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Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) 2010
2010 Paper No. 10147 Page 1 of 9
Expanding Combat Hunter: The Science and Metrics of Border Hunter
Sae Schatz
UCF Institute for
Simulation & Training
Orlando, FL
sschatz@ist.ucf.edu
Emilie A. Reitz
General Dynamics
Information Technology,
Joint Irregular Warfare
Center, Suffolk, VA
emilie.reitz.ctr@jfcom.mil
Denise Nicholson
UCF Institute for
Simulation & Training
Orlando, FL
dnichols@ist.ucf.edu
David Fautua
Joint Forces Command
Suffolk, VA
david.fautua@jfcom.mil
ABSTRACT
The Combat Hunter program was first conceived in 2007 to meet a training gap in small unit close combat
warfighting. This US Marine Corps (USMC) program of instruction (POI) trains the fundamentals of combat
profiling, tracking, and optics-based observation, helping students become successful “combat hunters” in an
irregular warfare battlespace. The two lead instructors, who also designed the original course, include a former
undercover inner-city police detective and a man-tracker from Africa. Both possess extraordinary innate expertise,
each with over 30-years experience in their respective fields.
However, the Combat Hunter POI is not currently available outside of the USMC, and the USMC’s 10-day course
actually represents a shortened version of what each instructor originally desired. Ideally, they would prefer a 20-day
POI that includes 10 days of tracking instruction and 10 days of observation/profiling instruction. Thus, a hybrid
Combat Hunter-like POI is currently being developed as a capability for the Joint community. The first step in its
development was a 20-day course delivered this April by the two subject matter experts (SME) to 43 military and
law enforcement trainees. A team of researchers was also embedded with the course. The researchers’ goals were to
(1) capture the content of the course and package it for greater deployability, (2) assess the instructional outcomes of
the course, and (3) explicitly articulate the linkages between the course content and underlying scientific principles.
This paper describes the actual experience of the April course and research endeavor. It also provides details on the
overall Joint Forces Command effort, outlining its rationale, goals, logistical processes, and data collection protocol.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Dr. Sae Schatz is an Assistant Professor with the University of Central Florida, Institute for Simulation & Training’s
(UCF-IST) ACTIVE lab. The ACTIVE Lab leads several DOD modeling and simulation projects, including efforts
sponsored by the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Joint Forces Command. Dr. Schatz conducts applied research in
scenario-based training, adaptive instruction, individual differences, and cultural modeling in support of these
efforts.
Emilie Reitz is a General Dynamics Information Technology Research Analyst with United States Joint Forces
Command (USJFCOM), Joint Irregular Warfare Center. She holds a Master's degree in International Studies from
Old Dominion University.
Dr. Denise Nicholson is Director of the ACTIVE Laboratory at the University of Central Florida, Institute for
Simulation & Training, and she holds joint affiliations with UCF’s Modeling & Simulation Graduate Program,
Industrial Engineering & Management Department, and College of Optics & Photonics. Her research focuses on
cognitive systems engineering, simulation, and training for DoD and dual-use applications.
Dr. David Fautua (LtCol Ret.) is currently a researcher with USJFCOM. He was formerly an assistant professor of
military history at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and he was Academic Chair and Professor of
History and National Security at the Joint Forces Staff College. He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame,
holds master's degrees in business and history from Boston University and North Carolina State University
respectively, as well as a Ph.D. in American history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) 2010
2010 Paper No. 10147 Page 2 of 9
Expanding Combat Hunter: The Science and Metrics of Border Hunter
Sae Schatz
UCF Institute for
Simulation & Training
Orlando, FL
sschatz@ist.ucf.edu
Emilie A. Reitz
General Dynamics
Information Technology,
Joint Irregular Warfare
Center, Suffolk, VA
emilie.reitz.ctr@jfcom.mil
Denise Nicholson
UCF Institute for
Simulation & Training
Orlando, FL
dnichols@ist.ucf.edu
David Fautua
Joint Forces Command
Suffolk, VA
david.fautua@jfcom.mil
“They have never seen Juba. They hear him, but by
then it’s too late: a shot rings out and another US
soldier slumps dead or wounded. There is never a
follow-up shot, never a chance for US forces to identify
the origin, to make the hunter the hunted. He fires once
and vanishes” (Carroll, 2005).
