The battlefields of the 21st century will rely on versatile, adaptive leaders to achieve situational dominance in highly dynamic environments. Adaptive battlefield thinking is a complex cognitive task that requires commanders to monitor the unfolding tactical situation for unanticipated events, identify key characteristics of the situation, and to determine the proper actions in response. Ensuring effective training will require innovative methods. One very promising solution is focused, deliberate training in the area of adaptive battlefield thinking.

To meet the needs of the future battlefield, the Army has developed a theme-based Think Like a Commander training program. The training program utilizes eight themes of battlefield thinking that are thinking behaviors characteristic of high-level tactical experts. Evaluating the training during live, face-to-face instruction revealed significant performance gains even though the amount of time to perform the task was decreased with each exercise.

The training method relies on coaching to increases the rate at which participants can improve their performance and to reduce the possibility of negative training. Training in a distributed or an embedded environment will often occur without the benefit of a live instructor or coach. While instructorless coaching has been successful for procedural level skills, it presents a challenge for cognitive skills. To address this concern, the US Army Research Institute developed an instructorless version of the Think Like a Commander training program. The training uses an automated 3-dimentional coach to provide accurate, specific, timely, and useful feedback. This paper will examine how an automated 3-dimensional coach-- that has been accepted by the training and military subject-matter-expert communities--can collect, process, and present timely feedback.