CROSSFIRE: an IDE for operational training

ABSTRACT

We consider operational-level training to be targeted at decision makers; increasing the cognitive readiness of commanders, directors, or staff members in a military or civil organization.

Operational-level training is very different from tactical training. Time, space, and forces may be very realistic or highly abstracted or aggregated, depending on the fidelity required to offer the targeted training opportunity. Displays can be symbolic or text-oriented, reflecting a closer approximation of realistic information. The time-model is turn-taking, and turns can simulate any fixed units of simulated time: hours, days, weeks, etc.

We are in the final stages of developing a cognitive-readiness trainer for senior Air Force decision makers. The target training audience is senior decision makers in the Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC), the Air Force Forces (AFFOR) staff, and the Combined Force Air Component Commander (CFACC) staff right up to the CAOC Director, the COMAFFOR and CFACC. The trainer is called CFACC Ace and it is being developed for the Air Force Research Laboratories, in Mesa, Arizona. It is the first trainer developed on CROSSFIRE, a new product being developed by MÄK Technologies. CROSSFIRE is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for the development of operational-level trainers. In CFACC Ace, the ability to model the entire area of operations and all of the individuals, organizations, and non-human factors that influence the decisions of the trainee, is key to developing realistic scenarios specifically designed to address training dealing with human behaviors, risk-management, resource allocation over time, effects-based operations, and many other instances where extended periods of simulated time are required to realistically play out trainee decision results in a an operational decision-making environment.

CROSSFIRE is based on Eclipse, an open-source framework for building IDE's. Eclipse makes it economically feasible to build full-featured IDE's for specialized applications like joint staff training, or any other operational-level decision-making environment.

CROSSFIRE features a distributed, agent-based architecture, with a powerful, customized modeling language specifically designed for operational-level scenario development and cognitive training.

CROSSFIRE is also being used to develop a Joint Task Force staff trainer for Joint Forces Command (JFCOM). The trainer is designed to familiarize individual augmentees with the doctrinal and procedural workings of a task force. In this adaptation, the training environment is a Combined Task Force (CTF) staff simulating the organization, physical layout, processes, meetings, and battle rhythm of a modern CTF staff organization dealing with a difficult mission. But the training environment goes farther. It simulates the behavior or the individuals on the staff: the CTF commander, his chief of staff, the intelligence director, the operations director, etc. Each of these individuals can have unique personalities and knowledge and the trainee not only learns about how a staff works in terms of doctrine and battle rhythm, he also learns to deal with the personal interactions required to function effectively in such an organization.

INDEX TERMS

Keywords:
cognitive readiness, integrated development environment, intelligent agents, operational training