[HN Gopher] Advanced Situational Awareness [pdf]
___________________________________________________________________
Advanced Situational Awareness [pdf]
Author : graderjs
Score : 233 points
Date : 2021-05-10 16:02 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (armypubs.army.mil)
(TXT) w3m dump (armypubs.army.mil)
| airhead969 wrote:
| I don't see how you can teach SA in a book.
|
| Plus, some people are hopelessly clueless and don't see subtle
| details as well as others.
|
| It's a nice thought to explain some trail signs, but experience,
| practice, and particular personal qualities likely prove more
| valuable to think independently. Primitive hunting, street and
| wilderness intelligence, and practiced SA in everyday life are
| probably the best teachers.
| standardUser wrote:
| There's a typo on page 1-1. Second to last line has a misspelling
| of "Soldiers".
| jvanderbot wrote:
| This seems to be particularly polarizing. I take the doc as an
| effort to distill practice, user stories, and a little bit of
| background theory as required to keep things varied an
| interesting to various types of learners. There's the rote
| memorization (do hasty search not a horizon scan), and theory-to-
| practice (rods and cones for nighttime visual search).
|
| I also imagine that the intended audience for this book has not
| been exposed to some of the biological underpinnings of senses,
| and never had an explanation for why it was difficult to resolve
| colors in darkness.
|
| That facts are placed right next to actionable workarounds and
| right next to observable consequences is a pretty good writing
| strategy to educate practitioners.
|
| I can imagine (but have not experienced) some useful rules of
| thumb coming from this document that are pounded into minds until
| they are second nature. Range estimation, hasty search + follow-
| up search, rough ranges at which cigarettes are visible in
| darkness, speech is audible, and so on. That's gold for its
| indented audience.
| austincheney wrote:
| Minor typo in table 3-4. Motor vehicle detection on a dirt road
| should read 0-500 meters not kilometers.
| Abimelex wrote:
| Who else wonder if the "This page intentionally left blank." is
| either redundant or wrong, since the page is not anymore blank,
| written this information.
| vageli wrote:
| This is a very common thing in text.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentionally_blank_page
| airhead969 wrote:
| Military intelligence borrows irony from the private sector
| too.
| AnthonBerg wrote:
| Perhaps it is done to start the book off with a reflection -
| This situational awareness intentionally left blank is no
| longer blank.
| slenk wrote:
| Did they take it down?
| moelf wrote:
| no, and I think they don't have any reason to.
|
| >DISTRIBUTION RESTRICTION: Approved for public release;
| distribution is unlimited.
| pupdogg wrote:
| Isn't it a National Security issue if the document is public
| globally?
| kube-system wrote:
| No. The military has procedures to protect national
| security information (classification), and those have been
| intentionally not applied to this document.
| openasocket wrote:
| No, this is general doctrine material. By necessity you
| need to teach a huge number of people in your army about
| your doctrine and how it works, so it's a really hard
| secret to keep. And, if your doctrine doesn't work if the
| enemy knows about it, then it's not a very good doctrine.
| In the same way that if your encryption program is
| vulnerable if people can inspect the source code, your
| encryption program isn't very good.
|
| The only real risk is that your adversaries might "steal"
| your doctrine and use it to train their own troops. But
| generally a doctrine on its own isn't enough, you need an
| established tradition and officer corps, as well as the
| right tools and equipment to execute it properly. And those
| (especially a competent and well trained officer corps) are
| much harder to appropriate.
| neither_color wrote:
| I was able to open it, it's a pdf. Is it legal to re-upload and
| mirror somewhere?
| vondur wrote:
| It says this on the PDF itself:
|
| DISTRIBUTION RESTRICTION: Approved for public release;
| distribution is unlimited.
| austincheney wrote:
| Yes, it is a US government publication released without
| classification or restriction.
|
| > DISTRIBUTION RESTRICTION: Approved for public release;
| distribution is unlimited.
| A_non_e-moose wrote:
| Approved for public release, right in the cover
| imrehg wrote:
| Mirroring on IPFS: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmTzi24R524CKGQNNoDio
| 7T1r6THhy3jYBcF2gW...
| graderjs wrote:
| The pages, 1 JPEG each (in case the HN Top load kills the above
| server):
|
| https://secureview.isolation.site/uploads/file2t3r.l46wc0l.p...
|
| _This link will self-destruct in 3 days_ :P ;) xx
| gshixman wrote:
| I've been my oldest child case with this very topic to the point
| they eye-roll me everytime I bring it up. To be clear, they often
| claim they've lost a shoe or toy just after literally walking
| past it or accidentally knocking it under a table or chair. I
| guess its also a prevalent issue for young adults as well as
| children now? (Table 2-1, specifically)
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Constantly being on a kid's case for not behaving/thinking like
| you do isn't likely to work out well unless you actually know
| where the disconnect is.
|
| Not everyone processes or thinks the same way.
| gshixman wrote:
| With respect, I'm keenly aware that they think differently,
| and as for the disconnect, it's because they're an adolescent
| with a brain that is still figuring out their body.
| Unfortunately, Pavlovian reinforcement is sadly sometimes
| necessary to get a point across, especially when its a
| repetitive issue.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| My parents took that approach, which resulted in me not
| getting an ADD diagnosis until I was in my mid 30s. While
| I've been fortunate in life overall, it's no exaggeration
| to say my life would be _dramatically_ different for the
| better if I 'd learned what was actually going on as a kid.
|
| If you view parenting as a pavlovian process rather than
| mutual communication and learning, then I'm here to warn
| you that if you walk down that path far enough, you will
| experience a day where you discover your children loathe
| you.
| NortySpock wrote:
| What would you have preferred?