From 2005–2007, a man (or possibly a group) called
the “Juba Sniper” terrorized American warfighters in
Baghdad. In a series of Internet-published propaganda
videos, Juba can be seen killing American warfighters.
In one of his videos, released October 2006, Juba
claims to have killed 645 US Soldiers and Marines.
Regardless of whether these deaths were truly Juba’s
handiwork, the US casualty report verifies a dramatic
increase in precision fire casualties during this period.
In January 2007, the US Marine Corps (USMC) sought
a novel solution. With assistance from the Marine
Corps Warfighting Lab (MCWL), a diverse group of
subject matter experts (SMEs) were assembled with a
common goal: Turn Marines from the hunted into the
hunters. From this meeting, Combat Hunter was formed
(Gideons, Padilla, & Lethin, 2008).
USMC COMBAT HUNTER
The Marine Corps realized that certain people were
better able to detect snipers and improvised explosives.
After examining their backgrounds, the USMC realized
that the most successful “battlefield hunters” were those
who could read the environment: the physical and/or
social landscape.
Combat Hunter was designed to train these skills. The
program focuses on enhanced observation, combat
tracking (i.e., reading the physical terrain), and combat
profiling (i.e., reading the human terrain). The USMC
initiated the original Combat Hunter training in
February 2007. A series of limited objective
experiments (LOEs) were held through July of that
year, refining the concepts; tasks, conditions, and
standards; and course instruction (Gideons, Padilla, &
Lethin, 2008). The inaugural course officially opened
in July 2007, and the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines
comprised the first class.
After the 2/7 Marines returned from Afghanistan, the
Marine Corps Center for Lessons Learned (MCCLL)
reported on their reactions to the course. Initial
responses proved overwhelming positive:
Combat Hunter is worthwhile pre-deployment
training, is viewed positively, and credited
with tactical successes by those knowledgeable
with the course content. The skills and
techniques imparted in this training are
enduring and transcend any particular theater
of operations, type of operation, and seem as
applicable for future military operations as
today’s efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. This
training is ripe for expansion…” (MCCLL,
2008: 2).
The Army began to take notice, as well. In May 2009,
US Army Forces Command (FORSCOM) sent CPT
Thomas Angstadt to the course. He found, “Combat
Hunter was the best training I have ever received (other
than Ranger School) and during the whole course I was
recalling instances from engagements and situations
during my last deployment in which these skills would
have helped me be more successful on the battlefield”
(Angstadt, 2008: 4).
Limitations
Many more after action reports and personal
recommendations for Combat Hunter can be found
(e.g., Knox, 2009; Department of Homeland Security,
2009; Gideons, 2008). Consequently, in order to meet
the growing demand for this training, key challenges
must be reconciled.
First, even with interest from the Army, Department of
Homeland Security, and other agencies, the Combat
Hunter curriculum is still available only through the
USMC. Further, within the Marine Corps, throughput
Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) 2010
2010 Paper No. 10147 Page 3 of 9
efficiencies remained an important concern; as of
December 2008 only 40 Marines could attend the 10-
day course at a time (MCCLL, 2008), and as late as
January 2010, this throughput issue remained an on-
going challenge (Spiker & Johnston, 2010). Primarily,
lack of instructors creates the bottleneck; that is, only a
small number of highly-experienced instructors are
qualified to teach the material. Although attempts to
create train-the-trainer style instruction have been made
(see Kobus et al., 2009), overall throughput remains an
issue (Spiker & Johnston, 2010).
