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Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) 2011
2011 Paper No. 11158 Page 1 of 9
Executing Next Generation Training in Combat identification
Emilie A. Reitz
Jay W. Reist
General Dynamics Information Technology
Joint and Coalition Warfighting
Suffolk, VA
Suffolk, VA
emilie.reitz.ctr@hr.js.mil
jay.reist@hr.js.mil
ABSTRACT
Fratricide is a fact of war; yet, its pervasiveness is shocking. It is likely to grow as future conflicts are fought in
complex urban battlespaces with ever more diverse military coalitions. Under such conditions, correctly identifying
“friend from foe” is challenging, and accurate combat identification becomes even more difficult when the “friends”
speak different languages, employ diverse tactics and procedures, use dissimilar equipment, and employ differing
communication techniques.
Solving this challenge is an urgent need, well recognized by coalition forces. In fact, the Strategic Plan for the Next
Generation of Training for the Department of Defense lists developing “capabilities for individual and collective
training that support evolving fratricide prevention measures and combat identification tactics, techniques and
procedures” among its Training Top Ten (Department of Defense, 2010b). Combat identification is currently
accomplished through the application of situational awareness and target identification with significant emphasis on
utilizing technology-based systems to sort friends from enemies, neutrals and non-combatants. These technology-
based systems can only confirm the presence of a friendly force unit or identify a unit as unknown – and that
unknown unit could still fall anywhere on the spectrum of friend, enemy, neutral or non-combatant. Novel combat
identification tactics, training, and technological innovations must be developed because of this. In this paper, we
present a review of the theory and history of combat identification, an assessment of the challenges faced by
coalition forces, the gaps, and areas for future developments in training and research. We close with a discussion of
a training initiative being assessed at Bold Quest, an annual Joint/coalition exercise at which new combat
identification approaches are demonstrated.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Emilie A. Reitz is a General Dynamics Information Technology Research Analyst, with Joint and Coalition
Warfighting. She holds a Master‟s degree in International Studies from Old Dominion University. Her research
focuses on integrating Joint capabilities into modeling and simulation, and appropriate training venues.
Jay W. Reist is a retired Marine Corps Infantry Officer. In his position as the Deputy Director for Training and
Education at USJFCOM‟s Irregular Warfare Center, he led efforts in Small Unit Excellence and War games that
integrate complex decision-making. As the Operational Manager for the Future Immersive Training Environment
Joint Capability Technology Demonstration, he focused on integrating sense-making skills into complex scenarios
using immersive training technologies.
Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) 2011
2011 Paper No. 11158 Page 2 of 9
Executing Next Generation Training in Combat identification
Emilie Reitz
Jay Reist
General Dynamics Information Technology
Joint and Coalition Warfighting
Suffolk, VA
Suffolk, VA
emilie.reitz.ctr@hr.js.mil
jay.reist@hr.js.mil
“The most basic identification system is comprised of
the human eye and the human brain, but these require
training to be effective.”
Who Goes There: Friend or Foe? U.S. Congress,
Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), 1993 (p 16).
On 4 March 2005, a Bulgarian patrol in the Iraqi city of
Diwaniya attempted to stop an approaching car.
Despite being signaled to stop, the car continued
forward. Bulgarian soldiers fired warning shots into the
air. In the shootout that followed, Bulgarian Private
Gardi Gardev was killed by a burst of intense gunfire –
not from the car that had approached the patrol, but
from a United States Army Communication site 150
yards away, who thought the Bulgarians‟ warning shots
meant the communication site was being fired on
(“Bulgaria Says,” 2005; “Bulgaria Sure,” 2005).
FRAMEWORK FOR COMBAT
IDENTIFICATION
The event described above is one of many examples of
the challenges associated with combat identification,
which includes the process of distinguishing friend
from foe in a complex multinational battlefield.
Accurate combat identification is challenging in all
combat situations, but the complexity compounds with
the addition of multiple services from many other
nations, each with different equipment, military
procedures and protocols, radio frequencies, and
techniques for identifying themselves as friendly to
their own troops.
