Development of Shared Mental Models during Air Battlespace Collective Training using Dispersed Networked Systems.

摘要

The UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) has a vision of providing Mission Training through Distributed Simulation, or UK MTDS. The paper will report the human performance results from a three year MTDS Capability Concept Demonstrator (CCD) programme presenting data to qualify the development of shared situational awareness and mental models in a networked training environment. Evidence was collected during five national and multi-national air battlespace exercises, from subjective rating scales, interviews, observational and anecdotal data. The MTDS CCD facility, based at RAF Waddington, included 8 fast-jet Tornado GR4 and Typhoon simulators, a 7-seat AWACS mission crew training system, and extensive exercise management capability (including virtual role players and Computer Generated Forces (CGF)). Data were gathered during representative daily Planning, Briefing, Execution, and Debriefing (PBED) cycles of air battlespace missions which took place at the collective, joint and multi-national levels. The MTDS CCD programme assessed the training benefit, and the optimal balance, between co-located teams and dispersed training teams (both in the UK and US). The major source of data across all sites was the application of the Mission Essential Competency (MEC) framework. Each warfighter's expectations were recorded for a series of platform based MECs and compared to warfighter's experiences. These data were used to assess differences between role, platform and site. To allow analysis of the robustness of the networked environment for shared cognitive processes, these were then sub-divided into collective experiences, i.e. those that required interactions with other players or entities leading to collective training; and individual MEC experiences.