of Team Collaboration via Analysis of Team Communications

A model of team collaboration was developed that emphasizes the macro-cognitive processes entailed in collaboration and includes major processes that underlie this type of communication: (1) individual knowledge building, (2) developing knowledge inter-operability, (3) team shared understanding, and (4) developing team consensus. This paper describes research conducted to empirically validate this model. Team communications that transpired during two complex problem solving situations were coded using cognitive process definitions included in the model. Data was analyzed for three teams that conducted a Maritime Interdiction Operation (MIO) and four teams that engaged in air-warfare scenarios. MIO scenarios involve a boarding team that boards a suspect ship to search for contraband cargo (e.g. explosives, machinery) and possible terrorist suspects. Air-warfare scenarios involve identifying air contacts in the combat information center of an Aegis ship. The way the teams' behavior on the two scenarios maps to the model of team collaboration is discussed.

Multi‐Agent Simulation of Human Behavior in Naval Air Defense

AbstractThe AEGIS Cruiser Air‐Defense Simulation Program models the operations of a combat information center team performing air defense for a U.S. Navy battle group. It uses multi‐agent system technology and is implemented in Java. Conceived primarily to assist personnel in air‐defense training and doctrine formulation, the simulation provides insight into the factors (skills, experience, fatigue, aircraft numbers, weather, etc.) that influence performance, especially under intense or stressful situations, and the task bottlenecks. It simulates air contacts (aircraft and missiles) as well as the actions and mental processes of the watchstanders. All simulated events are logged, to permit performance analysis and reconstruction for post‐scenario training. Validation of the simulation was done with the help of expert practitioners of air defense at the AEGIS Training & Readiness Center (ATRC), San Diego, California, USA.

Challenge — Naval Force Development

Challenge — Naval Force Development

Verification of the change blindness phenomenon while managing critical events on a combat information display.

Change blindness occurs when humans are unable to detect significant changes in objects and scenes after their attention is momentarily diverted. Because change blindness is relevant in many applied settings, the current study investigated the phenomenon in the context of tasks performed by naval command and control system personnel. Operators of such systems are often heavily loaded with concurrent visual search, situation assessment, voice communications, and control-display manipulation tasks at large, physically dispersed tactical situation displays. As the operators' attention shifts from one display to another, it creates an opportunity for changes to occur on unattended screens with potentially negative consequences. Our results show that on a display containing 8 objects of interest, considerable change blindness was demonstrated in that participants required 2 or more selections to correctly identify a changed object on nearly 1/3 of the test trials. Further, operator performance on 15% of the trials was equivalent to randomly guessing with replacement after making 3 incorrect selections. This research underscores the need for developing effective countermeasures to the change blindness phenomenon. Actual or potential uses of this research include interface design of computer workstations for military, nuclear power industry, air traffic control, crisis response center, and hospital emergency room applications.

Extracting Decision Rules for Cooperative Team Air Combat Based on Rough Set Theory

In order to reduce redundant features in air combat information and to meet the requirements of real-time decision in combat, rough set theory is introduced to the tactical decision analysis in cooperative team air combat. An algorithm of attribute reduction for extracting key combat information and generating tactical rules from given air combat databases is presented. Then, considering the practical requirements of team combat, a method for reduction of attribute-values under single decision attribute is extended to the reduction under multi-decision attributes. Finally, the algorithm is verified with an example for tactical choices in team air combat. The results show that, the redundant attributes in air combat information can be reduced, and that the main combat attributes, i.e., the information about radar command and medium-range guided missile, can be obtained with the algorithm mentioned above, moreover, the minimal reduced strategy for tactical decision can be generated without losing the result of key information classification. The decision rules extracted agree with the real situation of team air combat.

Watch Turnover Support for Future Surface Combatants

ABSTRACTDuring watch turnover in the Combat Information Center, warfighters rely upon verbal communications, standardized procedures, and personal memory to build the situation awareness needed to perform their jobs. The design and implementation of the systems they use require operators to integrate information through procedures. A user interface prototype for an automated watch turnover support system has been developed at the Integrated Command Environment (ICE) Lab at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Virginia. This prototype demonstrates how information from multiple shipboard systems could be integrated to a single source of information, enabling a more efficient and effective watch turnover process. An iterative development process allowed the documentation of watchstander information requirements, a categorization of information, and definition of user interface requirements.