This leads to a third problem: Trainees receive little-to-
no support for conducting continued in-unit training
(Spiker & Johnston, 2010). They lack access to course
training materials, a formalized curriculum, and
measures of performance. Nonetheless, trainees who
have participated in the Combat Hunter course
overwhelmingly report that they attempt to train their
peers back in garrison. For instance, in the MCCLL
report, 27 of the 30 respondents who participated
reported that they “conducted Combat Hunter training
for their unit” (MCCLL, 2008: 5), and in the present
study, 37 out of 40 respondents claimed they would try
to train their teammates. Because these grassroots
“trainers” lack access to a program of instruction, they
are, at best, under-supported in their efforts; at worst,
they may be delivering subpar (or erroneous)
instruction back at their home units.
This suggests a fourth issue, that is, that potential take-
home and reinforcement materials are lacking.
Although the USMC has created a draft handbook for
the course, according to Kobus et al. (2009) and Spiker
and Johnston (2010) an up-to-date manual and
supplemental materials have not been written. Kobus
and colleagues recommend updating the USMC manual
and including more consistent discussion of the
scientific foundations of the material. Spiker and
Johnston add that trainees could create their own “job
aids” as part of the course and discuss how class
lectures could also be distributed via DVD to the
trainees.
Fifth, as briefly mentioned above, measurements of
performance have not been formally established
(Spiker & Johnston, 2010). Although the expert
instructors use their judgment to assess the readiness of
their classes, no explicit standards or measurement
tools are available for the trainees. In their review of
the course, Spiker and Johnston suggest that
“scorecards” be handed out, so that personnel can self-
regulate their and their teams’ performance, even if the
pace of the course prohibits more traditional testing.
Spiker and Johnston further suggest that such
scorecards could double as handouts.
Sixth, as identified by the MCCLL, the skills learned
via Combat Hunter are not always understood (or
employed appropriately) by senior officers, particularly
at the onset of the training program. For instance, in an
after action review from two years ago, Marines
offered: “The Marine Corps views it as voodoo” and “It
would help if all the leadership was better familiar with
the Combat Hunter skills” (MCCLL, 2008: 5). While it
is impractical to send all senior leaders through the full
Combat Hunter course, focused overviews of the
curricula distributed to the leadership would prove
useful, as the MCCLL report also suggests.
In summary, the current USMC Combat Hunter
curriculum has significantly enhanced Marine Corps
training and given important insights to the Joint
Services. However, the following gaps still exist:
1. Limited access to the training
2. Limited course throughput
3. Insufficient support for train-the-trainer
4. Insufficient take-home materials
5. Lacking performance measures
6. Limited understanding of skills by leadership
EXPANDING THE TRAINING: BACKGROUND
16–17 September 2009, US Joint Forces Command
(USJFCOM) and Team Orlando hosted the Irregular
Warfare Training Symposium. It focused on exploring
ways to support excellence at the small unit level, with
an emphasis on cognitive training in order strengthen
team self-awareness, resilience, and confidence. The
symposium’s working groups discussed the areas of
team decision-making under stress, measurement,
assessment, and evidence-based training, mission
rehearsal, and joint enabling capabilities (USJFCOM,
2009).
A year prior, DoD Directive 3000.07 had been
published, requiring (among other things) that the
Services place greater emphasis on concepts and
capabilities relevant to irregular warfare. This directive
plus the insights from the symposium highlighted the
Joint need for greater capabilities for training decision-
making for the irregular warfare environment. This
impetus was echoed by the demand signal from Joint
Task Force North (JTF-N) for high-level cognitive
training on behavioral and environmental cues.
Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) 2010
2010 Paper No. 10147 Page 4 of 9
Goals
The JTF-N demand signal presented the perfect
opportunity to begin addressing some of the gaps the
symposium identified. USJFCOM and JTF-N partnered
on the creation of a Combat Hunter-like course at Fort
Bliss to train decision-making through enhanced
observation, tracking, and human behavior observation.
Controlled execution of this course also provided the
opportunity to conduct extensive research into the
underlying training, taking a step towards closing the
gaps identified earlier in this paper.
