ISSUE 182 : Jul/Aug - 2010 - Australian Defence Force Journal

The Canadian paper on CAS (Chapter 15) covers the requirement to develop measures of teameffectiveness in simulated coalition air exercises using simulator-based distributed missionoperations. The authors developed a behavioural rating scale based on a detailed task analysisof the CAS mission from the point of view of the forward air controllers’ interactions withother team members. Researchers then observed controllers and rated their behaviour onpredefined scales during an exercise. The authors note that the rating exercise was challengingand that they improved each day of the exercise, which points to the difficulties of doing thistype of research. Further, the methodology they report is a classic approach to generatingperformance feedback and one which, if pursued, will reveal critical issues in the CAS systemsarchitecture and operator expertise.Chapters 16, 17 and 18 are papers on well-conducted and -reported academic studies on theeffect of automated CID aids, with different reliabilities on operator reliance strategies whenmaking ‘shoot’ and ‘no-shoot’ decisions. The papers highlight the complexities of laboratorybasedresearch and the artificial nature of the abstracted tasks. However, their findings are richand support a substantially deeper understanding of the complex cognitive issues involved.The recommendations for systems design are straightforward but appreciation of the deeperinsights requires a researcher’s knowledge of the previous theoretical and empirical work thathas led to these powerful experiments being conducted.There are a number of issues that this volume of papers brings to mind for the ADF. Imention just three here. First, there are 21 chapters, most with multiple authors. Given theinfrastructure costs and the background training of each author, this book represents anenormous investment and store of knowledge capital and practitioner expertise. Second, ifyou want to reduce the rate of CID errors, then it will take a strong systems-developmentperspective, with a primary emphasis on the cognitive preparedness of the operators over thelife-time of a joint fires capability. The third issue is that we need to exercise caution whenbuying sophisticated foreign military systems with automation embedded in critical functionsfor which we are not exactly aware of how they will behave in our scenarios. This book shouldbe read by warfighters and capability developers across Australian Defence.NOTES1. K.A. Wilson, E. Salas, H.A. Priest and D.H. Andrews, ‘Errors in the heat of battle; Taking a closer lookat shared cognition breakdowns through teamwork’, Human Factors, Issue 49, 2007, pp. 243-56.99