Each service or nation that employs a term for combat
identification utilizes a somewhat different definition.
The US defines combat identification as “the process
of attaining an accurate characterization of detected
objects in the operational environment sufficient to
support an engagement decision” (Department of
Defense [DoD], 2010a). For the purpose of this paper,
the UK Ministry of Defence definition of combat
identification is utilized, due to its more comprehensive
nature. The UK Ministry of Defence definition
encompasses the US term, adding to it: “The process
of combining situational awareness, target
identification and specific tactics, techniques and
procedures to increase operational effectiveness of
weapons systems and reduce the incidence of casualties
caused by friendly fire” (National Audit Office [NAO],
2006). These definitions express the generalized
coalition stance that situational awareness plus target
identification equals combat identification. Where:
Situational awareness is defined as knowledge of
events occurring and location of units in their area
of the battlespace.
Target identification is the accurate
characterization of an object, sufficient to support
an engagement decision mentioned in the US
definition of the combat identification concept.
Combat identification is currently accomplished
through a mixture of human and technology solutions,
with the emphasis placed on technology. (Gadsden &
Outteridge, 2006; Schrader, 1982). Technologies for
combat identification can be highly accurate, yet
human operators must activate the system and then
correctly respond to its outputs, both of which
represent potentially error-prone activities. Situational
awareness is key during the response phase, as the
human is the one who acts on the system information
with a weapon or a call for fires (Greitzer & Andrews,
2010; Shrader, 1982).
Combat identification technologies involve cooperative
and non-cooperative techniques. A cooperative system,
such as a question-and-answer interrogator that seeks a
response from a friendly force‟s responder or an
operator using an infrared device to look for specific
signals from allies, will quickly identify a friend using
a compatible system (NAO, 2006). However, absence
of a response or familiar signal does not necessarily
mean that the target is an enemy.
When cooperative methods fail to yield a definitive
identification, then non-cooperative techniques are
employed, such as radar for identifying airplanes or
optics for identifying ground units (OTA, 1993). Even
well-practiced non-cooperative identification
techniques are susceptible to misidentification, as
illustrated by the incorrect application of non-
cooperative target identification during the 1988
shooting of a commercial aircraft by the U.S.
Vincennes (Johnston, Cannon-Bowers, & Salas, 1998).
Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) 2011
2011 Paper No. 11158 Page 3 of 9
Vincennes operators, using a radar system, incorrectly
identified a commercial transportation aircraft, without
cooperative identification technologies transmitting, as
a hostile fighter plane.
Fratricide
While the primary goal of combat identification is to
improve the operational effectiveness of coalition
forces, allowing units to quickly and correctly engage
the enemy, a concurrent aim is to reduce incidents of
fratricide (Gadsden & Outteridge, 2006). The United
States officially defines fratricide as “the employment
of friendly weapons and munitions with the intent to
kill the enemy or destroy his equipment that results in
unforeseen and unintentional death or injury to friendly
personnel” (Kulsrud, 2003).
Many coalition forces acknowledge three classes of
fratricide: accidental, causing the unintentional death
or injury of friendly personnel; military-industrial,
which is the misfiring, mishandling and backfiring of
weapons and munitions; and calculated, which is the
foreseen but unintentional death or injury of friendly
personnel (OTA, 1993; Stevenson, 2006). Improved
combat identification approaches should help reduce
incidents of accidental fratricide.
In the aftermath of an accidental fratricide, the unit of
battle who was engaged may suffer a variety of
detrimental effects, hesitation to commit to action,
degradation of morale, distrust in neighboring units,
and unwillingness to use available assets to their fullest
(OTA, 1993; Kulsrud, 2003). This can occur regardless
of whether the engagement led to casualties, equipment
damage, or was simply a close call.
HISTORICAL COMBAT IDENTIFICATION
CHALLENGES
Because of the potential for detrimental effects on
morale and unit cohesion, incidents of fratricide have
been historically underreported. Warfighters in an
active theater expect the enemy forces to try to kill
them. Fratricide is not only a historically harder
attribution to make, but one which comes with cultural
connotations closer to the committing of a murder than
an expected act of war. The distastefulness of admitting
to killing or wounding a member of an allied or own
unit led to underreporting until new policies were
implemented during Desert Storm, in 1991.