“BORDER HUNTER”
JTF-N arranged for the special 20-day “Border Hunter”
course to be delivered at Fort Bliss from 5-25 April
2010. Border Hunter may be best characterized as a
one-off, “graduate level” version of the Marine Corps’
Combat Hunter course. This course was delivered to 43
trainees from the Army and Law Enforcement
Agencies. The course was dubbed “Border Hunter”
because many of the law enforcement participants were
from the Border Patrol and because of the close
proximity of Ft. Bliss to Juárez, Mexico.
Course Instructors
Combat Tracking instruction was led by an
internationally recognized tracker with over 40 years of
experience in Africa and around the world. He
assembled a team of five hand-picked experts to assist
in the training. Together, these experts boast more than
180 years of collective experience.
Instruction in Combat Profiling and Enhanced
Observation was led by a highly-decorated former
undercover police officer from Detroit with more than
30-years experience. He assembled a team of eight
hand-picked experts to assist in the training, many of
whom are still active in their fields.
Curriculum Overview
The course was divided into two sections. The first 10
days (6-15 April) were dedicated to Combat Tracking,
which involves conducting “follow-ups” of a quarry
while operating in small, tactical teams. Trainees
learned to read their enemies’ spoor (i.e., footprints,
human signs, environmental cues, slight ground
disturbances). They were taught to build
social/biometric profiles of their quarry; anticipate their
targets’ actions by gaining the “mind of the quarry;”
and apply tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) to
hunt down their targets. Combat Tracking is a human-
centric competency particularly useful in irregular
warfare settings to support offensive operations,
intelligence collection, clandestine movement into
hostile areas, and counterinsurgency operations.
The second 10 days (16-25 April) were dedicated to
Combat Profiling and Enhanced Observation. Combat
Profiling is concerned with perceiving, analyzing, and
articulating critical events within the human terrain. Its
main goal is to identify pre-event indicators through
humans’ behavior “left-of-bang,” i.e., before a
destructive event occurs. Combat Profiling does not
involve stereotyping, such as by race, religion, or
ethnicity. Rather, it trains individuals to look for
behaviors that are anomalous, beyond the baseline of a
culture or location. Through Combat Profiling
warfighters and law enforcement agents learn to be
more situationally aware and to accurately interpret the
subtle cues that forewarn a critical event. Additionally,
the Combat Profiling team taught Enhanced
Observation, which involves advanced methods of
optics use. The instructors trained novel ways to make
the best use of optical devices, including binoculars,
ACOGS (Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight), and
thermals (i.e., “night optics”). For instance, thermals
can be used (day or night) to detect whether someone is
wearing a body-bomb under their clothing.
Fort Bliss Facilities
Figure 1. Trainees Track at Mount Franklin
Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) 2010
2010 Paper No. 10147 Page 5 of 9
JTF-N provided outstanding facilities for the course.
Lectures were carried out at the Ft. Bliss Battle
Command Training Center (BCTC), a new classroom
facility equipped with projectors and wall-to-wall
whiteboards. The practical exercises were held at the
Ft. Bliss ranges. Tracking exercises were conducted
across several different terrains, from soft sand to rocky
mountains. JTF-N also secured permission to conduct
the Combat Tracking final exercise (15 April) at the
Bureau of Land Management’s Mount Franklin state
park, located just outside of El Paso in New Mexico
(Figure 1).
Figure 2. The Original “Ville” (January 2010)
Figure 3. Redesign of Range Golf (April 2010)
Figure 4. The New “Marketplace” (April 2010)
For the Combat Profiling exercises, JTF-N reserved Ft.
Bliss ranges Golf and Foxtrot. Range Golf was
transformed for the course—changing from a basic
room-clearing facility to a “cognitive range” where
trainees could apply their Combat Profiling decision-
making skills (see Figures 2-4). To achieve this, Ft.
Bliss provided dozens of additional CONEX boxes
(i.e., large, metal freight containers), which became
one- and two-story homes and businesses. They also
used heavy equipment to create new roads and clear
vegetation. The lead SME from the Combat Profiling
and Enhanced Observation and his team dictated the
placement of each of building and prop; they even
planted the decorative bushes around the “well” in the
center of the new “village” and personally painted
graffiti in the “bad” section of town.
