Awareness Through Agility: Teenagers as a Model for Terrorist Development of Situational Awareness
Abstract
What do terrorists, teenagers, and the individual soldier have in common? The need for agile communications in their tactical operations. The agility exercised by teenagers in gathering situational awareness is a model for how insurgent terrorists communicate on the battlefield. Tactical decision making by Allied commanders is slowed by the application of strategic situational awareness concepts in tactical environments. Currently, tactical situational awareness is developed and transferred to the strategic common operational picture. Alternatively, the teenage communications model provides an evolutionary concept of operations for Allied forces to develop a highly flexible tactical situational awareness in urban environments leveraging commercial technologies and infrastructure. The forced technical interoperability between the tactical and strategic operations center hinder agility at the tactical level. The strategic/tactical model must be changed in the defense against terrorism. Allied forces must be able to keep pace with the enemy's rapid planning-and-attack cycle. By leveraging the teenage model to improve the flexibility and speed at which information is provided to the urban warfare environment we can, and must, change the Cold War communication paradigm. This paradigm shift will allow for tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) to be developed more quickly which is critical in the urban warfare environment. Teenagers use situational awareness to make decisions regarding their interpersonal relationships in much the same way that military and civilian leadership make decisions. By using commercially available, collaborated and highly resilient communications capabilities, both teenagers and terrorist insurgents are able to develop situational awareness in an unconstrained manner.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 01, 2006
- Accession Number
- ADA474177
Entities
People
- Matthew J. Sheffer
Organizations
- Defense Threat Reduction Agency