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| For them to realize something was going on beyond
| "doesn't apply himself" or similar phrasing that
| attributed what was happening to a combination of
| laziness and character flaw and to then consult an actual
| professional.
|
| Instead I got a whole lot of punishment, much of it
| physical, because my parents are also evangelical
| extremists.
| bqmjjx0kac wrote:
| I'm struggling to understand how Pavlovian training can
| develop a skill for finding lost objects.
| jcims wrote:
| There's a certain cognitive priming that I have to do in order
| to be effective at searching for things that I've lost. 'Think
| of where you had it last' doesn't really help because that's
| frequently a complete blank. Instead I need to project a mental
| image of the item into the space I'm searching to prime
| whatever pattern matcher is in my head. Without that my eyes
| will literally pass right over the object and not pick it out
| of the noise.
|
| My wife, of course, had no such limitation. 'THEY'RE. RIGHT.
| HERE.' a common exasperation of hers as our departure time and
| planned arrival time converge.
| airhead969 wrote:
| Tile. Know it, love it, accidentally click it in an elevator
| or in a movie theater.
|
| Edit: I dated a girl once who couldn't tell cars apart, and
| had a really hard time finding hers or anyone elses.
| FooHentai wrote:
| I have this issue, but no ability to project mental images.
| Generally, I manage by ensuring everything has a place to be,
| then I only need to worry when something is not in the right
| place.
|
| This is counter to my wife who can remember where most things
| are when placed somewhere random. We mostly manage, but she
| is the official house 'finder of things'.
|
| Where I seem to have the most difficulty is entirely my
| domain - The garage. I put tools down mid work and spend a
| bunch of time finding them again moments later.
| smilebot wrote:
| I've recently started doing this and has helped me find
| things much more efficiently. I project the image in my head,
| and make a mental note of the item's physical attributes such
| as size, color, etc. Once primed with this info, I go about
| doing a linear scan around my house.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Usually I'm searching aimlessly while thinking about
| something completely unrelated and I'm not bothering to be
| focused at all. The first step is to realize that I'm about
| to start looking for my keys in the same room for the third
| time and to stop and actually bother to focus and to bring
| the task to the foreground instead of the background.
|
| Looking for my keys though is a minor annoyance and I'd
| rather be thinking about something else, so this isn't
| something I think needs fixing. It isn't driving a vehicle.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I have a trick that helps me. I say out loud, "I'm looking
| for ____ " or "Where is ____". The vocalization focuses me,
| and hearing the word makes my eyes jump to the item if it's
| in field of view. Sometimes, I find myself stopped, staring
| at a part of the wall, not sure what's going on, but there is
| the item at the base of the wall in the corner. Just had to
| move my eyes more but my whole body was answering the
| question for me.
|
| I really do feel like I'm holding the reins of a big dumb
| animal sometimes.
| airhead969 wrote:
| I think it's a form of dependency/laziness. The best approach I
| know is to not think for them and have them help themselves to
| get better at independence and self-/world-awareness.
|
| Yeah, it is. Especially people posting comments to spoon-feed
| them an explanation of something rather than research it for
| themselves. It's a form of learned helplessness.
| desktopninja wrote:
| Personally think we were more situationally aware pre mass
| ownership of smart/feature-rich phones.
| DSingularity wrote:
| "No matter how abstract they are, these pictures describe systems
| that the U.S. military uses to make optimal, efficient decisions
| about killing other humans."
|
| And then they are shared with the Israeli military so they can be
| used to kill in Gaza! Hurray for humanity.
| openasocket wrote:
| It's kind of insane how many documents the armed forces put out
| like this. Hundreds upon hundreds of pages dedicated to one topic
| or another. Everything broken down into a template or series of
| steps, often with little mnemonic devices to help you remember
| things. Everything standardized and given official nomenclature.
|
| Want to know what an infantry platoon and squad does? Here's 826
| pages:
| https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ATP%203... .
|
| What about an infantry company? Here's 618 pages:
| https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN8519... .
|
| And those just cover the basics of organization, movement,
| attack, and defense. Want to know how to call in artillery
| support? Here's 256 pages:
| https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN2193... .
|
| 92 pages on military deception:
| https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN15310-FM_3-1... .
|
| 192 pages on recognizing aircraft by sight:
| https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN3274... .
|
| 146 pages on "Army Ceremonial Music Performance":https://armypubs
| .army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN3102... .
|
| There's just a ton out there if you want to dig around:
| https://armypubs.army.mil/ProductMaps/PubForm/TC.aspx .
| airhead969 wrote:
| Job security ftw. Even if it's useless in practice, churn it
| out to make General PHB happy.
| afandian wrote:
| Maybe it's a form of organisational dissociation to deal with
| the horror of what's on the other end of the weaponry.
|
| If you were in a position of influence in the army would you
| choose to soul-search about bombed children or try and
| construct some meaning around "Figure 4-1. Movement of the
| staff and command bugler around commander of troops".
| throwawaygh wrote:
| It's a jobs program. Someone has to employ all those boys who
| majored in the humanities at the academies and other feeder
| schools for the officer corps.
| airhead969 wrote:
| Related: Project 100,000 - Build those org chart pyramids,
| grow budgets, and get promoted.
|
| The MIC is about spending as much money as possible.
|
| Officially, it's $721,531,000,000 FY2020
|
| "In 2018, it was announced that the Department of Defense
| was indeed the subject of a comprehensive budgetary audit.
| This review was conducted by private, third-party
| accounting consultants. The audit ended and was deemed
| incomplete due to deficient accounting practices in the
| department."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United
| _...
| lolbrels wrote:
| War is inherently horrific. Being able to operate
| systematically under such conditions is invaluable.
|
| I think you could have come to that conclusion without the
| anti-war rhetoric, we get it - atrocities of war are
| terrible, this is not a unique/interesting perspective.
