Improving Command and Control by Assessing the Common Operational Picture
Walk into any military command center and you will likely see large wall-mounted screens and rows of laptops showing colorful symbols moving across digital maps. As in a bygone era, when real maps were spread over large tables and markers (reminiscent of Monopoly tokens) denoted unit positions, today’s high-resolution displays are meant to provide commanders with a schematic depiction of the operating area or battlefield, locations of friendly units and, when intelligence is available, the sites of enemy units.
The difference between then and now is dramatic. The “Monopoly tokens” of old were moved around the map based on (hopefully) periodic reports from the battlefield. But as the time between reports increased, so did positional errors. Today, in an era of continuous communications from the front and when the positions of individual soldiers are reported via global positioning system every few minutes, commanders enjoy “omniscient,” near real-time situational awareness of the battlefield.
But do they? And how would they determine whether or not they did?
How do commanders know if the displayed picture is accurate and that all of their forces (at least) are displayed in their actual locations? How do they know if the picture is complete, and that the forces—friendly, neutral, or hostile—for which they have data are being displayed? And how do they know if the picture is common, that they are seeing the same one that other commanders are seeing, and that everyone is working off of the same information?
To ensure the information is accurate, the U.S. military needs to move quickly and aggressively to regularly assess the quality of the pictures that form the foundation of situational awareness, which is a crucial factor in successful decision-making and command and control.
Achieving Accurate COPs
Situational awareness is based on common operational pictures (COPs) that, to be effective, must be as clear and complete as possible. A COP is any display containing information that supports decision-making at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels. COPs can inform maritime, ground, and air operations as well as military logistics and cyber issues. Depending on the mission and the domain, COP data can be displayed geographically—as tracks for aircraft, ships, or ground units, for example—or as text that provides status updates on an event. To be effective and operationally relevant, COPs must be accurate, complete, and common to all users.
A metrics-based approach that regularly assesses the quality of COPs is the key to achieving accuracy, completeness, and commonality. The Center for Naval Analyses’ work using this approach for air pictures has demonstrated the impact that such a metrics-based process can have on improving command and control, and combat system interoperability.
This has been seen through the single integrated air picture (SIAP), the air component of the common tactical picture. The air-defense community has refined SIAP during two decades of work on air combat systems integration and interoperability problems. They apply a metrics-based approach to measure the quality of the air picture and use those findings to identify interoperability issues and necessary system improvements. The process has prompted many changes to the airborne warning aircraft systems and to Aegis combat systems on cruisers and destroyers.
To create SIAPs, air-defense analysts first identified key attributes that could be used to assess the quality of the air picture. These attributes measure not only whether information is received, but its completeness, accuracy, and commonality. The resulting metrics link system- or platform-level engineering performance metrics to quantifiable mission capabilities.
Taking the Right Measures
The SIAP attributes that the air community uses to implement its metrics-based approach measure the accuracy and fidelity of the information that is gathered. This information forms a shared understanding of the operational environment and supports engagement- and battle- management decisions. These attributes include:
• Completeness, when all objects are detected, tracked, and reported.
• Clarity, when the air picture includes no ambiguous or spurious tracks.
• Continuity, when the track number assigned to an object does not change.
• Accuracy, when the position and velocity of each assigned track agrees with the position and velocity of the associated object.
• Identification completeness, when all tracked objects are labeled in a state other than “unknown.”
• Identification accuracy or correctness, when all tracked objects are labeled correctly.
• Commonality, when the assigned tracks held by each participant have the same track number, position, and ID.
Many of these metrics can be assessed using the digital data collected during exercises and operations. Having ground-truth data is often helpful in assessing SIAP attributes, but it is not required.
Although dubbed “SIAP attributes,” the principle of measuring commonality, accuracy, and completeness of shared data among COP participants is applicable to all operational pictures. With minor modifications SIAP attributes, or similar metrics, can be applied to other COPs, such as cyber and logistics. Such attributes can also be used to assess information sharing in general. In short, metrics-based COP assessment processes can and should be used to improve the quality of COPs throughout the military.