World War II and Vietnam
World War II was the first large-scale conflict to
feature massive numbers of multinational troops
coordinating with high lethality airpower. These
features led to well-known failures to perform combat
identification. For instance, in the Ardennes American
and British units often found themselves
misunderstanding which signals marked targets as
opposed to marking friends (Shrader, 1982). Even the
battle of Normandy was marred by heavy fratricide on
ground troops by the supporting air power due to
miscalculations in the bombing runs. The Pacific
Theater was no better – in one incident, Canadian and
American units fought hard to seize the island of Kiska
only to find that their enemy had been themselves.
Thirty-two allied troops were killed in the fight even
though the Japanese had deserted the island some
weeks beforehand (Roy, 2002).
Massive WWII era multi-national troop and airpower
deployments were compounded by confusion,
nervousness, stress, and coordination mishaps. One
officer noted that multiple staff officers in the rear of
the battalion were shot when troops, wary of contact
with the enemy, mistook them for Japanese infiltrating
the line, and failed to attempt any friend or foe
identification (Shrader, 1982; Cushman, 1944).
The pervasiveness of failures to correctly perform
combat identification before engagement did not
improve during Vietnam, though with superiority in the
air, anti-aircraft incidents declined sharply. Incidents
of combat identification failures mainly came from
perimeter guards who failed to wait for a challenge
response, and from soldiers who mistook allies as
Vietnamese agents, or soldiers who fired without
following proper tactics techniques and procedures
prior to engagement (Shrader, 1982). Later attempts to
pinpoint the root causes of fratricide were complicated
by the fact that “fratricide” was not an available option
on cause of death forms throughout the war. Instead,
being shot by an ally was often listed as „misadventure‟
(OTA, 1993).
What the modern era would consider technologically
supported identification techniques were limited in
World War II and Vietnam; combat identification
openly relied on the soldier who was seeking a
challenge response, visually identifying allies, and
calling in fire on enemy forces. As this section
depicted, those identification techniques often proved
ineffectual.
Gulf War and Current Engagements
Improvements to the identifiability of munitions and
the increased speed of information changed fratricide
reporting during the Gulf War. Because few casualties
were inflicted by the enemy, the fratricides stood out in
Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) 2011
2011 Paper No. 11158 Page 4 of 9
stark contrast. Many of them occurred during quick
target engagement situations, where a ground-based
shooter had a heightened sense of impending threat and
reacted to that perceived threat (OTA, 1993). Ground-
based fratricide incidents constituted the bulk of the
combat identification failures during the Gulf War. Of
the 28 total fratricide incidents, 15 were inflicted on
ground troops, accounting for 23 deaths and leaving 57
wounded (Shrader, 1992; Kellog & Potendyk, 2010).
After Desert Storm, many historians began to review
reporting procedures from previous engagements,
which brought to light the severity of the challenges of
performing combat identification (Kulsrud, 2003). This
revelation concurred with research that was performed
in the late 80s; it revealed that five percent of all shots
fired from blue forces during training exercises at the
National Training Center were fired at other blue
forces, with three percent of all shots „wounding‟ or
„killing‟ another blue force trainee (Hamsa & Banks,
1988). That level was reached without the stress and
sense of lethality that comes from actual combat
situations, which led researchers at the time to consider
the potential for even higher rates of fratricide on the
battlefield.
Before these analyses, the longstanding assumption
held that fratricide accounted for just two percent of all
casualties; however, recent reviews of historical data
suggest that the 15% to 20% rates of fratricide
exhibited during the Gulf War may be non-exceptional.
Fratricides from Vietnam have been re-estimated at
12% or more (OTA, 1993). The increases in reports of
fatalities, as well as injuries and equipment damage,
brought attention to the need to more accurately
conduct combat identification.
