Enhancing Tactical Decision-Making in Navy Seal Operations Navy SBIR FY2005.1 Sol No.: Navy SBIR FY2005.1 Topic No.: N05-069 Topic Title: Enhancing Tactical Decision-Making in Navy Seal Operations Proposal No.: N051-069-0118 Firm: Pacific Science & Engineering Group, Inc. 9180 Brown Deer Road San Diego, California 92121-2238 Contact: F. St. Phone: (858) 535-1661 Web Site: www.pacific-science.com Abstract: Two clear trends in the U.S. military's ongoing transformation are the increasing reliance on Special Operations Forces for agile operations in the War on Terrorism and the revolution in networked information tools that can be deployed to the field. Harnessing the potential of these networked tools for Special Warfare requires the development of innovative collaboration tools that support the distributed, highly mobile, and mission-centric nature of Naval Special Warfare. Pacific Science & Engineering (PSE) has the scientific expertise and decision support development experience, coupled with access to expert military users, to integrate emerging cognitive science concepts in collaborative knowledge management into an innovative shared situation awareness and map-integrated messaging tool for Naval Special Warfare. This tool concept, which we call SLATE for Shared Lightweight Annotation TEchnology, focuses on two capabilities to enhance shared situation awareness and tactical decision-making: 1) contextualized, map-centric integration of new information for rapid comprehension and efficient communication, and 2) integrated message history for maintaining shared situation awareness across intermittent interruptions. SLATE addresses several critical technical challenges facing the Special Warfare environment such as time pressure, small screen real estate, and ultra-light network communications. Benefits: Maintaining shared situation awareness across a distributed team as a situation evolves is a constant challenge, particularly in the fast-paced and agile operational environments that characterize Special Warfare, where connectivity may be intermittent or constrained. Lags in information exchange and differing situation awareness may put warfighters at risk and limit the chances for exploiting windows of opportunity. Additionally, the difficulty in prioritizing, interpreting, and integrating information quickly from disparate sources can impede situation awareness. These challenges are magnified by the agility and hidden nature of terrorist cells that can strike and then quickly melt back into the fabric of the culture. The SLATE concept is designed to improve situation awareness among team members and the Tactical Operations Center (TOC), enhance rapid decision-making, and increase team agility. SLATE has firm foundations in the cognitive science of collaboration and knowledge management, and it focuses on two key capabilities for enhancing collaboration: 1) map-centric contextualization of integrated graphics/voice/text messages, and 2) integrated message history information for maintaining awareness across interruptions. These capabilities will reside in a networked handheld tool that meets the operational challenges of Naval Special Warfare. Return