Adaptable Cognitive Decision Aids For Embedded Weapon Applications

A heavy mortar platoon providing immediate indirect fire (IF) support to an Infantry or Armor Battalion (BN) generates and processes many time-critical and mission-critical events. The effectiveness of the platoon is directly related to its ability todeliver On Order missions and Final Protective Fires accurately and on-time, while exploiting terrain features providing cover and concealment for survivability. Recent advances in battlefield communications, the quality and availability of digitalcartography, weapon systems technical architectures and intelligent aiding tools for coordinated tactical activity have created new opportunities for information exploitation to increase the operational tempo and combat effectiveness of the heavy mortarplatoon as will be required for Future Combat System (FCS) and Force XXI operations. Intelligent aiding of mortar planning including target area coverage, movement, fire-point selection including generation of hasty fire-points while on the move, and theconduct of On-Order and Final Protective Fire missions is proposed. The resulting decision aiding subsystem will be created by using a combination of analytical and cognitive decision processes implemented in reusable software components conforming toAppendix F of the JTA-A, and implemented so as to be installed on the Mortar Fire Control System. Application Programmer Interfaces will be provided for crew interaction using voice, and other non-contact I/O methods.This effort is a novel decision aidapproach for tactical systems, in that it attempts to reason across multiple decision factors by applying decision rules and cognitive processes. Such decision processes have been applied to some extent in data mining, but the approach taken here is moreadaptive, in that it monitors for conditions requiring reassessment. This approach is broadly applicable to commercial and military decision making situations.