Distributed Decision Making in Multihelicopter Teams: Case Study of Mission Planning and Execution from a Noncombatant Evacuation Operation Training Scenario

Abstract

This article presents a naturalistic case study of distributed decision making across military helicopter crews during mission planning and execution scenarios. The aim of the paper was to model the decision making strategies and examine the extent to which the environment supports the helicopter crews. This involved live observation of the crews of five Royal Air Force helicopters as they planned and executed a series of missions in a simulated operational setting as part of their predeployment training. The study revealed that there were differences in the decision-making strategies in colocated and distributed teams. It also showed that colocated teams were more able to resolve information conflicts than were the distributed teams. These findings suggest that the concept of the “death of distance” (i.e., that information and communications technology can overcome the negative effects of distributed teams) is somewhat overstated.