Tactical Domains Research Articles

Where is the Sport Science in American Football?

Despite enormous revenue production and a recent trend of investment in sport medicine research, American football has yet to make a measurable investment in sport performance science research. As a result, available knowledge is presently skewed toward technical and tactical domains, with very little knowledge development occurring in other areas within the sport science realm. In this editorial, we discuss plausible contributing factors to the current situation, and suggest ways to resolve this issue and move forward for the betterment of the sport.

A Review on C3I Systems’ Security: Vulnerabilities, Attacks, and Countermeasures

Command, Control, Communication, and Intelligence (C3I) systems are increasingly used in critical civil and military domains for achieving information superiority, operational efficacy, and greater situational awareness. The critical civil and military domains include, but are not limited to, battlefield, healthcare, transportation, and rescue missions. Given the sensitive nature and modernization of tactical domains, the security of C3I systems has recently become a critical concern. This is because cyber-attacks on C3I systems have catastrophic consequences including loss of human lives. Despite the increasing number of cyber-attacks on C3I systems and growing concerns about C3I systems’ security, there is a paucity of a comprehensive review to systematize the body of knowledge on the security of C3I systems. Therefore, in this article, we have gathered, analyzed, and synthesized the body of knowledge on the security of C3I systems. We have identified and reported security vulnerabilities, attack vectors, and countermeasures/defenses for C3I systems. In particular, this article has enabled us to (i) propose a taxonomy for security vulnerabilities, attack vectors, and countermeasures; (ii) interrelate attack vectors with security vulnerabilities and countermeasures; and (iii) propose future research directions for advancing the state-of-the-art on the security of C3I systems. We believe that our findings will serve as a guideline for practitioners and researchers to advance the state-of-the-practice and state-of-the-art on the security of C3I systems.

NATO RESILIANCE, DETER AND PROFESIONAL MILITARY EDUCATION

Our professional military education still lags in the attention it gives to contemporary deterrence problems. We try to provide a comprehensive framework for officer education across the strategic, operational, and tactical domains but curiously fails to highlight the need to teach deterrence in the professional military education classrooms. In this respect, we have to prepare our students for deterrence and escalation issues. It is critical to adapt their core curricula to include vital content on deterrence, escalation, cross-domain conflict, and crisis management under the nuclear shadow. Deterrence is not completely neglected in our core curricula, same individual academic or research faculty offer electives, even first-rate elective classes but still for a small number of students.

Characterizing on-road driving performance in individuals with traumatic brain injury who pass or fail an on-road driving assessment

Objective: To characterise on-road driving performance in individuals with traumatic brain injury who fail on-road driving assessment, compared with both those who pass assessment and healthy controls, and the injury and cognitive factors associated with driving performance.Study design: Cross-sectional.Methods: Forty eight participants with traumatic brain injury (Age M = 40.50 SD = 14.62, 77% male, post-traumatic amnesia days M = 28.74 SD =27.68) and 48 healthy matched controls completed a standardised on-road driving assessment in addition to cognitive measures.Results: Individuals with traumatic brain injury who passed on-road driving assessment performed no differently from controls while individuals with traumatic brain injury who failed the assessment demonstrated significantly worse driving performance relative to controls across a range of driving manoeuvres and error types including observation of on-road environment, speed control, gap selection, lane position, following distance and basic car control. Longer time post-injury and reduced visual perception were both significantly correlated with reduced driving skills.Conclusions: This exploratory study indicated that drivers with traumatic brain injury who failed on-road assessment demonstrated a heterogeneous pattern of impaired driving manoeuvres, characterised by skill deficits across both operational (e.g., basic car control and lane position) and tactical domains (e.g., following distance, gap selection, and observation) of driving. These preliminary findings can be used for implementation of future driving assessments and rehabilitation programs.Implications for rehabilitationClinicians should be aware that the majority of individuals with traumatic brain injury were deemed fit to resume driving following formal on-road assessment, despite having moderate to very severe traumatic brain injuries.Drivers with traumatic brain injury who failed an on-road assessment demonstrated a heterogeneous pattern of impaired skills including errors with observation, speed regulation, gap selection, and vehicle control and accordingly had difficulty executing a diverse range of common driving manoeuvres.Comprehensive, formal on-road assessments, incorporating a range of skills, and manoeuvres, are needed to evaluate readiness to return to driving following traumatic brain injury.Individually tailored driver rehabilitation programs need to address these heterogeneous skill deficits to best support individuals to make a successful return to driving post-traumatic brain injury.

The Heirs of Archimedes: Science and the Art of War through the Age of Enlightenment

The integration of scientific knowledge and military power began long before the Manhattan Project. In the third century BC, Archimedes was renowned for his research in mechanics and mathematics as well as for his design and coordination of defensive siegecraft for Syracuse during the Second Punic War. This collection of essays examines the emergence during the early modern era of mathematicians, chemists, and natural philosophers who, along with military engineers, navigators, and artillery officers, followed in the footsteps of Archimedes and synthesized scientific theory and military practice. It is the first collaborative scholarly assessment of these early military-scientific relationships, which have been long neglected by scholars both in the history of science and technology and in military history.From a historical perspective, this volume investigates the deep connections between two central manifestations of Western power, examining the military context of the Scientific Revolution and the scientific context of the Military Revolution. Unlike the classic narratives of the Scientific Revolution that focus on the theories of, and conflicts between, Aristotelian and Platonic worldviews, this volume highlights the emergence of the Archimedean ideal--in which a symbiosis exists between the supply of mechanistic science and the demand for military capability.From a security-studies perspective, this work presents an in-depth study of the central components of military power as well as their dynamic interactions in the political, acquisitional, operational, and tactical domains. The essays in this volume reveal the intellectual and cultural struggles to enhance the capabilities of these components--an exercise in transforming military power that remains relevant for today's armed forces.The volume sets the stage by examining the innovation of gunpowder weaponry in both the Christian and the Islamic states of the late medieval and Renaissance eras. It then explores such topics as the cultural resistance to scientific techniques and the relationship between early modern science and naval power--particularly the intersecting developments in mathematics and oceanic navigation. Other essays address the efforts of early practitioners and theorists of chemistry to increase the power and consistency of gunpowder. The final essays analyze the application of advanced scientific knowledge and Enlightenment ideals to the military engineering and artillery organizations of the eighteenth century. The volume concludes by noting the global spread of the Archimedean ideal during the nineteenth century as an essential means for resisting Western imperialism.

Adaptive training for command-and-control teams: challenges in scenario-based training

ABSTRACTIn the face of manpower reductions, which have constrained the ability to train sailors shipboard via on-the-job training and mentoring, the US Navy has focused on using tactical simulations at waterfront training facilities to bring sailors to high levels of tactical proficiency prior to reporting aboard ship. This new training approach has necessitated research and development into applying advanced scenario-based training approaches into the fleet training curriculum. This paper will discuss the science and technology work conducted under the Adaptive Training for Combat Information Centers (ATCIC) initiative, which focused on developing prototype concepts for adaptive training and assessing their effectiveness within scenario-based training systems. The ATCIC project approach and challenges associated with applying theoretical adaptive training concepts to the training of naval tactical decision-making skills will be discussed, and recommendations for future research to support generalising these results across tactical domains will be provided.