BORDER HUNTER RESEARCH
Acting within its role as a joint integrator of training,
USJFCOM was invited to lead a team of 13
researchers, who attended the course in order to
conduct scientific observation, experimental testing,
and a formative evaluation. The investigators’ goals
were to (1) capture the course content and package it
for greater deployability, (2) assess the instructional
outcomes of the course, and (3) explicitly articulate the
linkages between the course content and underlying
scientific principles. The researchers additionally
attempted to catalog the experts’ skills, identify
common traits of the best performing trainees, and
observe how tacit knowledge transferred from the
instructors to the trainees.
Research Design
A research design was created with these goals in mind.
The researchers additionally attempted to catalog the
experts’ skills, identify common traits of the best
performing students, and observe how tacit knowledge
transferred from the instructors to the trainees.
METHODS
Participants
Forty-three Soldiers/Law Enforcement Agents attended
the course. Of these, most were from the US Army (n =
21) and Border Patrol (n = 18). Two were from the FBI
(n = 2), and both the Texas Rangers (n = 1) and Parks
Services (n = 1) sent one attendee. All trainees were
highly experienced, with an average of 9 years in the
military/law enforcement sectors. To facilitate the many
hands-on exercises, the trainees were divided into five
8-9 person teams. They remained in these teams for the
full duration of the course. Teams 1 and 2 comprised
Border Patrol agents. Teams 3 and 4 comprised
Soldiers, and Team 5 was a mixed team, including
Soldiers, FBI agents, a Park Ranger, and a Texas
Ranger.
Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) 2010
2010 Paper No. 10147 Page 6 of 9
In addition to the course attendees, twenty-two Soldiers
(n = 22) were recruited from Fort Bliss to play key
OPFOR during the Combat Profiling exercises. These
Soldiers received training in human behavior patterns,
insurgent tactics, and Middle Eastern culture. Most of
these Soldiers held junior ranks (mainly private or
private first class), and they possessed an average of 3-
years military service. (To augment the Army role-
players, 30 professional actors were also hired from
Tatitlek; however, no data were collected on these
individuals.)
Apparatus
The experimental team (i.e., the 13 researchers, not just
this paper’s authors) conducted a within-subjects
repeated-measures design for collecting data. The 43
Border Hunter trainees completed or were assessed on
the following:
• Demographics survey
• Cognitive attributes battery
• Declarative knowledge pre/posttest
• Photo vignettes pre/posttests
• Situated judgment pre/posttests
• Perceptual aptitude pre/posttests
• Heart-rate monitoring (i.e., level of awareness)
• Behavioral observation during field exercises
• Daily reactions surveys
The 22 role-player trainees completed the following:
• Demographics survey
• Profiling declarative knowledge pre/posttest
• Profiling photo vignettes pre/posttests
• Profiling situated judgment pre/posttests
• Profiling daily reactions surveys
In addition to these metrics, the six tracking instructors
and nine profiling instructors completed structured
interviews with two of the researchers, Dr. William
Ross and Laura Militello. The instructors were also
given the same cognitive battery that the trainees
completed, with the hope of uncovering those innate
traits that comprise an expert Combat Hunter instructor.
Design
Stages of Training
The researchers created assessments for each stage of
the training process, beginning with acquisition of low-
level knowledge (i.e., declarative knowledge), moving
into rote skills (i.e., procedures), and finally assessment
of the acquisition of higher-order cognitive skills.
Figure 5 shows a simple diagram of the training
process. It highlights general stages of training from
low-level (left) to high-level (right). The diagram also
includes a box marked “Metacognitive Awareness,”
which represents the highest level of understanding, an
expert degree of competency. It must be noted that the
Border Hunter course did not attempt to train-the-
trainer or comprehensively impart meta-cognitive skills
to the trainees.
Each icon in Figure 5 was measured by at least one
apparatus. The lower-level skills were assessed via
traditional paper-based tests, while the higher-level
abilities were assessed via essay-like exams, behavioral
observation, or physiological metrics.
