Training the Digital Force

The U.S. Army has made a substantial investment and a strong institutional commitment to harnessing the power of technology to provide significant advantages on the battlefield. Command and control, situational awareness, target acquisition and identification, and improved system lethality have been affected and influenced by the new-found power of the microprocessor. This entire effort has come under the heading of digitization.

The Army Digitization Office defines digitization as "the application of technologies to acquire, exchange, and employ timely digital information throughout the battlespace, ...allowing [soldiers] to maintain a clear and accurate vision of common battlespace necessary to support both planning and execution".

Digitization impacts the way the Army operates: the way soldiers perform their individual and collective tasks and the way missions are accomplished.

One training challenge is the requirement to train digital skills while also training and maintaining backup conventional skills. In response, the U.S. Army Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences (ARI) directed HumRRO to examine digital and backup training to identify significant issues and a preliminary set of recommendations.

The study was performed by HumRRO's Fort Knox team, which examined training situations related to the conventional-to-digital transition. It serves as an initial training needs analysis for digital training developers.

Scope of Study

The study focused on two digitized systems: the M1A2 Abrams Main Battle Tank and the M2A3 Bradley Fighting Vehicle. It extends its findings to reflect the training impact that the Army as a whole faces as it moves toward increased digitization.

A series of expert groups defined the training issues and formulated recommendations. These groups represented a wide spectrum of viewpoints and interests including users of digitized systems, training and system developers, and trainers. Input from these groups was complemented by extensive collection and analysis of current and emerging training plans, data on training pipelines, and task performance requirements under digital and degraded conditions.

Issues and Recommendations. The expert groups identified and addressed problems, concerns, and opportunities characterized by issues in the following six categories:

• Operational Concepts and Development - issues arising from the introduction of digitized units into Army operations and the requirement for backup training.
• Institution - issues facing institutional training as digital and backup skill requirements emerge.
• Unit - issues regarding units' new role in training the digital Army.
• Training Pillar - issues that need to be considered as the Army redefines the institutional, unit, and professional self-development pillars.
• Strategic Analysis - areas associated with digitization that require further analysis.

Because the issues are complex, the recommendations address broad policy decisions. However, the expert groups also recognized the need to make recommen-dations that could have an immediate discernible impact. Therefore, the experts generated three detailed practical recommendations:

• A methodology to identify the backup training requirements for soldiers operating in digitized units.
• An Internet-based program for units to use to input and access information and experience on digital and backup skills.
• A description of the Commander's Integrated Training Tool, currently under development for the Close Combat Tactical Trainer.

The study also produced a report on the analysis of the training requirements for digital and backup skills. Its findings are intended to be used to direct the needs assessment for existing training programs and to identify new avenues of study. In addition, the lessons learned from the application of the study approach may be adapted by those who develop training programs for new systems or who must implement changes to existing systems as needs arise.