Assessing Decision-Making Skills in Virtual Environments

Members of small dismounted units will face growing responsibilities and increasing challenges in combined arms combat and contingency operations on the battlefield of the future. Many of these missions will take place in urban settings. Training for military operations on urbanized terrain is limited by time, cost, and safety factors. Virtual environment technologies have the potential to provide the Army with a training capability to meet these new demands. An automated training and after action review support tool (Virtual Soldier Skills Assessor - ViSSA) is described. The ViSSA system will allow trainers to effectively assess soldier and small unit leader tactical and decision-making skills in virtual urban environments. The system tracks mission-related factors linked to soldier decisions, movements, fire, radio, traffic, and contact with virtual entities and trigger lines under an intricate web of overlays designed to capture and store these specific pieces of data during a training scenario. The system provides automated output displays for an effective after-action review following the virtual exercise.