Publically available data from the current conflicts on
failures of combat identification is inconsistent (House
of Commons, 2007). However, there is an expectation
that high fratricide rates could continue at 20% levels
or even higher, due to the highly urbanized, close
combat operating environment, where the enemy is
indistinguishable from the population. As stated by
Stephen Dalton, the United Kingdom‟s (then) Senior
Responsible Owner for Combat Identification Air Vice
Marshal, “there of course will be many more non-
enemy and non-friendly people in the battlespace in the
future and therefore we need to be sure that we are
doing enough to recognize that we shall only be able to
recognize our own through some form of pure
identification systems per se. It is the situational
awareness, knowing the likeliest position of the enemy
in particular, but also of any non-combatants in there,
which is also important for us to do” (House of
Commons, 2007).
HUMAN FACTORS
The literature iterates repeatedly that weapon
modernization and technological sophistication have
outpaced the training sophistication of the operators
(Shrader, 1992; OTA, 1993; House of Commons,
2007). Similarly, combat identification technologies
have failed to sufficiently afford effective, error-free
operation. Consequently, there is increased interest in
how operators can better utilize combat identification
technologies (National Audit Office, 2006), as the
soldier is the end point in the process of combat
identification, whether it is a decision augmented with
technology or not. In the coalition focused technical
cooperation program, the fratricide mitigation group
has called out areas for further investigation, in
particular human decision-making and support. Each
source in the literature highlights human factors related
causes for failures in combat identification. Issues
include communication failures, poor situational
awareness, insufficient training, cognitive factors,
misapplication of procedures, misidentification and
poor leadership (Gadsden & Outteridge, 2006; Shrader,
1982; Wilson et al., 2007). In most cases, these issues
are brought about by stress, inattention, and
carelessness (Shrader, 1982, 1992). As friendly fire
incidents occur, these underlying factors increase in the
unit harmed in the combat identification failure, as they
lose confidence in their allies, and suffer a loss of unit
cohesion (Shrader, 1992).
Decision Making Under Stress
Units in the field perform numerous cognitively taxing
tasks daily, and decide in the midst of all of the other
information coming in whether to engage or not to
engage a target (Wilson et al., 2007). Performance of
such complex mental tasks substantially declines under
stress. Although there are expert-level decision makers
who can maintain high performance under stress, they
are the exception (Means, Salas, Crandall & Jacobs,
1993).
A good example of the effects stress has on operations
can be found in Vietnam. The 1/35 US Army infantry
had come into repeated contact with the enemy and
were conditioned for a quick response. Three platoons
from the unit were patrolling separate routes; one
platoon was disoriented by the jungle, and they fired on
another platoon, beginning a firefight that led to no
fatalities but severely reduced morale (Shrader 1982).
These personnel had been conditioned to expect
contact with the enemy, and they interpreted the signs
of their fellow patrolling unit as enemy contact. The
platoons had fallen prey to a common decision making
Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) 2011
2011 Paper No. 11158 Page 5 of 9
pitfall, the availability heuristic (Tversky &
Kahneman, 1973; Stevenson, 2006), where the incident
which is easiest to retrieve from memory is assumed as
the more likely outcome, due to recentness and
repeated exposure.
The availability heuristic is one of the two decision-
making pitfalls common to combat identification
failures. The other is the confirmation bias, which is
the unwitting seeking of and application of evidence
that agrees with one‟s expectation (OTA 1993;
Nickerson, 1998).
Either of these pitfalls interferes with warfighters‟
situational awareness and target identification abilities,
and contribute to failures in combat identification.
Situational awareness is particularly vulnerable, as the
understanding of where one‟s own troops are, as well
as the enemy, can be tainted by expectations such as
expecting that all friendly forces are to the rear and all
enemies are located forward (OTA,1993).