Collaborative Development of Expertise: Evaluation of an on-the-JOB (OJT) Training Program

The Collaborative Development of Expertise (CDE) program was created to support transfer of knowledge and skill from experienced personnel to trainees in on-the-job settings. Thirty-six active-duty Naval Air Defense Coordinators (ADCs) were recruited from Combat Information Centers on board AEGIS-class cruisers. The experimental group received a workshop, practice, and coaching in the CDE program. The control group did not learn CDE during the evaluation, relying upon current Naval training practices. Measures were developed to evaluate how CDE impacted mission debriefs between a trainer and trainee, and trainee on-the-job performance. Analysis of mission debriefs showed that CDE trainers and trainees discussed more of the cognitive challenges associated with the ADC position, and used more expert training and learning strategies than did control group participants. Expert ADCs, blind to experimental condition, rated CDE trainee performance as higher than the control group. Limitations of the study and future development objectives for CDE are offered.

Open Systems Architecture C41 Template

ABSTRACTThe Affordability Through Commonality Office (PMS 512) of PEO Surface Strike, in order to promote and enable the implementation of Open Systems Architecture (OSA) for Navy systems, established the Total Ship Open Systems Architecture (TOSA) Industry/Navy Integrated Product Team (IPT). TOSA has developed a notional open C4I template which incorporates an OSA. The application of OSA to C4I spaces will increase flexibility, upgradability, scalability, and adaptability and decrease total ownership cost over the lifecycle of the ship. Open systems concepts are well established in the commercial information technology (IT) field as a means to increase competition among vendors (broaden the market applicability and reduce costs). While the benefits of OSA are easily discernable for IT systems, the use of OSA for HM&E ship systems inter‐faces represents a new and unproven application. An important feature of the adaptable ship concept is the Functional Element (FE) zone, which represents physical divisions of a ship with managed functions, configurations, interfaces, and characteristics. This paper describes how the OSA process was applied to develop an example FE Zone template for a specific space, a notional Combat Information Center (CIC) zone. The resulting concept may be used to develop a family of templates to open the remaining Command, Control, Communications, Computing and Intelligence (C4I) zones on a ship.

Measuring the Impact of Advanced Technologies and Reorganization on Human Performance in a Combat Information Center

Systematically evaluating the impact of novel technology and organizational structure on team performance is a complex, multidimensional task. We define several of these dimensions that are of particular interest in the development of new command and control teams and technologies for the U.S. Navy. In addition, we describe an approach to stimulating and measuring human behavior on these dimensions, and an experiment in which this approach is applied. Preliminary data are presented.

Using network hacking techniques to disrupt military operational networks

It starts in a small way. An Internet-originated electronic mail message received by various technical ratings and Combat Information Center (CIC) officers on a ship deployed in a very high threat area of the Persian Gulf relays news of a natural disaster involving their families that supposedly occurred during a cookout:

Impact of Naturalistic Decision Support on Tactical Situation Awareness

A prototype decision support system (DSS) was developed to enhance Navy tactical decision making based on naturalistic decision processes. Displays were developed to support critical decision making tasks through recognition-primed and explanation-based reasoning processes and cognitive analysis of the decision making problems faced by Navy tactical officers in a shipboard Combat Information Center. Baseline testing in high intensity, ambiguous scenarios indicated that experienced decision makers were not well served by current systems, and their performance revealed periodic loss of situation awareness. A study is described with eight, expert Navy tactical decision making teams that used either their current system alone or in conjunction with the prototype DSS. When the teams had the prototype DSS available, we observed significantly fewer communications to clarify the tactical situation, significantly more critical contacts identified early in the scenario, and a significantly greater number of defensive actions taken against imminent threats. These findings suggest that the prototype DSS enhanced the commanders' awareness of the tactical situation, which in turn contributed to greater confidence, lower workload, and more effective performance.

Decision Making in Complex Naval Command-and-Control Environments

This paper presents the findings of a study on how experienced naval officers make decisions in a complex, time-pressured command and control setting, the Combat Information Center of AEGIS cruisers. The decision processes invoked by the officers were consistent with the recognition-primed decision model. The majority of decisions concerned situation awareness and diagnosis in which the decision makers used feature-matching and story generation strategies to build situation awareness. Furthermore, awareness of the situation enabled the officers to recognize appropriate actions from published procedures or past experience. A recognitional strategy was used to identify 95% of the actions taken; decision makers compared multiple options in only 4% of the cases. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for framing command-and-control problems, for emphasizing situation awareness, for a descriptive model of decision making, and for designing decision supports.

