Contemporary warfighters operate in fast-paced and complex domains that, without assistance from automated technologies, would overwhelm their information-processing and decision-making capabilities. These warfighters must exercise supervisory control, learning to monitor, initiate, change, and stop processes in automated systems. Several challenges to supervisory control are identified in scientific literature, but there is little information concerning how supervisory control is exercised for air battle management in air defense systems. One system requiring supervisory control is the Army’s Phased-Array Tracking Radar to Intercept on Target (Patriot) missile defense system. Our research collected data about Patriot crewmembers’ performance of supervisory control to inform the compilation of a supervisory control skillset and identification of training interventions to enhance its training. Twenty-nine (N = 29) Patriot crewmembers, trainers, and evaluators were interviewed about the general supervisory control issues and challenges presented in the literature, their prioritization of those for supervisory control performance in air battle management, and the skills and training required to perform supervisory control effectively. Problems with understanding how the system works, comprehending and integrating critical information to maintain situational awareness, understanding one’s role within the tactical situation, and attentional tunneling were identified as potentially being most detrimental to mission performance. We identified crew resource management, decision-making, interpretation, situational awareness, system operation, and vigilance as key complex skills for effective supervisory control in this environment. We proposed seven training interventions to enhance development of those key skills and the training of supervisory control. While the U.S. Army’s Patriot system was the focus of this research, supervisory control training is applicable to other Department of Defense applications, particularly those that require exercise of supervisory control over individual networked systems (such as integrated air and missile defense) or multiple grouped systems (such as multiple unmanned vehicles) by single operators or teams.
Training
Enhancing Training of Supervisory Control Skills for Automated Systems
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