SYSTEM COMPLICATIONS
Reason (2000) uses a system accidents model called
the Swiss cheese model to explain how overlapping
layers of systems and people can serve as a barrier to
accidents. In this model, systems have unpredictable
holes that come from attention lapses, equipment
failures, slips, violations of the standard operating
procedure, and designs which lend themselves to flaws
as the system or organization grows and changes. In
Reason‟s Swiss cheese model, accidents occur when
the holes in the system line up, and an occurrence
passes through the aligned holes rather than hitting a
barrier and causes a catastrophic end effect. In this
case, the end effect is a failure in combat identification,
whether it leads to a near miss or causes a fatality. For
this reason, while multiple studies have identified a
variety of human errors in the employment of combat
identification, seldom were able to attribute any of the
incidents to only one clear cause. Instead, human and
system errors cascaded, building on smaller mistakes
and assumptions, and are complicated by a range of the
contributing factors, such as poor communication and
stress (Shrader, 1982; Stevenson, 2006).
Multi-participant Complications
The Swiss cheese model of system accidents describes
complications within one system, not from the
interaction of multiple systems. Internal coordination
of units from different branches of one nation‟s
military proves challenging before adding in the
multiplicative effect of coordinating externally among
many nations. The holes in the system could shrink or
grow unpredictably in response to the intermingling of
diverse systems. Equipment interoperability and
harmonized training and tactics are required to
effectively integrate systems of systems and ultimately
to facilitate effective coalition combat identification.
This unification was a challenge in WWII, and it still
proves to be one today.
In a 2006 British House of Commons session on
combat identification, discussion centered around the
difficulties involved in procuring a common
technology solution. This discussion included lengthy
questioning by a government official as to the
seriousness of American cooperation. The topic of
allied-on-allied fratricides is a highly emotional one,
more so than failures in combat identification that
occur within the units of just one nation. At the time of
the 2006 session, a solid solution was estimated to be
ready by 2011 (House of Commons, 2007); however,
as of mid-2011, a unified multi-nation system has not
been adopted, nor are there any clear systems ready for
acceptance (Kellog & Potendyk, 2010).
An additional complicating factor is the need to
leverage temporary allies for limited missions or
specific areas of operation. Further, the ally of one
coalition nation is not necessarily the ally of another‟s.
Thus, accurate technologically based combat
identification must be done in a way that does not
compromise the identification systems‟ technology to
someone who may later use that information to their
own advantage against coalition forces. A clear
example of this involved interaction with Syrian troops
in the first Gulf War; a common cooperative
technology solution would have required giving the
Syrians temporary access to the U.S. combat
identification systems (OTA, 1993).
TECHNOLOGY GAPS
As mentioned previously, technology is expected to
bear the burden of combat identification. Coalition
nations are considering new technologies but have been
slow to acquire viable systems. For instance, in 2004,
the UK Ministry of Defence intended to complete and
deliver their planned Battlefield Target Identification
System (BTIDS) by 2006. BTIDS has not been fully
acquired and continues to undergo development today.
Part of the reason given in the House of Commons
testimony for the slow speed of technological
development is that the nature of modern warfare has
changed to such a degree that it demands extremely
robust systems for identification, with higher levels of
fidelity (House of Commons, 2007). At the time of that
particular report, the procurement of BTIDS had
already been delayed for six years due to coordination
Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) 2011
2011 Paper No. 11158 Page 6 of 9
challenges with allied decision makers. Because of this,
the Ministry of Defence has contemplated going it
alone on a limited national program to at least reduce
United Kingdom ground-to-ground identification
failures.
Dismounted units are particularly susceptible to these
failures. The combat identification technologies for
ground forces, as they are currently applied, have not
developed past what was available in the early 90s:
reflective tape applied strategically to equipment,
infrared lights, and panel markers (Kellog & Potendyk,
2010). Vehicular mounted identification systems have
made some advances in identifying themselves within
their own services; ground forces mainly depend on
their closeness to vehicles equipped with identification
devices to identify their friendly status to other allied
assets. Attempts at non-cooperative identification of
dismounts based on visual recognition of a combatant‟s
weapons system or the color and shape of a nearby
vehicle has been complicated by hostile and non-
hostile forces utilizing similar systems (OTA, 1993).
This requires the warfighters performing a visually-
based non-cooperative identification to process the
minute differences that would be exhibited by potential
target forces in a very quick period of time.