Trainee
Analysis
PROCESSES
Synthesis
SCHEMA
Effective
Application of KSAs
(Taskwork and Teamwork)
OPERATIONAL
COMPETENCE
METACOGNITIVE
AWARENESS
Knowledge of
Own Knowledge
(Expertise)
Knowledge
FRAMEWORK
Comprehension
VOCABULARY
Figure 5. Diagram of a Generic Training Process (developed by Spiker, Schatz, Fautua, et al.)
Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) 2010
2010 Paper No. 10147 Page 7 of 9
Kirkpatrick’s Hierarchy
In addition to evaluating each stage of the training
process, the researchers’ attempted to assess
Kirkpatrick’s four-level framework of training
effectiveness. This framework includes:
1. Student reactions to the course
2. Student learning during the course
3. Transfer of training to the job
4. Organizational impact of the training
Naturally, levels 1 and 2 were measured during the 20-
day course. Level 3 was measured via a longitudinal
study, during which a subset of Border Patrol (n = 5)
and Army (n = 7) personnel were followed through the
beginning of July 2010. Finally, level 4 was assessed
by testing certain trainees’ peers at their home stations;
the level-four assessment was augmented by the use of
a control group.
HIGH-LEVEL RESULTS
Complete results from this extensive study will be
published in a USJFCOM technical report, and specific
accounts are detailed in fellow 2010 I/ITSEC papers
(see Spiker, Johnston, Williams, & Lethin, 2010; and
Kobus, Palmer, Kobus, & Ostertag, 2010). The length
of this paper facilitates only a general discussion of
overall findings.
Level 1
Beginning with Kirkpatrick’s first level of evaluation
(student reactions), the key findings echo those already
identified by MCCLL and others. That is, trainees
responded very positively. Trainees’ daily overall
reactions ranged between 6.3–6.9 (on a 7-point scale),
and role-players’ daily overall reactions ranged from
6.4–6.5 (on a 7-point scale).
On the final day of the course, trainees were asked to
provide additional details on their perceptions. The
trainees overwhelmingly reported that, if they were in a
supervisory position, they would send their personnel
to a similar course. Many of the trainees also indicated
that they felt the Border Hunter course material would
save lives, make personnel harder targets, or increase
their survivability. Similarly, most of the trainees
indicated that they planned to teach the Border Hunter
material—either formally or informally—to their
teammates at their home stations.
As for which aspects of the instruction they found most
valuable, many trainees indicated that learning about
human behavior through the Combat Profiling
instruction was key. Other popular answers included
learning to act left-of-bang, Combat Tracking (in
general), and being able to articulate their tacit
knowledge.
Finally, the trainees most often suggested that the
following should be changed: trainees wanted days off
(the course comprised 20 contiguous days), they
requested that more time be dedicated to hands-on
exercises, and some requested more law enforcement
examples and scenarios.
Level 2
Seven measurement tools address the second level of
evaluation. Naturally, a range of results were identified,
and these are discussed in detail elsewhere. However,
the general trends suggest that trainees did acquire
substantial skills—at the declarative, procedural, and
higher-order levels.
Levels 3 and 4
As of the writing of this paper, data collection for the
longitudinal and organizational transfer studies is
ongoing. Thus far, data from 12 Border Hunter trainees
have been collected. Additionally, paper-based tests
that assess declarative, procedural, and conceptual
knowledge have been administered to 20 personnel
who work closely with a Border Hunter attendee.
Another 20 similar personnel, serving as a control
group, have also completed these tests. A second (i.e.,
posttest) administration of these metrics is currently
underway. Results will be reported in the USJFCOM
technical report.
DELIVERABLES
From the Border Hunter exercise, USJFCOM has
developed several deliverables. First, with input from
all 13 researchers, USJFCOM is producing an
integrated technical report that includes sections on the
course execution, experimentation, study results, and
recommendations for future work.
Second, USJFCOM is developing a high-level Program
of Instruction (POI). It includes a detailed syllabus,
divided into nine instructional units, as well as
supplementary materials included in a resource DVD.
