PNNL

Abstract

Commanders and their staff, when geographically dispersed, continue to choose what they find to be the most effective remote collaboration tools: email and radio messages. Even command and control systems that provide a unified view of the battlefield among remote collaborators are often supplanted by more traditional tools, such as a large paper map (McGee, Cohen & Wu, 2000). Indeed, today?s computer interfaces often impose too high a barrier for the capture and delivery of situational assessment (McGee, Cohen, Wesson & Horman, 2002). To compensate, commanders traditionally meet face-to-face at least once daily to debrief each other on the outcome of the day?s fight and to coordinate a strategy for the next day?s engagement. Each of these meetings presents a risk to commanders, in addition to lost time during travel and various other concerns. Ongoing activity at higher echelons may consist of this activity continuously. At lower echelons, coordination is typically mediated by a radio or other messaging platform. Common to each of these scenarios, the coordination and collaboration is mediated by physical tools, e.g., an up-to-date common operational picture. Much of the promise of collaboration technology, from video-conferencing to realtime collaboration tools, is meant to alleviate the need for face-to-face meetings and improve moment-to-moment coordination. However, these tools fall woefully short of meeting the needs of commanders in the battlefield.