| m463 wrote:
| A friend worked as a physical trainer in the military and
| described things like boot camp and getting soldiers on board.
|
| One funny thing she said was the moment they got off the bus,
| she had someone in her face in perfect military dress,
| screaming at her every minute of the day and night. She figured
| out later that they would take short shifts swapping off,
| getting in people's faces, then leaving and relaxing before
| showering and changing clothes and doing it again for a few
| hours.
|
| They got recruits from every walk of life. They were taught
| every skill, not only how to march or make a bed military
| style, but also some had to learn how to brush their teeth.
|
| Every skill is new to someone. I guess it makes sense to
| document everything so you can teach it and make it uniform.
| swader999 wrote:
| My wife trains our kids this way.
| [deleted]
| Othello_Returns wrote:
| Impressive strategic analysis. But maybe get Clippy to spell
| check next time boys and girls.
|
| "Solders" lol
| batch12 wrote:
| I don't think a spell checker would have caught that since it's
| a word that's spelled correctly.
| pizza wrote:
| It's interesting you bring this up. Norbert Wiener (coined
| cybernetics among other accomplishments) was once working on a
| kind of visual tracking system for the military, where a human in
| the loop would provide predictions as to where a plane were
| headed and this would be incorporated as a signal into the
| tracking system's prediction.
|
| I think ever since then you get a lot of ideas about using men as
| parts of machines, rather than the more Stalin-esque idea of
| making a new type of man
| tolbish wrote:
| I noticed they have sex in the base level of Maslow's hierarchy
| of needs, along with food and water. I think we will see movement
| this century on the topic of whether or not it is a human right.
| dougmwne wrote:
| What could that possibly look like in practice? Something
| beyond legalized prostitution?
| tolbish wrote:
| Some imagine something like Westworld.
| nefitty wrote:
| I think people are assuming some sort of coercive outcome if
| sex were to be considered a human right. What it might
| realistically produce are more lenient, practical and
| compassionate laws around sex work. For example, there are
| people who are lonely, possibly due to old age, illness,
| circumstance (incels), etc. What makes them less deserving of
| intimacy? What right does a society have to proscribe what
| services an individual is allowed to willingly provide?
|
| This is just another example of some of the hidden suffering
| that society predominantly refuses to counteract or even
| acknowledge.
| tolbish wrote:
| I just want to point out that the document has sexual
| intimacy as a separate, less important need than sex.
| dougmwne wrote:
| I originally thought your comment odd and out of context,
| but now that you mention it, the military's view on sex vs.
| intimacy hidden within these obtuse documents is a pretty
| interesting tidbit and entirely within the spirit of the
| article. This is a multi-million staff count, trillion
| dollar-a-year organization after all. It is about 80% male
| and skews very young.
| graderjs wrote:
| BTW what can explain how this Top drops 10 places suddenly?
|
| https://upvotetracker.com/post/hn/27107522
| anotha1 wrote:
| dang
| airhead969 wrote:
| Don't take the lord's name in vain, or he'll refer you to the
| guidelines. ;)
| jkaptur wrote:
| I'm reminded of Amazing Military Infographics [0], particularly
| one of the kickers: "The United States Military is operating at a
| conceptual level beyond every other school of thought except
| perhaps academic philosophy, because it has a much larger
| budget."
|
| 0: https://medium.com/message/amazing-military-
| infographics-1ba...
| beckingz wrote:
| This is incredible.
|
| " After a while you realize that this image could be used
| anywhere in any paper or presentation and make perfect sense.
| This is a graphic that defines a way of describing anything
| that has ever existed and everything that has ever happened, in
| any situation."
| formerly_proven wrote:
| While this is a 4D framework of description, it fails to
| account for non-local action and seems to assume absolute
| simultaneity, so this is still thinking inside the box.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| Except it's not novel and it came from strategy consulting
| decades ago (the Zachman framework in particular, which was
| popular at IBM in the 80s). In fact it's one of the main
| methods of describing an architecture framework, and a
| methodology I use daily doing EA / strategy consulting.
|
| Consultants are everywhere in the military. Especially the
| business / strategy / org behavior types. Anything the
| military does will have been done a hundred times before in
| industry -- the military just needs it at goliath scale.
| shoto_io wrote:
| Yes. Many of these graphs reminded me of stuff I was
| producing as a strategy consultant. In some cases you
| wonder if organizations that have too much money spend it
| purely on philosophical questions, unrelated to any
| business reality.
| philwelch wrote:
| I'm going to dramatically oversimplify things and just blame
| John Boyd for this.
|
| John Boyd was an Air Force officer who came up with the OODA
| loop theory. Basically, a pilot in air combat loops through
| the stages of Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act, and if a
| pilot is capable of iterating through this loop faster than
| their opponent, they win. Some people realized this same
| theory could actually explain combat more generally
| (particularly maneuver warfare) as well as business and
| everyday life.
|
| John Boyd's magnum opus was a slide presentation of several
| hundred slides, which took several hours to present, which he
| never allowed to be abridged or summarized in any way.
|
| John Boyd was influential and I don't even think he was a
| complete crackpot, but the military's tendency to overuse
| PowerPoint and develop vague theories-of-everything as their
| operational doctrines reminds me of him. I don't think they
| pull it off as well as he did.
| ultrastable wrote:
| Boyd's stuff is really interesting but yeah, he doesn't
| provide quite as much of a unified theory of everything as
| a lot of the Pentagon people seem to think. imo one result
| of the over-bureaucratized nature of the US military is
| that ideas that would be considered fairly basic in other
| contexts are treated as incomparable advances there
|
| [edit] which reminds me of the IDF/Deleuze thing - the
| grand insight they got from reading Difference & Repetition
| was that... they could blow holes in walls instead of going
| around them
| https://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/art-war-
| deleuze-...
