The Knowledge Structure of the Commander in Asymmetric Battlefield: The Six Sights and Sensemaking Process

Abstract

The battlefield commander or the CEO of a company is an intuitive statistician and a cognitive information processor. The commander must first make sense of the complex information provided from different sources. While there are availability of information technology to help the commander in data processing and analysis, it is not surprising that in real time operations, the commander falls back on what has been metaphorically called six senses (sights) while trying to make sense of a battle situation as well as making decisions to enact dynamic actions. In this paper, I present the six human sights -- insight, hindsight, foresight, short sight, and oversight, and show how each of the commander's sights moderate the sense-making process. It is surmised that these sights represent the dynamic knowledge structures of the commander while developing plans for an on-going operation. It is believed that each of the sights are evoked by intuition -- a "vague feeling of knowing something without knowing exactly how or why."

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 2006
Accession Number
ADA463414

Entities

People

  • Celestine A. Ntuen

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • C4I
  • Human Systems
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Battlefields
  • Cognition
  • Command And Control
  • Data Processing
  • Doctrine
  • Information Processing
  • Information Systems
  • Iraqi-War
  • Lessons Learned
  • Military Training
  • National Security
  • North Carolina
  • Psychology
  • Reasoning
  • Security
  • Thinking
  • Training

Readers

  • Educational Psychology
  • Military Training and Readiness Simulation
  • Systems Analysis and Design