Decision Requirements of Small Units in Urban Warfare

Military Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT) create new decision-making challenges for small unit leaders. To train small unit leaders to handle these challenges, we need to describe the decision requirements for MOUT: the critical judgments and decisions, the reasons why they are difficult, the types of errors found, and the cues, patterns and strategies used by experienced personnel. These decision requirements cover situation awareness as well as problem-solving and decision-making skills. To define the decision requirements, we will perform a Cognitive Task Analysis using methods that have been recently developed to discover the basis of skilled performance. We will conduct in-depth interviews with skilled subject matter experts to identify the types of things they can see that others cannot - subtle cues and patterns they can detect, discriminations they can make, ways that they can rapidly size up situations. At the completion of this project, we will generate a comprehensive account of the cognitive skills that are necessary for leading small units in MOUT environments. We will link these decision requirements to training objectives. In addition, we will draw upon recent developments in decision skills training to recommend strategies for training. BENEFITS: The findings and methods that emerge from this project will have general value for training decision skills in a variety of settings requiring rapid decision making. These include police and firefighting activities as well as hospital emergency rooms and emergency response organizations in nuclear power and petrochemical plants.