Situation Awareness for Military Ground Forces: Current Issues and Perspectives

Abstract

The military is rapidly importing digital technology into its ground forces. The U.S. Army, for example, is developing the Land Warrior system that will link infantry soldiers and units together via digital communications and imaging. These changes have profound implications concerning how soldiers will move, shoot, and communicate as a team. One result of this new technology is that information available to individual soldiers and small units will increase exponentially. This will require soldiers and their leaders to accurately and quickly process large amounts of information, to make sense of it, and to effectively utilize that information to predict what is about to occur in the uncertain and volatile conditions of ground operations. Establishing and maintaining situation awareness (SA), therefore, is a growing challenge for ground forces. The purpose of the current panel is to bring together military and industry experts who are actively involved in SA research among ground forces. Mica Endsley offers perspectives on SA measurement and training challenges unique to ground forces. Laura Strater reviews recent validation efforts of SA measures designed specifically for application to ground forces. Joseph Weeks describes Air Force efforts to develop distributed training procedures for SA and decision-making for airbase ground defense forces. Lawrence Shattuck discusses research into the cognitive processes by which battalion commanders integrate information into meaningful conclusions. Scott Graham describes ongoing and future research on SA with infantry forces.