Video clips captured during Border Hunter, and
associated with various modules in the POI, are also
included on the resource DVD.
Finally, an easy-carry student pocket guide of key
instructional points is being developed to correspond
Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) 2010
2010 Paper No. 10147 Page 8 of 9
with the instructor POI. All of these materials will be
made available to the Joint Services through
USJFCOM.
Additional Contributions
This endeavor also helped advance the science and
research of irregular warfare training in several ways.
1. Establishment of a baseline: The results
from the investigation establish a baseline of
qualitative and quantitative data for Combat
Hunter-style training against which similar
courses can be compared.
2. Prototype metrics: Original measurement
apparatus were created and formatively
evaluated during this study. In the future, these
apparatus can be used by other researchers
and/or trainers to assess similar courses.
3. SME “gold standard” course of instruction:
The two primary Combat Hunter experts were
able to administer the 20-day program of
instruction that they considered ideal, with full
logistical support (e.g., range access,
billeting), in an attempt to deliver the optimal
training experience.
4. Mental models of the SMEs: With no
guarantee of indefinite access to all the subject
matter experts involved in the development
and teaching of the Border Hunter Course, as
well as no existing tasks, conditions, or
standards for performance, the development of
an expert model of performance was a
substantial contribution.
5. Assessment of role-players: Anecdotal
remarks had suggested that the role-play
trainees benefited from the experience.
However, these comments had not been
previously tested, empirically. This study
evaluated role-play trainees on both
Kirkpatrick’s levels 1 and 2 (i.e., reactions and
performance).
6. Individual differences: To our knowledge,
before this study no attempt had been made to
identify the traits that differentiate high
performing Combat Hunter trainees from
others. This experiment takes a first step
towards cataloging those attributes of a
successful Combat Hunter student.
Gaps Addressed
Earlier in this paper six gaps of the current Combat
Hunter curriculum were identified. The Border Hunter
effort has taken positive steps towards addressing each
of these. The products USJFCOM is developing,
including the POI, resource DVD, and student pocket-
guide, can help mitigate issues of training access,
course throughput, and limited availability of take-
home materials. Development of original measurement
apparatus directly contributes to creating more formal
performance metrics. Finally, the products, including
the videos and technical report, can be used to help
articulate Combat Hunter-style training to senior
leaders.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
The Border Hunter exercise was a meaningful step
towards expanding Combat Hunter-style training and
research. However, more work is still required to
completely close all of the identified gaps.
Next steps should include validation of the deliverables
created by this project. More specifically, additional
administrations of the new apparatus should be carried
out in order to corroborate their generalizability,
reliability, and validity. Further, data collected from
these additional administrations must be pooled in
order to create a more extensive performance baseline.
From this pool of data, formal standards of
performance can then be developed.
Next, the POI and student pocket-guide will require a
host of complementary follow-on materials. These
include expanded primary content, supplementary
techniques and tools (e.g., for small-unit leaders or
team coordination training), and train-the-trainer
resources.
Similarly, additional tools are needed to further grow
the beginning skill levels of trainees and help them
maintain their skills over time, in other words, pre-
training and on-going refresher training tools. Some of
these supplementary materials should make use of
appropriate modern technologies, from interactive
online instruction to high-fidelity immersive
simulations, in order to improve the access and
repeatability of the training content (particularly the
instructional scenarios).
CONCLUSION
Based upon trainee reactions and an initial assessment
of the data, Border Hunter appeared to have been a
Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) 2010
2010 Paper No. 10147 Page 9 of 9
highly successful training experience. Forty-three
participants and 22 role-players received distinctive
Combat Hunter-style training from an elite cohort of
SMEs. The Border Hunter event also facilitated
uniquely intense and comprehensive analysis by a 13-
person research team. The results from this
investigation should meaningfully contribute to
improved concepts and capabilities for irregular
warfare training, and the deliverables created from this
endeavor will directly address several gaps in the
contemporary training cycle.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was supported in part by the US Joint Forces
Command (NG PO #7500074768). 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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