Improving Situational Awareness Training for Patriot Radar Operators

Situational awareness (SA) is the understanding of an environment and how one's actions affect it. We present the Cognitive Air Defense Training System (CAD-TS) Engagement Control System Simulator (ECS2), currently installed at Fort Bliss, Texas; which aims to increase the cognitive awareness and SA of radar operators of the MIM-104 Patriot surface-to-air missile system. The ECS2 presents multiple visualizations of environmental data on four levels: "Tactical"-the ECS operator's perspective; "Operational"-highly detailed realistic 3D representations; "Strategic"-a representational view containing the entire Earth; and "Time"-real-time game play, with pause and replay abilities. The levels vary in presentation, scope, and accuracy, so the instructor can alternate between 'available' and 'actual' information, to emphasize real world uncertainties as they may appear. Network shared objects are used to allow the differing views of the environmental data to be interchangeable during instruction and in After Action Review. The training system has an Observer Emphasis, where the observers in a classroom have access to all scenario views and a larger context, and the ECS operators in the ECS Digital Interactive Virtual Environments (DIVEs), only have access to the Tactical View as they will during actual deployment. Multiple perspectives can be presented by the instructor during instruction and in After Action Review. We will look at the Player and Observer roles, the four presentations of the environmental data within ECS2, and the technological issues involved in their creation. 1,2