| bena wrote:
| It's like they're reading the situation, evaluating their
| options, then printing their results in the form of
| actions.
|
| But that's the case for a lot of things. REPL and OODA fall
| into that category of philosophies that are simple once
| presented, but we needed someone to recognize as existing.
| And there is a benefit to recognizing these patterns as
| they allow us to optimize them.
|
| Also, things that get independently discovered in several
| places are more likely to be correct as they seem to be
| naturally emergent.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| The theories of everything stuff comes heavily from the
| academies as I understand it. Cadets go through a
| curriculum of military history that tries to look at
| everything since Rome from 100,000 ft altitude abstracting
| some hodgepodge set of exogenous principals of warfare.
|
| The other part is these "theories of war" become vehicles
| for self advancement. These become almost cult like fads
| within the pentagon. Then a few years later the new fad
| takes over. Remember "Shock and Awe?" Don't hear much about
| that anymore do we...
| otoburb wrote:
| >> _John Boyd 's magnum opus was a slide presentation of
| several hundred slides, which took several hours to
| present, which he never allowed to be abridged or
| summarized in any way._
|
| I think you're referring to _Patterns of Conflict_ [1]
| which is/was 187 slides plus around 9 slides of sources.
| The funny thing is that _Patterns_ is mostly comprised of
| dense text, not diagrams or pictures. It was a lot of fun
| trying to absorb Boyd 's ideas if one can find the
| presentations online. They are quite a contrast to
| (publicly available) military briefings and papers these
| days given the lower text-to-visuals ratio.
|
| Chuck Spinney and Chet Richards worked with Boyd, as did
| Ginger Richards, on various major briefings. To your point,
| most of them are 40+ pages/slides each.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_of_Conflict
| vageli wrote:
| It seems to be available online [0] (found a link in the
| linked wiki page).
|
| [0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20210414195621/http://ww
| w.ausair...
| neither_color wrote:
| >Part of what makes military diagrams so fascinating is that
| they look a lot like the images civilians use to do their
| regular workaday jobs. It's just software and hardware, after
| all, and there are only so many ways to draw a network diagram.
| Yet the scale of these systems is immense; the lines being
| drawn are between jets and satellites, not between a couple of
| web servers...No matter how abstract they are, these pictures
| describe systems that the U.S. military uses to make optimal,
| efficient decisions about killing other humans.
|
| Great article, despite the sardonic tone I found the graphics
| actually interesting, like something that would be read out
| loud and discussed on Jocko's podcast. That last line, however,
| reminded me of just how far we've taken it with systems that
| stalk targets from the sky for weeks to be used as evidence to
| authorize drone strikes.
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/palantirs-gods-eye-view-of-afgha...
| axguscbklp wrote:
| This reminds me of the mixed anger and surprise that I felt
| during the Snowden revelations when I realized that internally,
| the NSA was using a bunch of goofy-looking crude slides to
| communicate about the Stasi-like domestic spying apparatus that
| they had built using taxpayer money.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| >>> And org charts frequently show up. Many of them go up to the
| President. Who wouldn't put the President in their org chart if
| they could?
|
| I am now trying to work out how to fit the UK COBRA response unit
| into any of my Disaster Recovery Planning templates. They really
| do need spicing up.
|
| Maybe go with a sentence like "It is considered unlikely that we
| shall need to notify MI6 of any interruption to our service. The
| number just in case is 555-12345"
|
| See who actually reads these darn things.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > I am now trying to work out how to fit the UK COBRA response
| unit into any of my Disaster Recovery Planning templates
|
| In organisations supporting UK critical national infrastructure
| (e.g. power companies), a cyber response plan might involve
| contacting (or being contacted by) the National Cyber Security
| Centre (NCSC [0]), who as a public-facing component of GCHQ
| will be part of the government chain of command up to and
| including the Prime Minister.
|
| [0] https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/
| lazide wrote:
| I've taken to putting something similar in job postings that
| require careful attention to detail (right after the section
| that talks about said need) - 'If you want to get considered,
| make sure to put the name of a mammal that flies in your
| subject line. Otherwise I will throw your application in the
| trash'.
|
| So far? About 1 in 10 to 1 in 15 does it. Tends to be pretty
| effective actually, helps a lot with weeding out the spam too.
| Most lead with the 'I would love the opportunity to work with
| your company' which is clearly just generic spam and they
| probably didn't even look at the job posting.
| milliondollar wrote:
| Absolutely stunning example of work by some folks in DoD who
| clearly have "bullshit jobs." This includes diagrams and
| descriptions of how eyeballs work, quotes from Hemingway, and
| case studies of WWII operations. Can anyone imagine actually
| trying to train Joe based on this manual? A shining example of BS
| at its peak!
| bovermyer wrote:
| Yes, I can. Having gone through military training, it taught me
| things that I didn't understand before, or only had an
| intuitive understanding and not a full understanding.
|
| If you're going to call a reasonable document bullshit, then I
| might be inclined to say you have a somewhat skewed lens on
| reality.
| milliondollar wrote:
| Each fact in the document may be true, but the document is so
| overbroad as to be useless. Who is it intended for? I mean,
| it is almosth philosophical in starting from how senses
| actually work from science.
|
| Each lesson included could / should be broken out for Joe to
| make the desired outcomes practical and achievable.
| djrogers wrote:
| This document is the foundation for a month-long training
| course for the Army [https://www.benning.army.mil/Armor/316
| thCav/ASA/index.html], and likely others in other branches.
| If you look at it as a textbook, it seems quite a
| reasonable document.
|
| You seem to be making assumptions about how this is
| intended to be consumed.
| kube-system wrote:
| This criticism could just as easily apply to my entire
| college career. That doesn't mean that the things I learned
| weren't of any use. Understanding beyond simple application
| has value.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| Why do we assume the everyman is unable to do the most
| basic of rational thought.
