Conducting effective individual and collective training that is based on mission and job requirements is the overall goal of all training. Only when this occurs can there be assurance that individuals and units will be "ready" to perform their mission and associated task requirements. However, attaining this training readiness state has been difficult due to a lack of validated, constructive models that represent: (1) how missions are performed and measured; (2) how units and systems function; and (3) how individuals, crews, and teams perform work. Moreover, there is a lack of integration tools and accepted processes for building these mission-to-task linkages and managing the data.

This paper describes a top-down and bottom-up Mission-based Training Requirements Methodology that evolved from numerous training requirement analyses. This approach initially focuses on missions that are analyzed and defined using the Universal Joint Task List - Joint Mission Essential Task List (UJTL-JMETL) process. This process uses Service-approved taxonomies of strategic, operational, and tactical tasks as well as a comprehensive set of task conditions and performance measures to model mission task requirements. Using the Joint Training Information Management System (JTIMS), an automated capability for developing operational templates of these task requirements is provided.

Central to this methodology is the use of the Military Domain Representation Framework (MDRF) modeling developed by the Defense Modeling and Simulation Office (DMSO) and employed by the Joint Simulation System (JSIMS) program. The MDRF's Functional Descriptions of the Mission Space (FDMS) process models provide the means for modeling unit and system functional operations and, most important, provide the basis for linking mission task performance requirements to human task performance requirements. Human task requirements are identified using task analysis techniques that have been long-used by training analysts. Task analyses developed using these Instructional Systems Development/Systems Approach to Training (ISD/SAT) techniques constitute the bottom in the overall task analysis hierarchy and provide the basis upon which individual and collective training is developed.

This mission-to-individual task analysis approach provides a means for specifying, acquiring, developing, operating, and managing training systems that directly achieve mission and job task performance requirements. Beyond the training benefits of this approach, the methodology products have implications for supporting simulation-based systems acquisition, live-fire test and evaluation, doctrine development, manpower and personnel requirements analysis, logistics support analysis, business process improvement, and job, unit, and organizational development. Ultimately, the application of such a mission-focused analysis methodology specifies the level of unit and individual "readiness" necessary to accomplish those warfighting task requirements deemed essential by Commanders-in-Chief (CINCs) and their Service component commanders.