Support for the Process of Planning Coalition Operations
Abstract
The response to international crises typically involves extensive interaction and coordinated activities among multinational coalitions of military and civilian organizations. This interaction is often complicated, however, by cultural differences among coalition partners, creating roadblocks to the successful execution of coalition operations. Because the U.S. military often takes the lead role in coalition operations, mission success often depends upon the ability of U.S. military personnel to effectively plan and coordinate with military and nonmilitary personnel from diverse cultures. Unfortunately, there are few information systems in place to support effective coalition planning and coordination, leaving these important missions vulnerable to embarrassing misunderstandings and costly errors. To facilitate close cooperation among coalition partners, the Decision Support Systems for Coalition Operations (DSSCO) research and development project is working on providing information management and planning support tools. DSSCO is taking a user-centered design approach in which the decision support tools are based on key factors that make coalition operations successful and on a thorough understanding of the cognitive processes used by experienced crisis action planners. These tools support information presentation, knowledge management, distributed cognition, and modeling and simulation. In this paper, the features and functions of these tools will be discussed, and plans for further development will be summarized.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2000
- Accession Number
- ADA467963
Entities
People
- Jens A. Jensen
- Nancy J. Heacox
- Richard T. Kelly
- Robert J. Smillie
Organizations
- Naval Information Warfare Systems Command