| kahmeal wrote:
| present day
| tryauuum wrote:
| present time
| [deleted]
| lazide wrote:
| If you have a group of 10 random people, you'll have to
| count on 1-2 of them not knowing something important you
| think everyone knows (if you're lucky).
|
| If you have a group of 100 random people - that's now
| 10-20 people. A whole team, maybe two if the cards are
| particularly bad.
|
| The Army has 479, 000 people. They also have significant,
| predictable turnover, so if they teach everyone all those
| things once, in 4-5 years no one in some military
| specialities will know it again. Based on the average
| time in service (6.7 yrs) data I can see, even if they
| teach literally everyone everything they might not know
| that is considered essential, in ~ half a decade at least
| 1/3 of the people in the Army won't know some or most of
| it again.
|
| Add in that people can only pay attention to and retain
| so much, and you have to repeat things a lot, explain
| things from a bunch of different angles, and then test
| and validate on top of that before you can assume they
| know it.
|
| Even then, they might forget in a week.
|
| It's law of large numbers and people.
| bovermyer wrote:
| That manual is not meant as a pedagogical tool. It's meant
| as the source of truth to build those tools _from_.
| jordache wrote:
| more BS than another CRUD app?
| benkoller wrote:
| Situational awareness is in fact a teachable/learnable skill and
| not just a "thing you have". Every professional field has one or
| another concept of the around it. I'd even go as far as saying
| it's one of my crucial (soft-)skills and has benefitted me
| greatly in my career, so it's great to see that I'm not alone
| with my interest in the topic.
| kodah wrote:
| > Situational awareness is in fact a teachable/learnable skill
| and not just a "thing you have".
|
| It's definitely both, I don't know why you're trying to knock
| that some people either by birth or through their experiences
| are just better at something than others. I had Marines who had
| excellent situational awareness that could spot trouble or
| issues far before they became a problem and I had others that
| would accidentally a whole truck. They were trained, for the
| most part, the same way.
|
| I also disagree that situational awareness is a "soft skill".
| Having situational awareness, to me, means that you know a
| subject deeply enough to infer things about your environment
| from that knowledge. That would make it a very technical skill.
| preordained wrote:
| I would say my most practical experience with increasing
| situational awareness came from getting into competitive Magic
| the Gathering. Misreading a card or a line of play = loss many
| times; it is very easy to miss a key variable on the board that
| could make all the difference and if you are the slightest bit
| inattentive or operating by rote habit, you will miss it.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| How is your average soldier, as a non-college grad, going to
| internalize a 316 page document that covers everything from
| cultural, to environmental, to social political awareness on top
| of the physical and psychological demands?
|
| That's not rhetorical. I'm curious how this document is instilled
| in the short period of boot camp training before they are shipped
| off to their deployments.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| How would Steve Jobs read this without a college degree?
| cl42 wrote:
| I'm not in the military so can't speak to this directly, but
| I've been in training scenarios where you have 100s of pages to
| "memorize".
|
| The trick here is to actually learn via repetition so you
| internalize much of the training in a way that it becomes
| subconscious. The same would apply to me asking a developer how
| to build an iOS app (random example) -- you probably have so
| much internalized knowledge that you can write a few hundred
| pages on UX, UI, underlying tech infrastructure, coding
| practices, etc.
| lainga wrote:
| Or it leads to a situation where the 2nd LT is reciting in
| his head "3-69 The process of listening is composed of
| Listening, Receiving, Attending and Understanding... 3-70
| Speaking is the call to listen, the speaker has not
| communicated until the receiver interprets and understands
| the message sent..." while the guy in front of him is
| nervously telling him he's ordered a fire mission 50m from
| the wall they're behind.
| metiscus wrote:
| I am going to try to dispel a few things about this. "Boot
| camp" or basic training results in a basically trained Soldier.
| While in times of a severe national emergency, it is possible
| that a basically trained soldier may be deployed, in usual
| circumstances, even during war this does not happen. Soldiers
| in basic training are selected into Military Occupational
| Specialties (or basically your job in the military) as an
| example, 11B is the infantry. After basic training, soldiers
| are sent to their units and/or specialist schools for
| additional training particular to their MOS. For some
| enlistment types, there are exceptions to this, officer and
| warrant officer candidates go to separate schools and for some
| MOS there is OSUT which allows a soldier to remain in the same
| unit from basic through ait. These schools can take anywhere
| from a few weeks to months depending on the specialty. During
| basic training, a soldier is expected to read and understand
| several documents, primary among them, the soldier Blue Book
| TP600-4 https://adminpubs.tradoc.army.mil/pamphlets/TP600-4.pdf
| After basic training and individual training, soldiers may have
| need to memorize and reference things from many manuals but
| they are not generally expected to memorize large manuals as
| part of basic.
|
| The requirements are a bit different for officers and warrant
| officers. The training of officers and warrant officers is much
| more academically oriented. A 152F, Apache attack helicopter
| pilot is required to basically memorize the entire Technical
| Manual for their aircraft as well as many details about Army
| procedure for radios, weapon engagement, airspace management,
| etc. There are also joint publications, that are shared across
| the army, navy, airforce, marines, etc (sometimes with NATO
| allies) that folks in certain roles (pilots, FACs, officers)
| must be aware of.
|
| Hopefully you find this helpful.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| I don't think the average soldier is expected to internalize
| the entire document. It's more a training tool, or maybe taken
| into the field as a reference if someone thinks it's relevant.
