FORT BENNING, Ga., (Jan. 20 2016) -- More than ever before, Soldiers are finding themselves in the middle of complex operating environments where both human and environmental threats persist in evolving and new ways.
For many of those Soldiers, finding a way to transition from classroom to combat operations - where they are suddenly thrust into dangerous situations and have to detect anomalies before an attack - can be daunting.
To better prepare Soldiers and enhance the 'Human Dimension' aspect of decision making and combat preparation, the U.S. Army developed and implemented the Advanced Situational Awareness course - a 50-hour program that focuses on training Soldiers to be more aware by observing, interpreting and analyzing both the humans and environment around them during an operation in order to improve security and effectiveness.
"The course grew from the recognition that many of the young Soldiers coming into the Army needed additional training to enhance their awareness of their surroundings," said Vern Tubbs, project manager for the ASA program. "With the continued evolution of technology and social interaction, many of them lacked the 'hunter' skills (basic awareness developed from spending a lot of time outdoors or from actual hunting) that we saw in older generations.
"So the Army developed a course that would not only teach them those skills of awareness, but enable them to articulate observed threats, and encourage them to take those skills back to their home units."
The program teaches students to use predictive-profiling skills based on heuristics, geographics, proxemics, autonomics, atmospherics and kinesics.
"Many people describe their reactions to potential threats as a 'gut feeling,' but its more than that," said Sgt. 1st Class Doug Lodahl, course manager and NCO in charge. "Our 'sixth sense' alerts us through our brain's cognitive capabilities to interpret and process information gained subconsciously via our senses - reacting to something in our mental file folders, knowing it to be an anomaly, and making a decision to act."
The course is divided into five days:
Days 1-3: Students spend time in classrooms, learning the terminology and concepts of ASA, participating in memory exercises and understanding the threat mindset.
Day 4: Students are divided into several teams to observe, analyze and conduct a threat assessment of a village from a distance. Using radios to communicate, the teams observe clues such as body language and the overall atmosphere of an area to determine if the village is a potential hostile environment and which villagers are leaders, threats and so forth.
Day 5: Students enter the village in a complex, interactive outcomes-based exercise where they engage with trained Threat Emulators (role players). The scenario can be different for each class, and the outcome of the missions relies on the decisions made by students based on their prior observations.
Charlie Baroudi, acting program manager of Threat Tech - the company that provides the Threat Emulators - said they focus on the Army's Decisive Action Training Environment operational environment, which helps to create the setting and storyline in the village life being portrayed.
"When it comes to threat emulation type of scenarios, D.A.T.E. is the standard for training environments Army wide," said Baroudi. "All our threat emulators are D.A.T.E. compliant, and we provide the Army with subject matter experts on D.A.T.E.
"This is a very exciting time to be a part of this training environment as we transition our Soldiers to a new level of thinking and essentially waking them up to different realities that they may encounter one day.
"It is hard to quantify the benefit of this training on Soldiers, but mid-and post-deployment after action reviews show that this training makes a difference - and is saving lives," said Lodhal. "Soldiers at all levels have positive remarks about their time here, and state that ASA provides them with a systematic approach to solving problems."
Predictive Profiling 101
The predictive-profiling skills taught within the Advanced Situational Awareness Training program are based on six key domains of awareness:
•Heuristics makes use of things already known to develop a tactical shortcut that elicits just enough information to draw a reasonable conclusion. It acts as the "lens," helping point out the safe and focus on the dangerous so military personnel can be proactive in their pursuits.
•Geographics focuses on how terrain - specifically anchor points, habitual areas and natural lines of drift in both urban and rural locales - creates measurable and detectable patterns within any environment. Understanding how a threat uses or is familiar with the geographics of a battle space can promote predictive analysis on how, where and when the enemy will most likely strike.
•Proxemics gives Soldiers awareness of how proximity negates skill and how people interact with each other when they are in groups. Through the skills taught in this domain, troops will have the tools to better spot "high-value individuals and targets" on the battlefield.
•Autonomics includes consciously uncontrollable, observable, and measurable physiological freeze-fight-flight reactions of our autonomic nervous system to external stimuli that can be interpreted, e.g. our breathing and heart rate increase, specific hormone levels increase, our digestion slows (dry mouth) and our pupils dilate.
•Atmospherics consists of the smells, tastes and sights of an area, to include bullet holes, rubble, etc. and the symbolism of tattoos, colors, flags, bumper stickers and graffiti. This domain also accounts for the feel of an area; when Soldiers have conducted daily patrols along a route for months, they gain the ability to "feel" if something is amiss - this is the essence of atmospherics.
•Kinesics refers to the nonverbal body language or paralanguage, which constitutes roughly 70 percent of human communication and one can determine whether a person is angry, sad, violent, deceitful or in other emotional states that can be assessed at any observable distance. When combined with an understanding of host-nation culture, emotional indicators can help Soldiers skilled in kinesics determine whether a situation is or may turn violent or dangerous.
For more information on the Advanced Situational Awareness program, visit www.benning.army.mil/armor/316thCav/ASA/index.html#ad-image-t4 or call the Course Manager at 706-544-6406.
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