However, even if the development cycles of ground
force technology-focused solutions were accelerated,
such systems could only partially address the challenge
of combat identification on the battlefield.
Technological solutions cannot address how to teach
warfighters to recognize and address technology
failures (Wilson, Salas, Priest, & Andrews, 2007), or
how to perform the more complex cognitive tasks
which follow identification by a technology based
solution of a target as unknown.
FUTURE DIRECTION
Illustrated by the Swiss cheese model and the gaps in
human factors and technology, failures in combat
identification between coalition forces occur not just
from one moment or decision, but after a series of
cascading events (Gadsden & Outteridge, 2006).
Webb and Hewett (2010) found that human factors
contribute to roughly 80% of accidents; this includes
fratricidal incidents. Because of this, the human mind
and decision-making capability cannot be excluded
when building systems.
The gaps in technology and human factors also
highlight the frustration exhibited by coalition partners
about the slowness of development on the technology
side (House of Commons Committee of Public
Accounts, 2007) and the need to begin to close the gap
for the human factor in processing combat
identification. Yet these systems are approached in a
stove-piped manner, as if technology and human
factors gaps can only be solved through separate efforts
involving non-integrated development.
Potential Solutions
It has been suggested that in the Gulf War and in the
current conflicts, failures of combat identification stem
from a lack of constant, realistic training. Creating
stress and realism in the training and educational
experience was stressed throughout the literature.
Greitzer and Andrews (2010) suggested a phased
training experience to enhance combat identification
proficiency, with stress being increased as the training
continued in duration, to inoculate personnel involved
in the training against stress‟s negative effects, as well
as giving trainees time to develop defenses against
their cognitive biases at each level of increasing
challenge.
While technology has changed quickly, the types of
fratricide themselves have not, which suggests to some
that reduction of those incidents will rely on trained
skills (OTA, 1993). The UK Ministry of Defence
(2006) cites a 2003 two-year endeavor on the influence
of human factors on successful combat identification; it
suggests that no single piece of equipment will
completely solve the challenges of combat
identification. Instead, this research emphasized the
importance of training as a method to enhance the
application of combat identification. While unseasoned
personnel cannot become highly experienced veterans
overnight, training can circumvent the need to learn all
lessons on the ground in the heat of battle.
For instance, accurate shared situational awareness
cannot be expected to simply occur, and must be fed
constantly, from all levels of the chain of command,
down to the individual‟s awareness (Kulsrud, 2003).
To create true situational awareness, this information
must be rich; training personnel to quickly recognize,
process, and provide that richness of information has
been shown to anecdotally enhance combat
effectiveness in units which have deployed in recent
operations (Spiker & Williams, 2010). Those receiving
training must not only learn their own tactics,
techniques, and procedures, and how to enhance them,
but those of other units, services, and partners from
other nations and their services.
Because of the risks and costs of performing multiple,
progressively challenging live fire exercises where
sometimes the loss of life can be higher than during
actual combat, as was the case with the Air Force in
Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) 2011
2011 Paper No. 11158 Page 7 of 9
1992 where training lead to 17 deaths (Kulsrud, 2003),
there has been an increasing interest in simulation as a
tool to train forces to reduce errors in combat
identification. The US Office of Technology
Assessment (1993) stressed the potential of simulation
as a training tool to reduce fratricide due to combat
identification errors, despite the fact that, simulators
were faced with many technological limitations which
lead to limited fidelity at the time. With the current
exponential development speed in simulation
technology, the advent of shared virtual environments,
and expected near-term developments, many of the
limitations faced in the 1990s have been surpassed.
Because of these developments, it is possible that
human failures in combat identification can be
mitigated by thorough and intense simulation training
targeted at the faults that cause the incidents in the first
place – communication, cognitive biases, stress, and
more (Shrader, 1982; National Audit Office, 2006;
Kulsrud, 2003; OTA, 1993).
