Wargaming is a valuable tool for military planning, leadership strategic thinking, and tactics training.  However, wargaming simulation software has critical limitations that need addressing to increase the realism and efficacy of the scenarios.  One limitation is that human factors are often absent in scenarios, with personnel treated as high functioning, undifferentiated units.  In reality, human factors have critical effects on personnel readiness and performance.  Of particular interest in the current effort are the effects of human fatigue on simulated personnel entities and how this can inform wargaming participant decision making.

We developed an application that integrates human fatigue modeling with a wargaming logistics simulation to augment the system to include the effects of fatigue on aircrew and maintainer mission readiness and performance.  The fatigue modeling application was developed using the R programming language Shiny package and implements the Sleep, Activity, Fatigue, and Task Effectiveness (SAFTE) biomathematical fatigue model.  The SAFTE model produces performance effectiveness curves (i.e., fatigue) based on sleep input, homeostatic regulation, circadian rhythm, and sleep inertia.  As a use case, the application intakes Air Tasking Order (ATO) information from the Integrated Sustainment Wargaming and Analysis Toolkit (iSWAT), which provides logistic resource information on aircrew and maintenance personnel, and other resources pertinent to wargaming scenarios.  Sleep schedules for personnel were generated in the fatigue modeling application based on ATO information, general scheduling practices from the literature, and subject matter expert input.  The current effort examines fatigue estimates based on a realistic, mock-up wargaming scenario.

Resulting fatigue estimates suggested that a subset of aircrew and maintainer schedules commonly generated fatigue during the wargame scenario, likely degrading performance and increasing safety risk.  This has important implications for wargaming participant decision making as they will need to shift mission sets and use alternative resourcing to ensure peak mission readiness and performance.

Keywords
BEHAVIOR MODELING,HUMAN FACTORS,SIMULATIONS

Additional Keywords
Human Fatigue; Wargaming