| One of my favorite army field manuals is "FM 3-05.213: Special
| Forces Use of Pack Animal". 99.999% of soldiers don't need to
| know that when an elephant's body temperature reaches 38.3
| degrees celsius you need to let it rest, or the fact that the
| average working llama needs 4 liters of water per day. But if
| they ever find themselves utilizing war elephants (which is
| strongly discouraged in the manual!), they know that somewhere
| in this 225 page tome they can find information to help them
| succeed.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| My first question would be "how do you monitor an elephant's
| body temperature in a combat environment?" and my next
| thought was "this will be answered in the document"
| chrisseaton wrote:
| What makes you think this document is aimed at an average
| soldier? It's a training reference. From this actual training
| serials are prepared which are aimed at average soldiers.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| > What makes you think this document is aimed at an average
| soldier?
|
| Literally the second sentence in the document, on p. ix:
|
| > Included in the intended audience are Soldiers
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > particularly those tasked with integrating ASA concepts
| into training
|
| They mean soldiers who need to develop training to deliver
| to other soldiers.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| That seems to be your own connotative reading, not what
| is actually written in the text.
|
| Had the actual written meaning been exclusively those
| tasked with integrating training, then the wording would
| have said so. As it is currently written, the intended
| audience is all soldiers.
| WJW wrote:
| If a non-trainer soldier wants to read it, they are
| welcome to do so and the manuals will never turn away
| willing students (unless it is classified material of
| course). But regular soldiers are not the primary
| audience of this document.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| Again, the document clearly states that Soldiers are the
| intended audience. In plain English. In the second
| sentence.
|
| Your interpretation, irrespective of accuracy, is at odds
| with what is written in the actual document.
| stevenhuang wrote:
| Soldiers being the intended audience does not mean _all_
| soldiers must read it. What's so hard to understand about
| that?
| Ansil849 wrote:
| > Soldiers being the intended audience does not mean
| _all_ soldiers must read it. What's so hard to understand
| about that?
|
| Apparently a lot, based on some of the replies in this
| sub-thread. I, on the other hand, fully agree with you
| and have no trouble understanding this distinction.
|
| The poster to which my original comment was a response
| to, however, claimed that soldiers were not the intended
| audience.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| A possible point of confusion is that 'soldier' means
| different things in different contexts.
|
| Sometimes 'soldier' means anyone in the Army.
|
| Sometimes 'soldier' means anyone in the Army but not
| commissioned officers.
|
| Sometimes 'soldier' means only private members of the
| Army.
|
| In this case obviously 'soldiers' are intended to read it
| - as people in the Army are intended to read it. But also
| 'soldiers' are not intended to read it, as private
| soldiers would normally get training and would not have
| to read it.
|
| Reading requires context and domain knowledge.
|
| If you have context and domain knowledge, this document
| is perfectly clear on the audience.
|
| (I've had multiple training jobs in the (British) Army.)
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Well I don't know what else to tell you - common sense
| tells you this definitely isn't what they mean. Junior
| soldiers are not expected to read documents like this.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| Your interpretation, irrespective of accuracy, is at odds
| with what is written in the actual document.
|
| If it is true that junior soldiers are not expected to
| read a document such as this, then the document should
| not state that the intended audience is soldiers.
|
| A military manual is not a James Joyce novel. If the
| manual says the intended audience is soldiers, then you
| should not be able to come in and say 'actually,
| regardless of what they wrote, that's not what they
| _really_ meant '.
| moshmosh wrote:
| > Included in the intended audience are Soldiers...
|
| "We tried to make this understandable by Soldiers, among
| others, as far as reading level and expected context &
| background knowledge"
|
| > ...particularly those tasked with integrating ASA
| concepts into training
|
| "This subset of soldiers are the ones we mostly expect to
| read it, or to be required to read it, though, so expect
| that the content is tuned to and most suitable for their
| needs"
|
| Nowhere does it say that all soldiers read this or that
| anyone expects that a typical soldier be _required_ to
| read it. They are stating the background of their
| intended audience (Soldier, among others, should suffice)
| and those whom they expect to be best-served by the
| document ( "those tasked with integrating ASA concepts
| into training"). This sentence is about as clear as
| English gets, to the point that I'm baffled this exchange
| is taking place. It says _nothing_ about "junior
| soldiers [being] expected to read a document such as
| this".
|
| > A military manual is not a James Joyce novel. If the
| manual says the intended audience is soldiers, then you
| should not be able to come in and say 'actually,
| regardless of what they wrote, that's not what they
| really meant'.
|
| Your confidence and repeated insistence that your reading
| is correct here is not warranted. You're wrong. It is not
| ambiguous whether you're wrong.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| > Nowhere does it say that all soldiers read this or that
| anyone expects that a typical soldier be _required_ to
| read it.
|
| And nowhere do I make this claim. The discussion is bout
| the intended, not the required, audience. And the
| intended audience is explicitly stated to be Soldiers in
| the manual itself.
| moshmosh wrote:
| OK: let's look at this thread from the beginning. Not the
| post you responded to, but the one they were responding
| to. In particular, consider how the word "average" was
| intended in the post you responded to, and what aspect(s)
| of the root post that was addressing.
|
| Then consider, given the context of the whole thread, how
| "expected" was intended here:
|
| > Junior soldiers are not expected to read documents like
| this.
|
| Webster's for "expect": 1 c. to consider bound in duty or
| obligated
|
| (1a and 1b also more-or-less apply)
|
| That's what I take as the use of expect here, fitting
| with the thread before. Most soldiers are not _obligated_
| to read this work. No-one will be surprised or
| disappointed or pissed-off if _most_ soldiers never crack
| it open.
|
| And then consider how I (and others) may have read your
| use of "expected" in your response to that:
|
| > If it is true that junior soldiers are not expected to
| read a document such as this, then the document should
| not state that the intended audience is soldiers.
|
| By this you mean that the authors anticipate (sense 2 of
| "expect" in Webster's) that some of those reading it will
| be soldiers, that they expect (some!) soldiers to be
| among their readers--at least I assume so, given your
| agreement with the notion that most soldiers are not
| obligated to read the text.
