Training Tactical Decision-Making Skills: An Emerging Technology

Abstract

Training in decision-making skills directly contributes to the combat readiness of Battle Staff Officers assigned to Tactical Command and Control positions. More affordable, accessible and effective training technologies are required to supplement the command Post Exercises currently in use. This is the final report for a 3-year research and development (R&D) effort aimed toward the development of such technologies. The R&D problem was viewed from the perspective of Instructional Systems Development (ISD) as one of defining instructional content and strategy. The analysis, design, and development phases of an ISD process were completed for a specific, representative decision-making task performed by Fighter Duty Officers of an Air Support Operations Center (ASOC). The project resulted in the definition of a generic instructional strategy for practice of a class of decision-making tasks, and two computer- based systems called KEATS and SuperKEATS. KEATS was developed in Smalltalk and runs on PC/AT compatibles. SuperKEATS was developed in KEE and runs on a Sun 3/ 60 workstation. KEATS' primary function is to support the acquisition of decision task knowledge which is used as instructional content. SuperKEATS provides a practice environment for decision-making skills, with a full range of natural and artificial feedback. Only limited evaluations were performed, but the results were generally positive. Further evaluations and continued development are recommended.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Oct 01, 1990
Accession Number
ADA228444

Entities

People

  • Fritz H. Bracke
  • Michael J. Young

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • C4I
  • Electronic Warfare
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Human Systems
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acquisition
  • Aircrafts
  • Cognition
  • Combat Readiness
  • Command And Control
  • Command And Control Systems
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer-Aided Instruction
  • Computers
  • Control Systems
  • Emerging Technology
  • Lisp Programming Language
  • Psychology
  • Students
  • Task Performance And Analysis
  • Training
  • Warfare

Readers

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Database Systems and Applications
  • Military Training and Readiness Simulation

Technology Areas

  • Fully Networked C3
  • Fully Networked C3 - Command and Control