Measures of effectiveness and C3 testbed experiments

Caption title.Includes bibliographical references (leaf [14]).Research partially supported by the French Delegation Generale pour l'Armement. Research partially supported by the Joint Directors of Laboratories through the Office of Naval Research. N00014-85-K-0782by Philippe J.F. Martin, Alexander H. Levis

Operations Research in the High Tech Military Environment: A Survey

The use of operations research as a technology to solve many of the problems of government and industry has become a major field of study within the very short span of the last fifty years. In the paper entitled, Operations Research in the High Tech Military Environment: A Survey, the reader is provided with a better understanding of the tenets of operations research through an examination of a representative sample of the latest operations research applications developed for the high tech environment. Initially, this involves providing the reader with some fundamental insights into what operations research is, what its practitioners do, and how the state-of-the-art has evolved to its present form. It then involves providing a brief description of what is meant by the term, high tech military environment. A survey, which constitutes the bulk of the material presented, focuses on how various operations research methodologies are being used within that environment. The paper concludes with a discussion of the possible directions operations research will take in the future, based on the present state-of-the-art

A Survey on Weapon Target Allocation Models and Applications

In Command and Control (C2), Threat Evaluation (TE) and Weapon Target Allocation (WTA) are two key components. To build an automated system in this area after modeling Threat Evaluation and Weapon Target Allocation processes, solving these models and finding the optimal solution are further important issues. This setting demands instantaneous operational planning and decision making under inherent severe stress conditions. The associated responsibilities are usually divided among a number of operators and also computerized decision support systems that aid these operators during the decision making process. In this Chapter, the literature in the area of WTA system with the emphasis on the modeling and solving methods are surveyed

Learning from the Canadian Corps on the Western Front

There is a curious paradox about the Canadian Corps that is summed up in this quotation from Canadian Brass, Stephen J. Harris’s study of the evolution of a professional army in Canada. How did this military organisation become so effective in war, considering the background it had and the structure that supported it for most of its existence? This model of tactical excellence was born amid the chaos of Canadian Minister of Defence Sam Hughes’ egomaniacal control at Valcartier Camp. It was beset by jealousies, political backhanders, corruption and influence peddling, and saddled with favourites as incompetent officers who at best were ’very weak” and had “no power or habit of command.”2 Hughes determined to ensure that no Regular soldier received a command appointment, and instead put in his favourites. These were drawn from the citizen militia, whose ability was summed up by the young iconoclast and future military theorist J.F.C. Fuller, who remarked that the Canadians had potential only “if the officers could all be shot.”3 Yet the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) rose above this administrative nightmare, even if its impact continued to haunt the force for most of its existence

Who Goes There: Friend or Foe?

This report discusses the problem of fratricide, or “friendly fire” casualties among combat units. The House Armed Services Committee requested that OTA assess the technology and techniques available to reduce this tragic loss of life

UAV swarm attack: protection system alternatives for Destroyers

Systems Engineering Project ReportThe Navy needs to protect Destroyers (DDGs) from Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) attacks. The team, focusing on improving the DDG’s defenses against small radar cross section UAVs making suicide attacks, established a DRM, identified current capability gaps, established a functional flow, created requirements, modeled the DDG’s current sensing and engagement capabilities in Microsoft Excel, and used Monte Carlo analysis of 500 simulation runs to determine that four out of eight incoming IED UAVs are likely to hit the ship. Sensitivity analysis showed that improving weapon systems is more effec-tive than improving sensor systems, inspiring the generation of alternatives for improving UAV defense. For the eight feasible alternatives the team estimated cost, assessed risk in accordance with the requirements, simulated performance against the eight incoming UAVs, and performed cost benefit analysis. Adding CIWS mounts is the most cost effec-tive alternative, reducing the average number of UAV hits from a baseline of 3.82 to 2.50, costing $816M to equip the 62-DDG fleet for a 12-year life cycle. Combining that with upgraded EW capabilities to jam remote-controlled UAVs reduces the hits to 1.56 for$1844M, and combining those with decoy launchers to defeat the radar-seeking Har-py UAVs reduces the hits to 1.12 for $2862M.http://archive.org/details/uavswarmttackpro1094528669Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Friend/foe Identification Accuracy And Shooting Performance: Effects Of Prior Task Loading And Time Pressure