Exploratory Research at Bold Quest
As illustrated by the gaps and the potential solutions,
training for combat identification requires realism and
inoculation against the negative effects of stress. Such
training must also be situated in complex scenarios that
feature realistic threats as well as the portrayal of
multination coordination. Further, Greitzer and
Andrews (2010) call out the need to design training
scenarios that test assumptions and help create
resilience in uncertain situations. Similarly, warfighters
must have the opportunity accurately perform target
identification and be able to recognize when their
technology has failed them (Cannon-Bowers & Salas,
1998).
The Joint and coalition test-bed for combat
identification technologies, Bold Quest, formerly
Urgent Quest, focuses on accelerating fielding of
combat identification technology to coalition forces
(Carter, 2008). Current systems under consideration for
assessment have been in development for a number of
years. Some of the systems now considered for
dismounted units were initially developed for vehicle-
on-vehicle identification (Kellog & Potendyk, 2010).
Others have focused on the use of global positioning
systems to enhance situational awareness and to
potentially correct issues where units drift out of their
sectors and into other units‟ areas (Kellog & Potendyk,
2010). Another technology solution being pursued is
recognition training devices, intended to improve
visual recognition of allied systems and weaponry.
This, too, has developed slowly (National Audit Office,
2006).
Based on demand signals for non-technical solutions,
Bold Quest 2011 will include research focused on
assessing the effect of training enablers on efficient
combat identification employment. Leveraging
previous research in the improvements to warfighter
performance afforded by programs such as Combat
Hunter, Border Hunter, and advanced situational
awareness training (Schatz, Reitz, Nicholson, &
Fautua, 2010), and the body of work associated with
the Future Immersive Training Environment Joint
Capability Technology Demonstration (FITE JCTD)
(Muller, 2010), a suite of training enablers will be
offered. Further, each enabler will be assessed for its
effectiveness in improving combat identification during
the execution of live complex scenarios.
Selected participants will receive training in advanced
situational awareness. They will also perform combat
identification sorting in a virtual immersive
environment, as well as receive training on the hazards
of the environment through the Mobile Counter
Improvised Explosive Device Interactive Trainer
(MCIT) and virtual marksmanship training to enhance
their confidence in engaging static or moving targets
after identification has been made. Selected
participants will also perform in a stress inducing
virtual scenario where they are forced to perform
sorting and shoot/don‟t-shoot decision-making in a
sensory realistic environment. At the end of the
training, units will then transition to performing
combat identification tasks in live scenarios, where
their performance will be measured and compared to
the accuracy of combat identification tasks performed
by those who had received partial training and those
who had received no training. Throughout the training,
participants and control group members will receive
surveys that measure for the transfer of declarative
knowledge as well as improvements in situational
judgment.
We hypothesize that the integration of training
capabilities focused on enhancing cognitive flexibility,
stress resilience, situational awareness, and decision
making, supported by measured live and virtual
platforms, will lead to enhancements in dismounted
soldier situational awareness, target identification
capabilities, and complex decision making, as well as
enhanced ability to employ the combat identification
technology solutions being assessed. A coalition
military utility assessment will be published in 2012,
which includes all analysis outcomes from Bold Quest
2011.
Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) 2011
2011 Paper No. 11158 Page 8 of 9
CONCLUSIONS
Distinguishing friend from foe on the battlefield is
challenging, complicated by the speed of operations,
urban operating environments, coordination with
coalition allies, human factors and cognitive biases.
Because of the interaction of multiple, overlapping
complex systems, technology alone is insufficient to
address combat identification gaps. It must be a multi-
part solution, to include unified tactics, techniques, and
procedures, supported by realistic training that focuses
not just on performance of combat skills but also on
preparing the mind by practicing those skills for their
eventual employment. Focusing effort on supporting
the human factor in combat identification is an
important first step on the road towards closing the
gaps in the challenges associated with accurate combat
identification.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work was supported in part by the U.S. Joint
Forces Command (Contract # N65236-09-D-3809).
The views and conclusions contained in this document
are those of the authors and should not be interpreted
as representing the official policies, either expressed or
implied, of the USJFCOM or the US Government. The
US Government is authorized to reproduce and
distribute reprints for Government purposes
notwithstanding any copyright notation hereon.
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