Differential Effects of ‘Noise’ Stress and Workload on Salience and Hemispace Bias in a Screen-Based Target Acquisition Task

Attentional biases in stressed or overworked radar operators (airborne or in Combat Information Centers, etc.) may have important operational implications. This study examined the effects of workload and non-workload-related stress on salience bias in a screen-based target selection and engagement task. Results in the control condition confirmed that appreciable baseline salience bias existed. Moreover, in the non-task-related stress condition (noise/anxiety), a significant increase in salience bias was observed. Elevated workload, in contrast, was associated with no significant changes in salience bias. Overall, the results showed stable individual differences in salience bias and suggested that non-workload related stress influenced ‘high bias’ individuals proportionately more than ‘low bias’ individuals-an outcome with potential implications for selection. Subjects were also significantly biased toward the left hemispace, a powerful effect that remained even after the experiment was repeated using subjects’ left instead of right hands.

Patterns of Errors Shown by Experienced Navy Combat Information Center Teams

The Tactical Decision Making Under Stress program is being conducted to apply recent developments in decision theory and human-system interaction technology to the design of a decision support system for enhancing tactical decision making under highly complex conditions. Topics to be discussed include: (1) a description of the difficult tasks identified for analysis; (2) the general methodological approach; (3) development of the performance measures and issues related to their development; (4) discussion of the modification and extension of the TapRoot® Incident Investigation System; and (5) discussion of the types of errors made by decision makers and interpretations for the cause of these errors based in the cognitive psychology literature.

An Experimental Plan for the Evaluation of a Decision Support System

This paper describes an experimental plan for the evaluation of display modules that comprise an experimental decision support system (DSS) for combat information center (CIC) decision makers. A description of the test bed simulation known as the decision-making evaluation facility for tactical teams (DEFTT) is given. A rationale for the development of the test tasks (scenarios) is also given. The initial effort and rationale for developing the display modules is described along with a brief description of the performance measurement system. Data have been collected for subjects’ performance in the DEFTT system without the DSS and the results of these baseline runs are given.

An Analysis of Communication and Use of Military Terms in Navy Team Training

Efficient communication is essential to effective team coordination. In particu- lar, the use of specialized military terms with specific meanings is essential to accurate communications and also helps keep messages short. Internal Combat Information Center communications were recorded during Navy team training. Communication behavior was classified by speech turns, with emphasis on the use of military terms. Even though the purpose of military terms is to promote brevity and accuracy, speech turns with military terms were wordier and had more format violations than did those without military terms. Military terms were used as officially defined only 57% of the time, and little change was found over training. Subjective comments made during debriefing sessions did not reflect actual measured behavior. The results suggest areas of communica- tion behavior where specific training might be useful, including the accurate use of military terms.

A User-Centered Approach to the Design of a Naval Tactical Workstation Interface

The 21st century Navy combatant ship will experience exponential increases in shipboard information to be processed, disseminated and integrated. High Definition System (HDS) technology will provide for the convergence of text, graphics, digital video, imagery, and complex computing to allow for a new range of advanced capabilities that exceed those of currently available workstations. These capabilities could result in unmanageable and overwhelming cognitive workloads for Navy tactical operators in CIC (Combat Information Center). For this reason, a prototype user interface was designed using future combat system requirements, proposed HDS capabilities, and human-computer interface design standards and principles. Usability testing of the protoype user interface was conducted as part of an effort to identify integrated information management technologies which reduce operator workload, increase human performance, and improve combat system effectiveness. This demonstration will focus on explanation and demonstration of future concepts envisioned for the AEGIS operational environment; organization and functionality of the menu structures and window contents; the usability testing methods utilized; results from usability testing; and plans for utilization of the prototype shell in other operational environments.

Decision Making in the AEGIS Combat Information Center

This paper presents the methods and findings of a study designed to identify the decision requirements for anti-air warfare officers in the Combat Information Center of an AEGIS cruiser. Decision requirements include the decisions that systems operators make, the cognitive strategies they invoke to make these decisions, and the cues and factors essential for making these decisions. These requirements can be used to design training, human-computer interfaces, or decision supports. The researchers adopted a method based on Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM) research. NDM describes how people make decisions in real-world settings under conditions of time pressure, high risk, and ambiguity. This paper describes a process for obtaining data necessary for describing these decision processes. The central method is a semi-structured interview method, the Critical Decision method (CDM). CDM was used to interview 31 experienced AEGIS personnel resulting in 14 incidents that reflect real problems experienced by the operational fleet. Analysis of these incidents revealed 183 decisions. Of these, 103 concerned situation assessments (SA). The operators used feature matching and story building to make all SA decisions. The operators invoked recognitional strategies to generate 95% of the course of action (COA) options and compared multiple options in only 5% of the COA decisions. The findings reported here indicate that under conditions of time pressure and ambiguity: decision makers rarely use analytical decision strategies, they usually satisfice rather than optimize, they rely heavily on diagnostic decisions, and they invoke singular rather than comparative evaluations of courses of action.