The current dismounted soldier and the soldier of the future will be loaded with more information processing tasks while they perform shooting tasks. It is conceivable that some increased level of cognitive tasking may be performed simultaneously with required shooting tasks. The effect of cognitive load on shooting performance has been previously examined (Scribner and Harper, 2001). This study concentrated on the effect of various cognitive workload demands on a friend-foe discrimination shooting task in a single- and dual-task scenario. In light of this, it is imperative that the soldier not be overburdened mentally, which may result in decreased survivability and lethality. Specifically, this study was designed to examine the ability of the soldier to perform friend-foe target discrimination and shooting accuracy, with varying target exposure times, friendly target signatures, and varying cognitive load demands (working memory recall task). Using the Small Arms Simulator Testbed (SAST) we examined the effects of manipulations of working memory load and sustained information transfer, on shooting performance (as measured by target acquisition and friend/foe discrimination indices). Additionally, we investigated subjective measures of workload and stress. A secondary task, administered aurally, was given to subjects to attend to while they performed shooting (friend/foe discrimination task) scenarios: working memory recall task. Each type of task consisted of three levels of difficulty. Analysis of variance revealed significant differences for the memory recall task during shooting and non-shooting conditions. Furthermore, results showed that workload increased as a function of task demand, with associated decreases in shooting performance

User Interface Design for Supervisory Control of Multiple Manned and Unmanned Air Vehicles

This dissertation research will cover lessons learned from the three-year, iterative design and evaluation of TECUMSA (Tasking and Execution of Collaborative Unmanned and Manned Systems with Autonomy). TECUMSA is a graphical user interface and autonomous tool suite that enables a single operator (e.g., an Air Mission Commander) to team with autonomous capabilities (e.g., route planning, aircraft task allocation) to effectively command and control multiple manned and unmanned aircraft in a contested battlespace. The user/AMC was responsible for accomplishing a series of reconnaissance, surveillance, and threat neutralization tasks in a hostile and dynamic simulated battlespace. The main challenges in this problem space are cognitive bandwidth of operators (e.g., maintaining situation awareness, allocating attention flexibly across multiple aircraft), and their ability to coordinate and collaborate with subordinate autonomous agents. The main objective of this research was therefore determining what control mechanisms offered the TECUMSA operator stability and reliability of control. Two formal system evaluations will be discussed, where a total of 15 Army aviators used TECUMSA to complete multiple hours of simulated air assault operations in a synthetic task environment. This research explored distributed supervisory control, where the operator distributed authority to automation for continuous manual control tasks using Play Calling (i.e., directability). The following research will also cover observations from the system evaluations highlighting interface features that afforded the user the ability to observe, perceive, and understand the state of the world relative to their goals and intentions (i.e., observability). One of the major themes in this dissertation is the importance of observability and directability as design principles, and the implications they have for both user interface design and human-autonomy teaming

Integration of tools for the Design and Assessment of High-Performance, Highly Reliable Computing Systems (DAHPHRS), phase 1

Systems for Space Defense Initiative (SDI) space applications typically require both high performance and very high reliability. These requirements present the systems engineer evaluating such systems with the extremely difficult problem of conducting performance and reliability trade-offs over large design spaces. A controlled development process supported by appropriate automated tools must be used to assure that the system will meet design objectives. This report describes an investigation of methods, tools, and techniques necessary to support performance and reliability modeling for SDI systems development. Models of the JPL Hypercubes, the Encore Multimax, and the C.S. Draper Lab Fault-Tolerant Parallel Processor (FTPP) parallel-computing architectures using candidate SDI weapons-to-target assignment algorithms as workloads were built and analyzed as a means of identifying the necessary system models, how the models interact, and what experiments and analyses should be performed. As a result of this effort, weaknesses in the existing methods and tools were revealed and capabilities that will be required for both individual tools and an integrated toolset were identified

The Responsibility Quantification (ResQu) Model of Human Interaction with Automation

Intelligent systems and advanced automation are involved in information collection and evaluation, in decision-making and in the implementation of chosen actions. In such systems, human responsibility becomes equivocal. Understanding human casual responsibility is particularly important when intelligent autonomous systems can harm people, as with autonomous vehicles or, most notably, with autonomous weapon systems (AWS). Using Information Theory, we develop a responsibility quantification (ResQu) model of human involvement in intelligent automated systems and demonstrate its applications on decisions regarding AWS. The analysis reveals that human comparative responsibility to outcomes is often low, even when major functions are allocated to the human. Thus, broadly stated policies of keeping humans in the loop and having meaningful human control are misleading and cannot truly direct decisions on how to involve humans in intelligent systems and advanced automation. The current model is an initial step in the complex goal to create a comprehensive responsibility model, that will enable quantification of human causal responsibility. It assumes stationarity, full knowledge regarding the characteristic of the human and automation and ignores temporal aspects. Despite these limitations, it can aid in the analysis of systems designs alternatives and policy decisions regarding human responsibility in intelligent systems and advanced automation