|
| You've been writing past everyone in this thread because
| your original response was a non sequitur to the thread-
| in-progress, which was about who is obligated or
| intended, in practice, to read this document.
|
| chrisseaton was addressing something _different_ from
| what you 're trying to argue over. You aren't even
| contradicting him because you're talking about different
| things.
|
| Besides, your reading is every bit as "connotative" as
| chrisseaton's, except that you're ignoring a big chunk of
| the (not long!) sentence you quoted in order to preserve
| yours as the exclusively correct reading. In particular,
| there are two senses of "audience" at play, between this
| thread and the text in question. Your reading that the
| piece is intended to be understandable by a "Soldier"--so
| that is the "audience"--does have support in the text,
| clearly, but the contention that the "audience", in the
| sense of who is actually expected to read it, and so for
| whose needs we may expect the text to have been crafted,
| is more precisely specified in the second part of the
| sentence, is also supported _by the text_ , and is what
| comes out when the entire sentence is considered. That
| second sense is what was under discussion, originally.
| chrisBob wrote:
| Like all good Army manuals this one has a training plan! It
| starts on Chapter 12.
|
| Seriously though. The goal isn't to make every soldier an
| expert. At the most this will be discussed for a few hours in
| Basic Training, and units that are in the training phase of
| their cycle can spend a little time on it.
|
| Basic training is the Hello World of military training. When
| Soldiers aren't deployed the spend about half of their work
| hours on training that is planned and executed at the company
| (~120 person) level. The Platoon Leader and Platoon Sergeant
| will most likely incorporate this into other activities. Other
| specialized training programs (SAPPER, Ranger, SF, ...) will
| use this document extensively as part of their training.
| op03 wrote:
| Video games and super hero movies. They start on them young.
| bovermyer wrote:
| Rote memorization enough to pass the exams, and situational
| training enough to memorize key behaviors.
|
| 100% memorization is neither achieved nor expected.
| balls187 wrote:
| They're not. Read the preface, while the intended audience is
| all soldiers, the manual is geared towards trainers.
|
| The value isn't in the content of the publication (hence why
| it's public), it's in the training that soldiers undergo to
| make the information 1st-hand nature.
|
| Example--you can read about the OODA loop. Reading about it
| doesn't make you good at using it. That takes training, and the
| Army has specific exercises that helps a baseline soldier know
| the fundamentals.
|
| Like with nearly all skills, start with first principles,
| ingrain them with drills and repetation, then build advanced
| skills based on those fundamentals.
| tylerflick wrote:
| Checkout the Combat Hunter program. It's good example even
| though it predates this document.
| openasocket wrote:
| I don't believe this is a part of boot camp, this is advanced
| specialized training. This looks to be a course teaching these
| concepts:
| https://www.benning.army.mil/Armor/316thCav/ASA/index.html . It
| seems to be open only to Sergeants through Captains, many of
| those will have a college education. From the course schedule
| it looks like this takes a month. It's not clear but it sounds
| like it's an all day thing too.
| anotha1 wrote:
| The last few chapters are all about training.
| kodah wrote:
| Different branches tackle this in different ways.
|
| It's probably important to note that each branch has more
| specific things they need to know. Much of the Marine Corps
| relies on cross-training to fulfill this demand because their
| goal is much more open-ended than the rest of the branches (to
| my knowledge it's something like, "seize forward operation
| bases and areas of operation".)
|
| To put it in a metaphor: bootcamp is considered dipping your
| toes in the water, your MOS school is like getting in ankle
| deep, the fleet is being nose deep with only your clothes on.
| When you get to "the fleet" is when your real training will
| begin and it is unending; the only thing that changes over time
| is that you figure out your clothes are actually flotation
| devices (fun fact, they actually are). You will spend night
| after night in the field training, they'll institute artificial
| stress, and attempt to train you into dealing with it. They'll
| use simulations like paint rounds, explosions, medical
| evacuations, and simulation towns in group-training settings
| with real civilians doing all the erratic things real civilians
| would do when caught in the middle of a gun fight or normal
| operation. No expense is really spared, you will actually fight
| like you play and that is a regular mantra. I'm reminded of a
| time in 29 Palms where my unit airlifted a radio truck onto a
| mountain so they could broadcast on the other side of it, which
| is _exactly_ what you would do in country if you couldn 't get
| to the top of the mountain.
|
| Aside from that you'll be subject to the typical "death by
| powerpoint" classes that continue to drive in some of these
| trainings, but they're always referring you to a manual to
| learn more from. When people do screw up, they'll usually make
| them teach a class to show everyone what they learned.
|
| I don't know if there's an official statistic on this, but a
| majority of the training that is conducted in the Marines I
| would be willing to put three paychecks on is conducted by
| Lance Corporal through Sergeant.
|
| The goal is to cross-train enough people and foster enough
| interest that a team can be mostly self-sustaining.
| swebs wrote:
| I'm sure you've experienced 300+ page textbooks in high school.
| kube-system wrote:
| I also read a few in undergrad, before I was a college grad.
| batch12 wrote:
| When I was in basic, we were all given STP-21-1 and expected to
| read it. While waiting for other activities (haircuts, range,
| etc) often we were told to read it. I probably read the entire
| thing from cover to cover twice in those 9 weeks.
|
| Edit: I was also not a college grad at the time. People can
| still read without a degree.
| kepler1 wrote:
| I wonder if people who consciously practice being more
| situationally aware, who went through some training (or are just
| naturally able to handle more thoughts and inputs at once)
| sometimes look at people on the street, lazily walking through an
| intersection slowly while staring at their phone, or just ambling
| through life unawares and think: wow, a lot of people are lucky
| to not be evolutionarily selected out each day.
|
| I think you start to wonder, how do many people in this world get
| through life sleepwalking?
|
| Not to say that this awareness = "superior", of course, many
| people have different talents and being situationally aware is
| just one such thing. And for some, not being situationally aware
| is necessary to allow some less tangible benefits to appear
| (creativity, relaxation to enable free thought, intangible
| problem solving, etc). Hopefully such people, by the way, have
| other people looking out for them.
|
| But sometimes, you wonder -- person XYZ on the street, neither
| paying attention, nor having someone who looks out for you as you
| talk your head off unawares and self-absorbed... What world do
| you live in?
| lamontcg wrote:
| Yeah I cave dive as a hobby and the lack of situational
| awareness on and around our roads is abysmal.
| bluGill wrote:
| Whats worse is knowing that I've done some things and
| realized I'm not better. Sure I sometimes use situational
| awareness and avoid an accident. However other times I do
| something stupid and only because someone else used
| situational awareness did we avoid an accident. Most people
| write the latter off as a rare thing, but I've recently had
| the insight it all balances out and humans are all equally
| bad at driving.
|
| Which is why I'm careful to leave 3 seconds between me and
| the car in front no matter how many people fill the gap - I
| need all the help I can get to stay safe and I don't care how
| much slower it makes me.
| graderjs wrote:
| > (creativity, relaxation to enable free thought, intangible
| problem solving, etc)
|
| I think ASA is not exclusively focused on outer awareness. I
| think there's a significant component of awareness of yourself
| (strengths, emotions, thoughts) that's part of it, and
| associated with resilience etc. I also don't think that
| situational awareness, inner or outer, is exclusive with
| creativity, relaxation, free thought, intangible problem
| solving.
|
| I think what you're missing here is that the "concrete outer
| world" can also be manipulated and conceived abstractly at a
| very high level. I think the "head in the clouds" creative is a
| stereotype, and exists, but is not representative, and is not a
| majority one, and there's plenty of super aware people who are
| also super creative. Me included. Also I think maybe many of
| those people who "shut away" in the inner (or phone?) world,
| can probably handle many inputs and thoughts, but it's a case
| of where they choose to put their attention. Surely there are
| some who deliberately isolate their senses in this way, because
| they are so very sensitive, and just haven't learned how to
| comfortable utilize it, or perhaps just not yet.
| quercusa wrote:
| In good military fashion, Jeff Cooper (Lt. Col,USMC) developed
| a color code for situational awareness with respect to the
| possibility of conflict/combat. White: unprepared / Yellow:
| Relaxed alert / Orange: Specific alert / Red: Fight
|
| Most people stay in Condition White.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Cooper#Combat_mindset_and...
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| Absolutely. I'm a naturally anxious person which translates
| into observing the situation as much as possible before
| interacting, and I also have significant training in the OP
| material. Sometimes (often) this is a hindrance to enjoyment. I
| have to practice a lot of mindfulness to not get unreasonably
| upset/concerned at some behaviors.
|
| The number one behavior that upsets me is in grocery stores:
| people who do not realize that their shopping cart placement is
| causing a noticeable blockade and others are squeaking by or
| (im)patiently waiting for them to move, or avoiding the aisle
| entirely. This is not restricted to any type of person either;
| just today I witnessed a young man in scrubs park his cart
| sideways in the center bread aisle, halfway through turning
| around, and then abandon it to walk to the aisle cap to grab
| something (which he analyzed for some time before deciding upon
| taking). My mom used to do this same thing and it always
| bothered me, except now I view it as not just an annoyance but
| an evacuation and movement hazard.
|
| The other one that bugs me is when I see people stopping at an
| entrance/top of escalator/exit of elevator or similar choke
| point. Please, I know it's overwhelming to decide what to
| do/where to go next, but be aware of your immediate
| surroundings and move to the side as you figure out the rest.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Everyone who drives a motor vehicle in public should probably
| read this back to front.
|
| > 1-5. People emit certain conscious and subconscious signals
| indicating their mental states and intent. Humans tend to follow
| predictable patterns of behavior. Continued observation of
| behaviors and the surrounding environment reveals patterns that
| can be used to derive other information about the person or
| people being observed. The goal of this observation is to
| determine the relevance of the information provided to the matter
| at hand.
|
| > 1-6. Soldiers can observe indicators based upon an established
| baseline. Soldiers can identify the enemy among civilians.
| Baselines are established when the enemy is not present because
| the lack of enemy presence allows the observer to determine the
| most complete baseline.
|
| Consider the "enemy" here to be the idiot who is about to pull
| into traffic without seeing you coming, and the signal to be how
| they did an aggressive stop, they blew the line of the stop sign
| completely, and they're displaying aggressiveness and impatience.
|
| Your foot should already be coming off the gas and covering the
| brake pedal, and if you see them move forwards at all you should
| be already actively braking.
|
| Generally any vehicle waiting at a stop sign I mentally label as
| a possible threat, but you can often be better prepared when you
| observe someone's actions in their vehicle that seems different
| than baseline. You don't need to react as strongly every time you
| see a vehicle waiting at a stop sign at a cross street to you,
| but when you see signs of aggressiveness, you should increase
| your own defensiveness and preparation to act.
|
| I'm sure I'll hit the sections on visualization and preparation
| for action later.
|
| If you watch r/roadcam vids on reddit you'll often see accidents
| that are the counter example to this where people speed at a
| consistent 8 mph over the limit all the time, and don't adjust
| their velocity ever for hazards or even just intersections and
| are caught completely unaware when another vehicle that displays
| a deviation from baseline, immediately then does something really
| dumb and collides with them.
|
| Related article:
|
| https://gedandclaire.com/downloads/a-fighter-pilots-guide-to...
| quercusa wrote:
| For motorcyclists, it can be a life or death skill.
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